Changing the World

One of the unjust things about the world is that reaching a state of greater Justice often requires significant sacrifices on the part of the very people who suffer the most greatly from the current state of injustice, due to the uncompensated sacrifices that it extracts from them. This is an unfortunate, but inescapable side effect of a mantra that I heard over and over again when I was in high school: "If it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't matter to me." Or, as it is perhaps better put: "One has to be the change one wants to see in the world." Despite what we often want to believe, Injustice is rarely the result of a certain group of people acting with coordinated malice or stupidity. Rather, it is the simple result of them pursuing what they understand to be their best interests. Accordingly, I am always skeptical of claims that people enact unjust policies or social mores to their own direct detriment.

Demonstrating to others that the world that we wish to see it better for them, as well as us, takes work. And while I understand begrudging that work on the basis of what we are owed for the work already done that remains uncompensated, the only alternative tends to become a helpless anger with a world that has its own interests to pursue.