No Such Thing as Justice

This doesn't really relate to any of the specific readings or topics we've been discussing, but I was thinking about it the other day, and it does have to do with ethics and the way we live our lives.

Justice, at least my own interpretation of it, is the idea that "good" people should be rewarded for their deeds, and "bad" people should be punished. I think most people see justice, and the judicial system as a way to carry out the latter. When people say "I want justice", mostly they mean, "I want revenge." I don't believe in revenge because revenge does not change the original bad deed committed, it does not encourage the person involved to do the right thing next time, and it causes people to enjoy the misfortunes of others, something I believe people should strive to avoid.

The justice system is vitally important to our government and legal system. We need it in order to keep order. Without it we would have no organized way to settle disputes or to determine the guilt and sentences of criminals. However, that does not make it an ethics system.

In order to get a mule to go forward, you dangle a carrot before it and hit it's rump with a stick. People are not mules. We should not see things so simply as to do good things just to be rewarded and avoid doing bad things because we will be punished. What is right and what is wrong, in my own opinion, is too murky a lens with which to classify people, and justice is really the aftermath of that division, not the cause.