Let's be clear: Justice is not an immutable law of nature. Neither math nor physics nor chemistry recognizes justice as one of the universe's governing principles. The strong, rich, and powerful have, since long before humans emerged, by and large taken what they wanted, when they wanted, and never counted the costs to those they took it from. Despite what Socrates may have said, justice has forever occurred, at best, in fleeting, ephemeral flashes. We yearn for a god capable of seeing and ultimately judging all rights and wrongs -- because we know we can't be counted on to do it ourselves. Small wonder that the legend of Robin Hood – the original 99 percenter -- still resonates after 800 years.
We can say that humanity might change, but that's just another, kinder, more optimistic lie. We can't. Not as a whole, not within the time scales required to preserve ourselves. We are descended, on a time frame of 3.5 billion years, from organisms that succeeded because they were the best at gathering as much as they could in the shortest amount of time possible. This has been true throughout history. And prehistory. And primordial history. It's too deeply ingrained to switch off or even ignore. We just don't work that way, and it's time for us to accept that and start thinking about how to address our problems without relying on an ultimate goodness in our nature.
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