People Treated Differently. How Do We Live Justly in an Unjust World?

There is a difference in how people are treated no matter how much respect they offer. There is also a difference in how people with some power perceive the reactions they receive.

It is filtered through experience, preconceptions, and invisible biases that have been taught and ingrained in our minds.

Whether we are on the defensive or offensive is due, in part, to our programming. It colors our hearing and our seeing.

The reason I brought this up today is because, I found this among my memories from three years ago when I journaled this thought:

For 5 years in the 90s, I taught close to 15,000 traffic school students, mostly middle class, not sure of the racial demographics, perhaps more Caucasian than any other single group.

Many told of being belligerent, uncooperative, and rude with the officer giving them a ticket.

They were proud of it.

Half had a bad attitude.

Some were physically intimidating. I might have felt at bit fearful with them. None were choked to death as they were immobilized and pleading for their lives.
------------------
They felt in charge and empowered and safe.

Imagine growing up in an environment where you never felt that way about anyone in authority.

-----------------

"A study at New York's Stony Brook University found people who are scared do indeed give off “fear pheromones” in their sweat. These hormones trigger parts of your brain that are subconsciously associated with fear. ... The fear pheromone can trigger similar emotions in others who happen to catch a whiff. - "Sep 15, 2014

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344325/

-----------------

It is an unjust world in many ways, but that does not precent us from striving to live justly in it.

Living Justly in an Unjust World

It is not a concept, but a thrust to be just.

In a word it is to love that which is above us, surrounds us, envelops us, has created and is creating us and to love those who also are created and are being created.

But it is an unjust world, you cry, protest, and flail.

We can try, resist, and ultimately fail to live justly in such a world. Why try?

If it were not possible to swim against the tide, there would be no more salmon on the planet.

Grant it, it is hard and our charred, scarred, burned and battered selves must energize, prioritize, and optimize, but we can live justly in an unjust world.

In the end, -and at the beginning- it is all we can do

And it is what we cannot be stopped from doing.