Justice and Envy

Justice and Envy

Samuel Bird

I ran around the house as excited as I ever could. It was my seventh birthday, and it looked like it was going to be a good one. Our neighbor across the street was an older Christian woman who lived alone and liked us children. For each of our birthdays, she would find toys, a dinner, and make a cake, even if it usually had hair in it. This was as good as life got back then, and I was excited. Mother loved gift giving and made sure to get a present that matched what we were interested in. I saw them in her room when I put the laundry in there. A plastic green army helmet, binoculars, and a pair of walkie-talkies. This was the greatest day of my life so far. My sister and I ran around the house at full speed, yipping and hollering. There was even a chance our father would make it home from the factory, and we would have the whole family together. I ran past my little sister's room as she waved me down. She was a wild thing that didn’t speak a word despite nearly being two, would steal and eat sticks of butter from the fridge, and refused to wear clothes. I stopped to see her blond hair and blue eyes looking up at me. “What? What do you need?” She toddled closer to me as her eyes opened wider as if she was about to start speaking for the first time. As she got closer, she lunged forward and latched onto my arm with her teeth. She chomped down with a bone-crushing force not often found in girls of that size. I pulled myself back and looked at my arm to see the deep indentations that were formed in the same shape as her crooked teeth. The pain was intense, and seeking relief, I belted out one of the words our parents would use against each other. My mother shot out of nowhere, grabbed my arm, and marched me to my dark and cold room. She slammed the door while I asked when I could come out. Silence met my questioning, so I asked again. With no response, I said I was sorry through the door. My apology had no affirmation. I laid down on my moldy bed, put my legs up, and began to kick the wall. From many days of being locked in that room, I found it to be the best way to maintain sanity, exert energy, and display my grievance. A knock came on our heavy wood door. Our Christian neighbor came in. I could hear the rustling of bags full of every treat and goody my little brain could remember from seeing them in the store. I heard her ask where I was as I had to listen to my mother give her another long explanation about why I was such a bad boy. Tears streamed down my cheek as I heard the clatter of old plates, the chewing of delicious food, and the warm conversation of a family that didn’t want me. More than just pain, this seemed an injustice to me. 

Before and after this experience, my parents and especially my father had a particularly brutal punishment. When he knew I was hungriest, he would buy some canned pumpkin and bring it home. I would have to sit there with a grumbling stomach as I watched her eat. After a long shouting session that informed me what a wretched child I was, I would have to watch as he told another child they were loved. In the last part of my life with my father, I moved in to build a relationship and take care of my younger siblings. No matter how peaceful I tried to be, I found him handing wads of money I didn’t know he had, to my sister. This coveting was weaponized against me and became a minefield left in my mind long after the war was over. As a child, I would have to watch other children play, eat food, and be loved all while I went without. Throughout my time as a young person trying to rise from my circumstances, I had to watch loving parents give financial and emotional support to my peers. Even now, I watch as my peers fall in love and have children while I fail to do so. In a later article, I will talk about how I keep this pain from turning to anger, but for now, I seek to express how painful it was. The world around me seemed to receive a good or resource that I wanted or even needed, while I did not. My siblings had comparable situations to mine, and each of them became heavily involved with politics. While I am critical of viewing the human experience from the macro social level and refer to politics as “philosophy for fools,” I think there is another reason I vary. The injustices they witnessed led to a need to right wrongs. I am critical of each type of justice, but justice as fairness is what I find most dangerous. This fairness then comes down to an egalitarian view of how value and resources should be divided amongst a group of people. I will leave the rest of the conversation up to the social sciences. However, I think there is something to be said from the phenomenon of human existence. 

You have your life. It is safe to say this because you are reading this which takes time and being alive. Your life is a series of events leading to now and culminating in the unknown. You probably have a story to make sense of these many larger events into a more simple framework. Still, the actual events you have lived in are incredibly complex. You have most likely been alive for many decades. This implies many days lived, with many hours, and moments. While there can be arbitrariness in what is valuable, the days varied in what you found valuable and how much of it you received. Some days, the love, food, and joy you took from a day was both what you needed and wanted, some days neither, and others one of the options. With all this complexity in one day, it can be difficult to say what the merit of that day was in metrics, let alone the merit of an entire life lived. This justice as egalitarianism isn’t just about the filling of your needs alone, but how they are filled relative to others. If we are going to find how the value of our lives stack up to another’s, we will no doubt need a metric. The issue is that, once again, it is complex enough to make it not possible. For example, many people will be bitter that someone has more resources than them. While you could certainly say they net more of a certain resource, you could not say that translated to net greater total value. I have met millionaires with penthouse suites who wished to open the window on that suite and jump down. I have also met people living with no house at all, and they were grateful for the space to jump for joy. 

Perhaps the response is to ask who got the most value from a specific transaction. Sort of a momentary equity. If that were the case, it would not be equity as an even split of value would see it going equally to someone that has more. For example, if we say it is difficult to say who is better off, so a millionaire and I split all our shared bills evenly, it is missing the fact of who has more to contribute. Equity can then not be applied in a given exchange, or over a life without defeating its own objectives. This makes it inconsistent, which is the closest thing to a failing as far as I’m concerned. This drive for sameness also breeds everything ending up being homogenous. This then is the death of magnanimity, which likely had to do with why there was value in the first place. I then ask, what is different between this iteration of justice, and my coveting? You may say: but wouldn’t this imply that equality is not one of the greatest goods? Well, I am not saying it couldn’t be, but Nietzsche showed me that I am without enough of a case to think it is. 

This sense of justice my siblings have, has caused them much pain. It has caused me pain as far as I fell into its trap. The inevitable next step was to pity myself which removes my ability to act in the world and finally ends in me saying no to life. Wanting a different outcome, I choose a different input. A few years ago, my father told me he was going to start another family and he would love them like I wished he loved me. My mother did a quieter version where she took in young people who were my age and cared for them. Each of these was painful for me. I couldn’t help but want to hate these people who had what I wanted and maybe even needed. I was surprised how deep that pit was that sprouted this vitreal. I realized what was happening, what I was thinking, and what I wanted to do. I pulled these people in mind that replaced me. I realized that I was happy for them. I was happy for my parents to find people to care about. I was happy that they found that love reciprocated. I want to make it clear, that this is incredibly unfair, but that is the beauty of mercy. It removes me from a tally of gives and takes and moves me to what difference I can make. When my sister found out I reached out to my father and apologized, she correctly informed me that was unfair and that he did not deserve it. She was right, but I could offer it, and even if I was told off, I wanted him to have the peace he never offered. This removes me from a groveling fight to procure what I want from the world and makes room for my own developing magnanimity. In a read from Nietzsche, I realized that what is seen as kindness on my part is rather an overflow of strength of character. Having fought to become as powerful as I can, I have more of this power that overflows and benefits the lives around me. 

Last night I had a dream. The phone rang. I answered it to hear the melodious voice of the girl that I once loved. We talked for a moment as she told me how wonderful her life had become. She gently reminded me that despite all my efforts, I was back to the same pitiful fights to survive I always fought. I listened, content to recall she was more than just a memory. She told me she was with some people as I heard their voices. The child who would hit me with sticks when I tried to play with the other kids, my first love who put me down, old bosses who worked me to the bone and paid nothing, and finally, my father. “Father, is that my father?” She said yes as I asked to put the phone on speaker. “It is good to see you are all happy. You seem to be having a grand time and I love to hear it. I hear the clattering of plates and the chewing of food. I hope your dinner is good.” I woke up and sat forward. No matter the ontology of the dream, my body seemed sure of what just happened. In this dream, I was back to being pathetic, alone, and scared. These people who had brought much pain in my life were all happy and won in the end. I knew myself well enough to know I had to make something meaningful from this, or my day was ruined before it started. I thought to my Esse Maxim and what it would necessitate or suggest this could mean. Sitting there with the pain that each of them brought on, it came to me. I was going to do the most wretchedly unjust, unfair, and unequal thing I could. I would wish them well.