Non-Religious Reflections on a Greater Sense

The human race is individually endowed among the millions of other species on this planet with the facet of multiple emotions.  Emotion, that blessed variable that sets humans apart.  Sets them apart, though, for what?  Basic reactions have always been present from the moment an intelligent creature graced the planet in the form of marine life.  These main feelings mainly include happiness, sorrow, fear, and pain.  Almost all life on earth has the capability to express these feelings in one way or another.  However, non-human beings still lack one emotion: justice.  Justice, in its purest from, is not just pronouncing sentence upon another or ensuring fairness, although those are indeed significant components to the machine of true justice.  It is comprised of the internal pangs, pressures, and instincts that one feels when that person knows the right thing is being done, or feels that that emotion has been violated.

This emotion, justice, is called upon during widely varied occasions, and sometimes even at inopportune times.  However, this emotion is one of the only things this life has to give a person nakedly, without sugar or glorified falsehood.  It provides in addition an awareness of security that whatever happens, something in our minds will hint at what is true, what is false, what is good, what is bad, what is...

I hold the belief that true justice and one’s conscience are nearly interchangeable, excepting the fact of manifest human error.  The wisest, truest man’s conscience would surely be equivalent to justice; for if that man’s non-desensitized conscience told him something was right or wrong, what else could that thing be but right or wrong as this man deems?  And if he knew that his was a just conscience, why would he allow the outside media to taint and corrupt it?  Of course he would not, nor would any who had this remarkable ability.  Alas, no one has this perfect conscience, but one can only endeavor to remotely achieve justice as this.

Some people claim that this world holds nothing worth for which to strive, that whatever one does, it is not worth it.  I mean, hey? who cares, right?  It doesn’t matter.  We all die anyway, and we all try to make the best of our lives, so why not step from the pack, be different, and not care?  It seems a faultless solution, to just give up on everything because there is no point in working for ideality.  Let’s all run away and hide from the very things that make us alive, that make us joyful, sorrowful, that make us feel.  Feel, unlike any other creature on the planet.  Aw, hell, while we are at it, why doesn’t the world just commit mass suicide?  Why don’t we raze and annihilate the whole planet with our brilliant weapons in the hopes of eliminating all the problems that we face?  Because we do care.  We know we care, deep in our hearts, yet cowardice, cowardice prevents us from facing our fears and insecurities and eliminating them in the valiant method upon which the human race has worked and improved since the beginning, resulting in man’s domination of Earth.  Why do we care?  Because our distinctive emotion, justice, urges us otherwise.

All right, justice saves the world from creating hell on earth.  What about optimists who believe in creating earthly heaven?  We can all work together, get along, and make one, big, happy family.  While honorable in principle, justice also proves to us that this utopian approach to life will also never be truly effective.  One disagreement between the flawless, passive people of the perfect future could effect global chaos.  If one argument could destroy the world, how can we hope to accomplish the task of establishing this kind of society in the first place?

Justice almost seems an inadequate word to describe so crucial an element of the mind.  Justice appears to hearken only to human, imperfect matters.  If one believes in conscience, that person would understand how essential this justice is.  Justice, that insufficient word…as what could it be described in terms of power?  It certainly holds no majesty, no awe-inspiring ring to it that moves the heart.  It is more like a sense…a sense of…what?  What emotion, sense, can describe…  None, of course.  The imperfect human language holds no bars to putting stories onto paper, or little anecdotes or cheery tales.  But describing such divine concepts as this in mere human words…