These days there is always a fundraiser for this or a protest against that. We are bombarded to join a “cause.” And Generation Y, especially, is at the forefront of such efforts.
Christian students are traveling to Africa to share their faith. College graduates are committing two years to the Peace Corps to teach about HIV/AIDS in Asia. Young business owners are donating their profits to build houses in Mexico. Filmmakers are producing movies that unveil global tragedies.
Celebrities like Bono and Angelina Jolie have used their fame to raise awareness for global poverty, orphans and the AIDS epidemic. Companies like Apple and Sprint have created products that directly benefit different social causes. Thousands of Americans rallied behind the victims of natural disasters by donating money, time and other resources.
All of this is done in the name of “social justice.”
A Sicilian priest, Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, first coined the term “social justice” in 1840. He used this term as an appeal to the industry leaders to meet the needs of the urban workers that had been adversely affected by the Industrial Revolution.
In modern thought, social justice is a work of virtue that is aimed at the good of humanity as a whole. Conversely, social injustice is the breaking of agreed rules that constitute fairness.
Author, philosopher and Director of Social and Political Studies at the American Enterprise Institute Michael Novak dissects the meaning of social justice in his essay, “Defining Social Justice.”
“The skills it requires are those of inspiring, working with, and organizing others to accomplish together a work of justice. It aims at good of the city, not the good of one agent only,” Novak says.
If such is true, social justice is open to all kinds of ideals- liberal, conservative and moderate. Instead of dividing, it unites people in a quest for common good, regardless of differences.
“The virtue of social justice allows for people of goodwill to reach different, even opposing, practical judgments about the material content of the common good (ends) and how to get there (means),” Novak says. “Such differences are the stuff of politics.”
So where did we go wrong? Why do we still allow the fight for humans rights to be divided between blue and red? If humanity cannot unite for the sake of each other's rights then we're a lost cause.
published in magazine "Generation WHY"
