We can make a rational sense of justice based on enlightened self interest & our preceptions of the greatest good for the greatest number. But since people are imperfect, the justice we create will always be imperfect, based more on our needs, or more accurately the needs of the powerful among us, than an ideal.But still we should strive to express the ideal of justice

Unfortunately those things are in short supply

The universe & nature definitely are not just. I believe the only justice we have is that we as a people create for ourselves, imperfect as that is. Often justice is distorted by powerful interests.

The universe & nature do not appear to have the concept of justice. The big fishes eat the little fishes & all that. Justice appears to be a human construct based on our relation with our fellows & society as a whole

Children develop very early a sense of what is fair & what is not. It may be skewed to their self interest, but it is there. A child will protest loudly if they feel someone got a bigger piece of cake than they did.

So justice is part of our social contract, & does not depend on any universal principles or god's will. If there is something that we can call god, & he,she,it has a will, it doesn't not appear to involve our interests, It is up to us to protect & maintain justice in our existence

@Remiforce We agree on a lot of things.

@Remiforce It's not just a social contract. There are biological reward systems that favor empathy & community.

@Remiforce Sorry but you need to do a search on animal morality, there are hundreds of studies out there on the instinctual origins of morality and especially a sense of justice. It does not start with human culture. But even so whether it starts with human culture or in our animal natures, it certainly does come before religion, religions claims to have created morality and justice are no different from the claims it once made that it could bring the rains, just a way to get money and devotion out of people for pretending to provide what was theirs to start with.

@Fernapple Isn’t the animal sense of justice mostly just a tool for living in a particular group? Outside that group I thought it was the law of the jungle.

If so, that would seem to preclude any grand universal morality or justice.

@WilliamFleming Of course but isn't our sense of justice just a tool for living in a group too. The fact that it can be distorted by cultural programming, does not affect its basic primal nature.

@Fernapple Sure.

Unfortunately the average person, even today, doesn't understand complex social, economic, political realities. They need a simple, dramatic, emotional shorthand to get their acceptance & cooperation.Enter religion & Fox News (except with Fox News, it's distortions to serve the interests of sinister billionaires)

Justice & injustice appear to be self reflecting concepts of the human mind. They appear to have no relation with the universe or nature

In the past, our ideas of justice were based largely on the religious concepts of good & evil, Respect for religion is falling in many parts , although it is rising elsewhere. Respect for justice is falling because many people are beginning to realize it has been co opted by powerful special interests & no longer works for the people, if it ever really did..

God has been seen in the past as the Great Policeman in the Sky, who enforces the rules & punishes hidden crimes in the afterlife, but we are rapidly losing that comforting notion.

I, too, wish hell was a real place. I've met several people I'd like to send there. I would start with many of the religious hypocrites who mess up people's minds with this nonsense.

It is hard for many people to accept, but just because we want something to be real doesn't mean it is.

Iagree. Heaven & hell & reincarnation according to one's merits or demerits is just wishful thinking

It would be nice if we could bring the murdered little girl back to life, so society has to do the best it can & try to make certain this type of situation doesn't happen again, at least with the murderer. We can have a discussion about the justice of the death penalty. Personally I feel in the case of very heinous crimes, it is justified, as long as proper safeguards are in place to minimuze the chance of executing an innocent person

@Remiforce I think that in attempting to make sure things don't happen again and calling that justice, we are simply failing miserably at both. If my lessons I've learned raising children are of any merit, I would say that when you are genuinely trying to stop bad behavior from being repeated, you do things a little differently than when you are focused on punishing others. Those little differences make a big change, however. I think our society has a punishment mindset rather than a teaching mindset and I think the increasingly violent crimes are one symptom of that.

I personally am in favor of the death penalty but not as an "eye for an eye" type of punishment. More of a protection when someone has demonstrated an extreme degree of depravity and you want to ensure that they are never able to repeat that behavior again. I'm not a huge fan of locking people up for life or of jail in general. I think we'd see huge changes by requiring people to make restitution rather than just locking them up. We also would struggle to force people to make restitution for "crimes" that aren't really hurting people, like using drugs.

I think if we want justice, it is up to us to create & maintain it

I think we can base our sense of justice on enlightened self interest & John Staurt Mill's ideas about the greatest good for the greatest number. To my mind, justice is not something we experience, it is something we create

As Tevya sang in "Fiddler on the Roof", "Would it hurt some vast, eternal plan--if I were a wealthy man?"

Much in our existence we do not, & perhaps cannot, understand. I assume you are talking about "the laws of creative force" in a poetic sense, as no one knows if there is such a force at work. A creative force would imply a sense of purpose, as when something is created, it is done for a purpose. But we don't know if there really is a purpose to all this.

Justice in any sense we can comprehend doesn't seem to function in the the natural order of things. What we encounter is what it is, so as a practical matter, we must take life on life's terms, not ours

@Remiforce Exactly. Nature responding to whatever laws are inherent within it.

Religion is often used as a cover for evil