Whether you are born into injustice or born sheltered from it won’t matter; invariably, you will feel the sting of it. Something bad is going to happen to you; something not only unconscionable but seemingly preventable. As you attempt to wrap your head around it, you become aware you are not alone in your suffering; you have become part of some growing statistic on this particular phenomenon; Instead of feeling isolated, a group of you can now feel completely alone together.
The ‘just’ thing would be that it never happened in the first place; the implementation of ‘justice’, in the second place, implies that it would ‘never happen again, but unfortunately, we must settle for third, fourth, or even last place: our current legalized form of retribution is neither reparative nor guaranteed, while many of us face daily injustices that society is not equipped to manage, so effectively ignores.
The longer one lives, the greater the chances of winding up in several statistical categories, reinforcing the growing realization that none of these problems is ever really going to go away. Now, when we hear some statistic, we tune out; we know firsthand that caring about it will not stop it from happening. Statistics are for those who have already lost, so instead, we resolve to focus on the road directly ahead of us, attempt to dodge the bumps ourselves, and not waste energy on things we have no power to change.
Each injustice we suffer is statistically too small to move an entire population of people. To increase its political power, each injustice would do well to tie its fates to the others, but the bond would need to be interlocking, as powerful interests would attempt to pull it apart, with its usual ‘divide and conquer strategies.
So, to perhaps the only good reason why you should care: as it turns out, each unconscionable, preventable injustice does share an interlocking connection—there is a root or systemic anomaly beneath all of it –the whole of humanity has, in fact, been alone together this entire time. The Third Option suggests we stop hacking away at the branches that represent our individual suffering; these will only continue to grow back through time. The Third Option intends to strike at the root of all suffering; we seek a reckoning. The arc of the universe has been bent too long toward injustice, and we are simply going to bend it back the other way. Perhaps you would like to exercise some of your ‘free will’ toward this effort. Thank yourselves if you do.
