A Strong Inner Sense of Justice Corrupts You

The stronger your inner sense of justice is, the more easily corruptible you are…

What do I mean by this?

Well, the stronger your feelings and beliefs pertaining to good and bad, right and wrong are is the more given you are to trying to force your will and sense of authority onto others. A strong inner sense of justice has a tendency to turn people into tyrants who feel entitled to judge and punish others for their own amusement and satisfaction. The stronger your inner sense of justice is, the more you try to make people and things fit with and conform to what you think is fair and proper.

Now on the surface a strong inner sense of justice seems like a good thing. A strong inner sense of justice can perceivably compel people to intervene when or if someone who’s powerful or who has situational advantages over others tries to bully and/or take from defenseless parties. Beyond this, it can serve as a guide to keep those who have one from treating others poorly themselves. Or at least it seems that way on the surface…

The problem with everybody’s inner sense of justice is that it’s skewed by and according to self-interest. What a person thinks is fair is more often than not tethered to their own inner story, and as such, heavily biased by and according to the individual’s desires and cultural influences. In other words, what most people think is fair is what benefits them or those they feel linked to the most.

So for instance if there’s a conflict between two or more groups, what an onlooker will think is “fair” in the way of dispensation for punishments and rewards is whatever leans in favor of the party they most readily identify with. As if to say: “Whoever’s most like me and/or how I view myself deserves the most considerations and the best outcomes. If they deserve punishments then they deserve less punishment, and if they deserve rewards then they deserve more rewards.”

Such individuals don’t think in terms balance, only in terms of justice.

You see, balance happens at a systemic level whereas justice happens at the individual and group levels. That means justice is local and balance is universal.

Balance is what you call it when agents performing within a system reach and perform within a state of mutual symbiosis, which allows for growth, harmony and sustainability at the systemic level. When it comes to balance, all transactions ultimately source back to the interest of the system itself — not the isolated interests of agents performing within the system.

That means justice is NOT balance. They’re not mutually inclusive or interchangeable concepts. In fact, the pursuit of justice necessarily precludes balance, as it removes focus from consideration for the system at large, and instead focuses exclusively on individual and group interests and needs.

This is why justice sources back to parasitism (an extension of corruption), and balance sources to natural order and/or organization.

You ever wonder how people can watch someone from one group murder a person in cold blood on film and still have sympathy for the assailant, but only hear loose accusations of a person from another group doing wrong, and then scream, holler and demand that the accused be locked away in prison forever or even killed? It’s because what people think is justice…what people think is “fair” will always be skewed by and according to self and group interest.

A strong inner sense of justice necessarily corrupts you. The most corrupt people in the history of the species have all had insanely strong inner senses of justice. Every homicidal maniac, tyrant, genocidal group, social predator, abusive parent or mate, rapist, pedophile, serial killer, racist, nationalist, misogynist or aggressive radical feminist, aggressive religious zealot, corrupt authority figure (lawmakers and enforcers alike), etc, have all believed that they were/are “right”, and that injuring, exploiting, subduing, robbing and even murdering others, namely those they judge and seek to define themselves against, is “fair, just, proper and necessary”.

Every fear monger has sought to appeal to their audience of cowardly ideologues’ inner senses of justice.

Just think about people like Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Tommy Sotomayor, Ann Coulter, Tomi Lahren, Rush Limbaugh, Jordan Peterson, Umar Johnson, etc… They appeal to their audiences’ desires for moral symmetry. All they have to say to their audiences is: “That’s not fair!” and their listeners will be putty in their hands. The stronger your inner sense of justice is, the dumber and more selfish and intolerant you tend to be. The dumber you are is the easier it is to influence you, which makes this a vicious cycle. The stronger your inner sense of justice is, the more judgmental, pious and aggressive you’re gonna be. It’s the more prone you’ll be to ONLY listening to people who say that you’re right and that others (those unlike you) are wrong. It’s the more you’ll cheer for the suffering, oppression and humiliation of those unlike you and/or who you seek to define yourself against.

The inner sense of justice makes corruption ‘excusable’ when or if your side is benefitting from it, but intolerable and worthy of the highest punishment and penalties when others engage in it or benefit from it. A strong sense of inner justice lends itself to narcissism in that it always makes you see yourself as the good guy and see others as bad and deserving of punishment and contempt.

The inner sense of justice is also at the root of envy.

“It’s not fair! Why do they deserve to have this and I don’t! Why do they deserve success and I don’t? Why do they get attention ahead of me? Why are they prettier than me? What about me?”, or “We deserve to have more than them! We deserve to have easier lives than them, and to live and benefit at their expense! We deserve good things and they deserve bad things!”

Again, narcissism, competition and aggression are triune — and the inner sense of justice appeals to all three. The inner sense of justice is born from narcissism, and necessarily makes those who live through it competitive and aggressive. Narcissism, competition and aggression are trinity and the gateway through which corruption enters the soul.

Instead of living for justice, strive to think and see all things through a lens of balance. Balance doesn’t focus on what’s fair, but instead, on what produces harmony, healing and pathways to progress.

To think in terms of balance is in essence to be averse to corruption wholly. That means you have to be principled, and to think at the level of the system with respect to benefit. When you think in terms of balance you necessarily become honest and brave. You refuse to accept or support corruption irrespective of who’s benefitting from it, or who’s engaging in it. That means you don’t allow for or abide things bullying, exploitation or the oppression of others, period. It has nothing to do with what you think is fair, and everything to do with isolating and neutralizing what the system itself cannot abide or sustain through.

If you’re not thinking in terms of balance then you’re not thinking about solving problems, but instead, getting even and/or getting justice. And the pursuit of justice becomes this never ending tug-of-war in which no one truly wins.

Constantly nurturing within yourself mental rigidity in the form of hardline views on good and bad, right and wrong, and authority and subordination necessarily turns you into a corrupt person.