Starving children in sub-Saharan Africa. Girls being sold as sex slaves in Thailand. Child soldiers in Uganda. Homelessness and unemployment at home. Each tragedy has its activists, its flyers, its clubs. Each situation captures the hearts of a select group of students, compelling them to donate their money, their prayers, and their time.
As I am sure you have experienced, life at Columbia comes with a collection of social problems ranging from the localized to monumental, from tearjerking to heart-wrenching. Surrounded by students who feel the same sense of duty to fight such injustice until it disappears from this planet, we set our sights on one of the myriad opportunities to bring a glimpse of good into the world. To do so, we pour effort into benefit concerts, service opportunities, and walks for or against the cause.
After such efforts, we sometimes experience the heartening achievement of success. Some of these human travesties begin to shrink or disappear. When this victory achieved, the next gaping need rises to plead for our assistance. Without a break in our step, we find ourselves rallying our peers to fight another unacceptable injustice.
Just as often, though, our painstaking efforts result in no visible change. Perhaps after years of ceaseless campaigning there are still tears being shed by numerous victims of unspeakable brutality. In moments of solitude and discouragement, we look at this stagnancy and wonder what the use was—what we could possibly do against evil that knows neither boundaries nor repose.
There is a frequently missed step in this process. It has nothing to do with how to get the word out, and it isn’t a critique of the way we choose which issue to fight for. Instead, it has to do with the way we approach the concept of social justice.
Take a step back and look at the state of the world. From Japan to Johannesburg and New York to New Delhi, this planet is inundated with examples of incredible pain and incomprehensible cruelty. These tragic situations aren’t exceptions—this corruption in humanity exposes itself in every culture, group, and community. A cursory survey of the state of society in any country reveals that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. For some reason, people feel compelled to hurt, enslave, and kill. Regardless of educational, financial, or social status, injustice flourishes in every human environment.
Circumstances like these beg questions about the origins of such brutality. If human nature is essentially good, what explains this widespread corruption? Could there possibly be some sort of universal problem with humanity? Some sort of international, trans-generational, nondiscriminatory issue that has its roots in our most fundamental identity?
I realize it is highly unpopular in our modern, progressive world to talk in a way that contradicts the idea that every culture can decide right and wrong for itself, but the facts speak for themselves. It may be polite to endorse moral relativism, but the question remains—the question of evil and its presence in humanity. It may be tempting to let the blame fall on society’s structure, but we have to stop faulting circumstance and start recognizing that changes in environment won’t cure what we have.
By conducting a thorough exploration of what is wrong with mankind, we can gain a new perspective. Instead of viewing the starving children in Africa and the persecuted faithful in China as separate and unfortunately coincidental issues, we can recognize those two situations as symptoms of the same disease. After finding this connection, the world’s plague of countless injustices stops looking like a sea of unrelated issues and starts looking like the interconnected theaters of a larger war against the darker side of us.
Our new perspective also transforms the idea of basing success or failure on an issue-by-issue basis. A macro view of the problem reveals that whether we are lobbying for human trafficking awareness or going to Uganda to save child soldiers, we are all in the same fight. If one specific attempt fails but the global march against injustice continues, success has been accomplished.
The battle for social justice in the world is not simply a battle for the promotion of certain results, but it is another facet of a conflict that has existed for millennia and continues to plague us. When we can take the time to explore just what it is that causes the world’s pain, we can approach more universal and timeless solutions. I do not doubt the effectiveness of those individuals and organizations that oppose the evil in the world—I praise their efforts. Instead, I want to urge you, reader, to take a hard look at the fundamental problems that we face. Grapple with them and use the answers you find to bring the fight against global injustice to an entirely different level.
Derek Turner is a Columbia College sophomore. Opening Remarks runs alternate Tuesdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com
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