The fight against heartless social justice

Columbia, we love social justice. It’s really quite remarkable. I’ve never heard of another university that spends as much time on it as we do. The entire Millennium Village Project is run from right here. We are one of very few universities in America where you can concentrate in sustainable development as an undergrad. There are so many social justice student groups on campus that I’m not even going to bother to look up the actual number. And when John McCain and Barack Obama wanted to find a venue to stop all their vigorous campaigning for a day and talk about community service, where did they go? Roone Arledge Auditorium.

So here’s a question: What are we doing? Why do we do all this helping the poor? I don’t mean the moral imperative. What are the goals? Is it just to get poor people some wealth? In and of itself, that seems like a strange goal. After some thorough Googling, I pulled up a few different studies about which nations have the happiest people who are the most satisfied with their lives. The highest I saw America ranked was 15, always with several much poorer countries ahead of us. Does that not strike you as odd? We are the richest country in the history of the known universe, and the Venezuelans think they’re having a better time than us.

Can I make an incredibly cliché suggestion as to why this might be? If you give someone money, they’re not any happier. They just have more money. Sure, their lives are easier, but that doesn’t appear to make much of a difference in people’s perceived quality of life.

But there’s a bigger problem with the way we do social justice. You’ve probably been to some event where someone was raising awareness and funds for some issue, right? How do they do it? Step one is to explain to you the mind boggling travesty that is their particular issue, both with statistics and tear-jerking anecdotes of tragedy. Next, they detail their organization’s outstanding work combating this travesty, both with statistics and tear-jerking anecdotes of success. Finally, they ask you to get out your check books. I know this because I’ve done it plenty before.

Of course, this can all be done with pure intentions and in an acceptable way, but it can also be done in a way that objectifies the very people we are trying to help. They become those statistics and those anecdotes. They are a means by which we prove the worth of our own organizations and raise funds so that social justice may continue marching forward. Then, we can feel good about ourselves for having acted according to our socio-political beliefs and ideologies.

Meanwhile, there’s a homeless man on the corner who really just wants someone to talk to, which brings me to the actual point of this article. Social justice is great. I’m a big fan. Keep doing it, but make sure we don’t lose the heart of the whole endeavor. People want more than just occasional hand-outs or even a sustainable income. They want real interaction and relationships with other people, and I’m not just talking about the poor. That goes for us too. The funny thing is, though, it looks like a lot of poorer people have figured out how to be happy in this way a lot better than we have. That’s not always true, but life satisfaction does appear to be somewhat class-blind.

Now, we all go to an Ivy League school, which means, regardless of our background, we are now official, card-carrying members of the top 1% of the world. Welcome. It’s quite comfortable up here. But people like us are not known for associating with people who do not have homes or jobs. We’re perfectly happy to set up a government program to assist them in their attempts to be just a little bit more like us, but we don’t actually talk to them very often. What if we did though? What if Columbians were known for sitting on the steps and hanging out with the poor in our neighborhood, or staying in the village instead of the nice hotel downtown on our summer trips to Africa? What if we had so many homeless friends that public safety started to get nervous about how many of them were sleeping in the dorms? What if the social trends that dictated how people interact with people from other income brackets completely broke down at our school?

Radical? Yes, but since when was it a bad thing to be radical at Columbia? We’ve had our radical fire stomped out sometime in the last few decades, and I’d be more than happy to help rekindle the flames, which is why I leave you with a small challenge. Next time you go to Morton Williams, there will probably be an older guy with a beard and cane standing somewhere just outside the door. His name is John. He seems like a good guy. Try making a new friend.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in History and Germanic studies. He is the former president of the Veritas Forum and a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.