Integral-Development

This famous verse by David Maria Turoldo introduces this brief – and certainly not exhaustive – reflection on ‘justice’, a theme that is often at the heart of debates and demands. Let us ask ourselves what the meaning of the term “justice” is in a globalised, multicultural society dominated by market forces and technology, and, above all, on what foundation can the concept of “justice” be anchored if religious and moral references are no longer valid or shared? Is a society that speaks the language of weapons just? These days, the terms most frequently heard in public debate are those relating to war, violence, the death of innocent people, and armed attacks. It seems that humanity is prey to an insatiable thirst for power and is capable only of devising plans for destruction, aggression, and the invasion of spaces belonging to others. Pope Leo XIV, too, in the Angelus on Sunday 15 March, drew attention to the “dramatic situations of injustice, violence and suffering that mark our times”.

The world is hungry. We hunger for justice and peace. We are born into a state of hunger, cut off from our mother and turned out to a cruel world as orphaned beggars. We are robbed daily of our peace. Our energy and joy are eaten day and night to fuel the extracting machines of this world: industrialism, capitalism, consumerism. Brutalized, where in this world can we turn for justice? No where. Checks on executive power weaken with each social media proclamation, judicial bias has been bought stock and trade, due process is a false and flimsy veil over systemic corruption. Justice is bartered at the money changers’ tables beneath the ivory towers of our governments and the price is steep!

It is always terrible to see how humanity, generation after generation, finds its greatest aspiration in war, murder, and destruction. In the annihilation of part of itself. One might say, “It’s not my fault. It’s the other who is my enemy, and therefore I must crush him like a poisonous plant.”

This is the same argument used by Cain when questioned by Yahweh after spilling Abel’s blood, who gave the surprising answer, “Who made me my brother’s keeper?”

It seems that so-called political realism is in vogue, i.e., that there are no laws or rules to protect us, but that it is only important to know how to navigate the conflictual sea of reality, where nothing but force and power make sense. That men, after such a long journey, return to the club, the stone, and the machete is indicative of a regression to the devastating powers of instinct, but also of an intolerance towards what had been the liberal canon in recent years, made up of a dense web of rights, which, however, had been transformed into the garment that Deianira sent to Hercules, a garment soaked in the poison of Naxos. Poison that killed Heracles.

Those who go against justice are like wild beasts to other men. With sharp teeth and sweaty, shivering skin. The harshness of strong men, their animal nature, which nothing can stop because they are dominated by their passions, is that of The Genealogy of Morals, when Nietzsche states that evil birds love lambs, “because there is nothing more delicious than a tender lamb.”

This principle of forced saturation of one’s own being, this revelry to the point of bursting, eating everything, digesting everything, destroying everything, could be mistaken by some unhappy people for some kind of greatness, like towering above ordinary mortals. But the light is given to tyrants by mediocrities. The demigod, the superman, needs crowds of cheering mediocrities to praise and support him.

The year 2026 will likely mark the beginning of a new era, one of artificially produced literature that is indistinguishable from text written by humans. As the practice of writing with AI becomes more widespread, it will no longer be possible to distinguish between the human and the artificial. Everything will be open to question.

Only works written before 2026 will be able to be attributed with certainty to a human author. But after 2026, we will no longer be able to be sure. A new era is dawning.

As is well known, the distinction in politics between “right” and “left” has long since lost its raison d’être. Today, the division between progressives and conservatives is more valid. Progressive or conservative ideas that take root in the two camps of the old “right” and “left”.

We must consign these obsolete concepts to the annals of history. But once we have rid ourselves of the words “right” and “left” we must understand the differences, analyze this antagonistic global tension between conservatives and progressives, because this exhausting struggle is tearing the world apart.