The impact of injustice on the brain

«Hunger for justice» It is a more accurate phrase than one could imagine. When a person feels treated fairly, the same area of ​​the brain is activated that when you eat a tasty meal, receive a gift or admire a pretty face.

According to scientists at the University of California-Los Angeles (United States), this shows that justice is a basic need for human beings.

The experiment was simple: a group of participants were gathered and informed that an amount of money was going to be distributed to them. He «area of ​​justice» It was only activated when the amount received was equitable. Instead, When it was unfair, another area was activated, the insulalinked to the regulation of negative emotions.

Ethics of care or instinct to help?

The desire to care has a biological basisis a «natural virtue», and therefore it is more reliable than justice inspired by ideological values. As is known, what is right and wrong can differ between businessmen or workers, believers or atheists, to give just a few examples.

The affectionate care that parents offer their children, and the understanding of their mistakes, should inspire social norms and the distribution of responsibilities. When we hear a child crying we react immediately, but we cannot do the same if the baby cries in another house or thousands of kilometers away. The institutions They have been created in part to bridge these gaps.

On the other hand, an adult person takes care of themselves in many ways, but they are not an island. Societies organize to satisfy needs whose achievement eludes individuals. If society fails In this sense, the person feels unfairly treated and looks for blame.

In this situation, one can fall into temptation to invent a culprit (internal or external) to punish. This avoid addressing complex problems whose solution would surely involve a distribution of responsibilities.

He victimhood It is a strategy with many followers. There are people who feel harmed by the system. They often find direct culprits and sometimes all life seems unfair to them. Play the victim can be used to obtain attention through emotional blackmail, but above all it serves to run away from the real problem and own responsibility.

Victimhood is common in people with low self-esteem who have felt unloved or abandoned. The problem is that by being victims they fail to establish positive relationshipsnor receive the selfless affection they are looking for and instead of changing their attitude they are reinforced in their conviction.

They also tend to be people who find it difficult to express what they really want, perhaps because They expect others to guess as a test of affection. If it doesn’t happen, they have an excuse to launch their complaints or accusations.

The trench of victimhood

Another victimizing tendency is to take any difference of opinion as a personal attackwhich allows you to impose your own without having to explain it convincingly. These people they think they are always right and they do not usually analyze their beliefs in depth.

Describing victimhood is useful because it can help us avoid falling into its trap. One of them is listen carefully to the arguments of the person with whom you have entered into conflict in order to detect the attack personal injury or injustice, which justifies one’s anger and complaints.

This is a reaction so common that it can be defined as normal, but It is preferable to look for a constructive solution. Whenever feasible, seek communication bridges and allies that allow us to move forward.

Empathy helps us be more fair. It is a good idea to put yourself in the other’s shoes, think about their living conditions, personality, desires or limitations to understand their way of acting. The same goes for not being unfair to others. At all times it is convenient anticipate what the person in front of us feels or will feel based on our behavior.

Some flexibility is also necessary. It is a good general rule to put the people ahead of ideas absolute. The obsession with principles such as fidelity, obedience or many others has generated a lot of suffering.

The importance of an even-handed look

If we feel unfairly treated, instead of getting angry or denigrating the other, let’s look for his gaze and let us present ourselves calmly before him or her. The look must penetrate to the most intimate depthwhere we are all equal and conscience dictates what is right.

Meeting and open dialogue should be a requirement in any conflict situation. In Anglo-Saxon culture many disagreements are resolved in mediation meetingsrather than in court.

The power of the look and the appeal to individual conscience as an engine of justice have been understood and put into practice radically by the Religious Society of Friendswhose members are known as Quakers. In their communities, when someone commits an injustice, they are not judged according to a written law or repressed, but rather members gather to watch in silence. Furthermore, his sense of justice prevents them from punishingimprison or participate in wars, whatever the cause.

This way of doing justice is in the origin of non-governmental organizations very important today as Greenpeacedefender of nature and peace, Amnesty Internationalwhich denounces violations of human and political rights around the world, and Oxfamwhich works for social justice alongside the disadvantaged.

true justice has little to do with punishing the guiltyeven though the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth does not lose popularity. It is, rather, the result of everyone’s efforts to relate in a harmonious wayrecognizing the rights and obligations of each one. We are all at the same time vulnerable and capable of being a little more fair.

To deepen justice

• What is justice? Hans Kelsen, Ed. Ariel
• A just future; Various authors, Ed. Icaria
• The power of empathy; Ciaramicoli and Ketcham, Ed. Vergara