What To Do about Injustice

Injustice seems to be all around us these days, ranging from big and small in scope. Injustice can be experienced relationally - someone cuts you off on the freeway, someone is not doing their fair share in the workplace, your partner has been unfaithful to you. Injustice can be experienced systemically - school to prison pipeline, racial profiling and discrimination, unequal opportunities for different cultural groups.

Injustice is pervasive in our experiences, and a natural human response to the experience of injustice is revenge. The desire for revenge is such a natural phenomenon that literature, movies, and TV shows are thematically littered with plots of revenge (such as Count of Monte Cristo, Moby Dick, John Wick, amongst countless others). Maybe you’ve experienced the desire for revenge in the form of road rage, or during those sleepless nights when you plot your revenge against your ex partner.

When we fixate on revenge, we are asking our minds to continuously replay the unjust events. That kind of rumination can have the unintended side effects of intensifying the feelings of being wronged, magnifying the feelings of anger, and giving the event more control over your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Focusing on revenge also causes us to blame ourselves - “why did I let that happen to me, I should have known better than to trust (insert wrongdoer here)”. Not only that, it also activates the amygdala (the emotion center of our brain) to prepare against threats and attacks that are unnecessary. Too often, it turns out that our desire for revenge is not helping us move past the unfair event, it’s actually increasing the power and control it has over us. We continue to fall victim to that experience of injustice time and time again, regardless of how much time has passed since the actual event.

Then what is the alternative? As the cliche saying goes - success is the best revenge. This requires that we focus our energy on upholding the values that were violated, by creating something that is personally and/or societally significant. To redirect the power of our thoughts, emotions, and efforts to redeem the painful experience. It means focusing our minds on what is possible and potential, rather than on what has already passed and is immutable. In doing so, it can help us grow in our feelings of agency and power, once again to being the ones in control of our lives.

If you’ve found lately that you are struggling with the injustice you see and experience in the world, rather than ruminating on those facts and events, try instead to channel that energy toward the growth of something positive. Either something positive for yourself, for others, or for both. Because as there are things that you can’t change, there are things that you CAN change. And along the way, you might find yourself amongst like-minded people who are motivated by the same values as you, and want to create the same change to repair the injustice that they have experienced in their own lives. 

Feelings of injustice can be debilitating, especially when we become fixated on revenge, or when we feel powerless to change what has created that injustice. But there is always a limit to our reach and our efforts. We can’t change the past, and we can’t singlehandedly change the world. Focusing instead on building something that is going to benefit yourself and others around you is a way to free ourselves from the shackles of the pain of being wronged, to reclaim power and agency in our lives, and to be focused on what the future can hold.