OCT 12 — I’ve been thinking about justice lately and what it means to be just. Many have expressed their disappointments over the failings of the court of justice in the case against the transgender community and the lawyer being charged with a law to shut people up from speaking against corruption.

Also adding to this endless stream of disappointments is the signing of the TPPA. This month has been a month of darkness as we regress into a new form of authoritarianism in all aspects of our social, political and economic lives.

Many motivational speakers of all types and styles earn a lot from this climate of hopelessness, providing superficial relief in this shit-hole we’ve found ourselves in.

What ticks me off is how the media, aided by these motivational speakers, so easily point the blame on the everyday people, how it is always our own fault when things go wrong.

It is us, for the most illogical reasons, that have to adjust ourselves to any surroundings created by politicians and policy-makers.

GST? Spend less. Don’t earn enough? Work more. Can’t afford the school fees? Get a loan. Housing prices soaring off the roof? Hey, nobody said you need a fancy roof.

It is as though our rights to a decent life were never in the considerations of our policy-makers in the first place. If we keep operating on this survival mode, just how long do you think we could last before we finally collapse?

There is only so much we can do. Our public space and our access to basic needs are being stolen away every single day not only by the state, but also by corporations. Both of them are often working together,  which means you’re really getting screwed from both ends. Oh what joy that is.

John Rawls (1921-2002), the famous philosopher on his theory of justice, said that what we’re able to do is in large part structured by the world around us.

This means that no matter how motivated you are or how you are physically able, if the structural mechanisms are deliberately crippling, you’re bound to become socially disabled.

The disposable people

Last week’s lesson on Sexuality and Disability (I am studying at Universiti Malaya) talked about how the sexual minorities and the physically challenged are similarly sidelined in the sense that they are seen outside the categories of normality.

But what if their plights, though more challenging and more socially dismissive, are not at all abnormal to us with perfect bodies?

It is easy to notice the injustice of the world that is made for right-handed people when you are left-handed. It’s not so easy to notice if you are a right-handed person in a right-handed world, that there is an oppressive power structure for the right-handed, to subdue the right-handed and the left-handed altogether.

We need to start realising that we are just as disposable as the next marginalised minority. The numbers of the precariats are growing at an exponential rate, but until today the terms “social precariats” do not even exist in mainstream discourse.

Culture of Apathy

Right-handed people in a right-handed world rarely think about the plights of the left-handed because left-handedness does not occur to them.

Unfortunately, unlike the dominance of which hand to use for vocational purposes, you are not guaranteed to be immune from social disability tomorrow, just because you are immune today.

At any point in the future, if policy-makers make the wrong policies again, the social repercussions could throw a person, a family, even a whole society, off balance.

For now, we might have to just adjust a little bit here and there. But don’t completely dismiss the possibility that we would need to learn new skills, re-start our lives all over, because suddenly the Lego world is not made of Legos anymore and we become socially mis-matched.

What we need to learn is that the fight for left-handedness in a right-handed world would benefit the right-handed people greatly, because we never know when the tables might turn.

The idea of justice needs to include everyone, including the social minorities. In fact, if you ask me, the minorities should be at the center of issues, because any fight for their rights is also a fight for ours.

At least that’s my theory of justice. What’s yours?

* This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.