A Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance Gives Rise to Injustice
1. The Plague of the Body and the Plague of Society
Today, injustice appears to be a deadly, pervasive and uncontrollable scourge in human society. The plague, too, was like this for thousands of years. Human beings died, cities were emptied, families broke apart, and terrified people searched for the cause and a cure, but they did not know the real cause, and therefore, they had no treatment.
Looking at the plague, particularly the Black Death in the fourteenth century, is instructive for understanding injustice in our time. The plague killed the human body; injustice destroys personality, society, morality, law and peace. The plague spread due to ignorance of the agent of the disease; injustice, too, continues to claim victims due to ignorance of its own origin and institutional hubris that refuses to study this origin.
The agent of the plague is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. After centuries of killing people, this agent was identified at the end of the nineteenth century. A few years later, the role of fleas and rats in transmitting this disease to human beings became clearer. It was from that time that human beings were able to bring the plague under control, not through prayer, curses, scapegoating or celestial theories, but through scientific understanding, prevention, hygiene, quarantine and, ultimately, antibiotics.
But prior to that, human beings did not know the real cause. This very ignorance paved the way for delusion, superstition, scapegoating and violence. During the era of the plague, anyone and anything could be accused, except the real agent of the disease. The wrath of God, the corruption of the air, the stars, sin, magic, foreigners, Jews, swamps, earthquakes and corpses were all brought in to explain the plague. But the bacterium, the flea and the rat were not seen, because the tools of understanding and the scientific mindset required to see them did not exist.
When the real cause is not known, society both becomes a victim and creates victims. For instance, if it was said that Jews had poisoned the water wells, public fear and ignorance could lead to the massacre of Jews. In such a situation, a baseless theory turns into an instrument of death.
2. The Right Question in the Wrong System
The important question is: where were the scientific circles of that time, and what were they doing?
In the fourteenth century, human beings were faced with the plague. Human beings were dying. The reality of the disease was before everyone’s eyes. But a questioning scientific mind did not exist to ask:
- What is the real agent of this death?
- How is it transmitted?
- How does it enter the body?
- How can it be prevented?
- How can it be treated?
In 1348, Philip VI, the King of France, asked the Faculty of Medicine in Paris to give an official opinion on the cause of the plague and the ways to counter it. In response, 49 professors of medicine in Paris compiled a treatise whose mission was to examine the distant and immediate causes of this epidemic and to propose ways of prevention and treatment.
The King of France’s question was logical. He wanted to know the cause of the outbreak of the plague in order to find a way to counter it. But this logical question was raised within an unscientific system. Therefore, the response was not scientific either.
The professors of medicine in Paris sought the distant cause of the plague in the position of the stars and the influence of the heavens on the earth. They pointed to the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the sign of Aquarius and linked it to the deadly corruption of the air. The immediate cause, according to them, was the corruption of the air, contaminated vapours, humidity, winds, earthquakes, swamps and terrestrial conditions. Instead of identifying the real agent of the disease, they offered an explanation mixed with astrology, guesswork, inherited theoretical medicine and the intellectual framework of their time.
This point is very important: the problem was not merely that no question was asked. A question was asked. The problem was that the question was not raised within a scientific framework, and the answer was not evaluated within a scientific framework either. It is not enough for a logical question to be raised. There must also be a logical and scientific system that evaluates the answer against correct criteria. The questioner must be able to put the answer to the test, and the respondent must commit to answering only on the basis of reason, observation and sound method.
In the case of the plague, such a system did not exist in the fourteenth century. In the case of justice and injustice, too, such a system still does not exist among philosophers, judges and politicians in the twenty-first century, whether at the national or international level.
3. From Understanding Disease to Understanding Injustice
Justice is the core of morality, law and peace. Without a deep understanding of justice, morality does not take shape in its true sense, the rule of law does not become possible, and peace is not established. If justice is not understood, injustice remains in human society like a chronic disease and appears each time in a new form.
A questioning scientific mind must do the same in the face of injustice as the scientific mind of today does in the face of disease. When a new disease such as COVID-19 appears, today’s scientist does not look for the cause in the heavens and the planets. They ask: What is the agent of the disease? How is it transmitted? How does it enter the body? How can it be prevented? How can it be treated?
But when war, terrorism and injustice occur, political and international institutions often do not raise such questions. They condemn, express concern, hold meetings and issue statements, but they do not address the main question:
- Why does a human being violate the rights of another human being?
- Why does a human being oppress another?
- Why do war, repression and the humiliation of human beings continue to recur?
- What is the origin of injustice?
What kind of education can prevent human beings from producing injustice?
The lack of scientific questioning is the very deficiency that still keeps us in the Middle Ages. In medicine, the scientific mindset has largely replaced the superstitious mindset. But in the realm of wisdom, justice, law, morality and peace, human beings still repeat the same medieval error: they see the symptoms, they see the victims, they see the disaster, but they do not know the cause, or they do not want to know it.
When the scientific mind encounters a phenomenon, it first tries to understand why and how that phenomenon has emerged. If the phenomenon is beneficial, the scientific mind tries to replicate it. If the phenomenon is harmful, the scientific mind tries to prevent it. This rule holds true for the plague; it must also hold true for injustice.
4. The Courage to Say “I Do Not Know”
In the face of a logical question, the honourable response of a human being who does not know is: “I do not know.” But this admission must be accompanied by a commitment: “I do not know, but I must try to find out.”
This very sentence shows the difference between the scientific mind and the hubristic mind. Today’s professor of medicine, if they cannot find a scientific reason for a phenomenon, has no right to present society with just any explanation from their official position. They must say: I do not know, but I must investigate.
The professor of medicine in Paris in the fourteenth century did not do this. He did not know, but from the position of the scientific authority of his time, he offered a baseless and dangerous explanation. The people paid the price for such hubris with their lives.
Today, the same problem is observed in the three institutions of philosophy, the judiciary and politics, which must identify the origin of injustice and prevent its occurrence. The scientific spirit that has developed in the natural sciences over centuries is still not truly present in these three fields. As a result, injustice is accepted not as a phenomenon that can be studied, but as something recurring, political, ordinary or inevitable.
Today, you do not hear the scientific and moral statement, “I do not know, but I must try to find out”, from many philosophers, legal experts, politicians and leaders of global institutions. They either offer baseless answers or remain silent.
5. The Origin of Injustice and Its Treatment
Before the discovery of the agent of the plague, human beings attributed the plague to the wrath of God, the corruption of the air, the stars, sin, magic, foreigners or fate. Because they did not know the real cause, they had no true treatment either. As a result, human beings died.
Today, injustice is dealt with in the same way. The same familiar symptoms of injustice are seen, but their deep cause is often not known. Every group attributes injustice to the enemy, the rival party, another religion, another nation, another economic system or human evil.
But within the framework of True Philosophy, the deep origin of injustice lies in the fact that two-thirds of human homeostasis do not function correctly; that is, the human being has not yet learned to establish and maintain order and balance in relation to other human beings and with nature.
Just as the plague was brought under control by identifying the agent of the disease and its route of transmission, injustice, too, can only be brought under control by identifying its origin and treating it. The fundamental treatment for injustice is Wise Education. This is the very education that must begin in childhood and prepare the human being to maintain Right, justice, order and balance.
Such education is demanded in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where it defines the goal of education as the full development of the human personality and the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Therefore, Wise Education is not a decorative proposal; it is an answer to the root of injustice, in the same way that the antibiotic became the answer to the bacterial agent of the plague.
Introducing the fact that two-thirds of human homeostasis do not function correctly as the origin of injustice may be as strange to today’s society as introducing the bacterium as the agent of the plague was to the professors of medicine in the fourteenth century. But the strangeness of a truth to the mind of the era is no proof of its falsity. Sometimes, a truth seems strange simply because the era has not yet acquired the tools to understand it.
6. The Time Machine and Two Spirits of the Age
To make this point clearer, imagine we could send a present-day medical student to Paris in 1348 using a time machine; a student who knows Latin and can speak with the professors of medicine of that time. The student’s mission is to tell them: the cause of the plague is not the conjunction of the planets, nor the corruption of the heavens, nor the vapours of the earth; the agent of the disease is a bacterium that is transmitted to human beings through fleas and rats.
In all likelihood, they would either not be allowed into the meeting at all, or if they did gain entry, they would be met with silence, mockery, rejection, dismissal as mad, or the accusation of insolence towards the esteemed professors. The problem was not merely the entry of a student into the meeting of 49 professors. The problem was the confrontation of two spirits of the age and two systems of thought separated by seven hundred years.
Those professors were not ignorant in the simple sense of the word. They reasoned within the framework of the official knowledge of their time. The problem was that the framework did not know the real cause, the scientific mind required to break that framework had not yet taken shape, and no will to seriously question the validity of that framework was evident.
Today, the same problem exists regarding injustice. Anyone who claims that we must seek the origin of injustice stands before the people shaped by the official spirit of our age in much the same way that the imaginary medical student stood before the professors of Paris, who were shaped by the official spirit of their own age. Such a person’s words may seem strange, unconventional or even disturbing, but this very reaction is a sign that the spirit of the age is not yet ready to hear fundamental questions.
7. The United Nations and the Question of Defining Peace
War is the most terrible form of injustice that human beings inflict upon one another. The United Nations was established in 1945, after the painful experience of the Second World War, to maintain global peace and security. However, in all the years that have passed since the establishment of this organisation, no effective, central and binding institutional effort has been made to define peace, understand the origin of war, and link peace with Wise Education.
The issue is not the current or former Secretary-General as a person. Secretaries-General come and go. The issue is the post of the Secretary-General, the institutional culture, and the lack of a questioning scientific mind within an institution whose primary mission is peace. Just as the critique of the Paris medical report is not an attack on the individuals who wrote it, the critique of the United Nations is not an attack on individuals. The issue is that a prestigious institution, with global symbolic power, may see the symptoms but not know the cause, and make no serious effort to understand it.
No United Nations Secretary-General, as a representative of this institutional post, has seriously and publicly asked this question of themselves and their colleagues: What is peace? Why do human beings fight each other? How is injustice produced? What kind of education can prepare human beings to truly respect the rights of others?
The famous correspondence between Einstein and Freud entitled “Why War?“ is an important example of raising the right question. Einstein asked Freud about the cause of war; war is that very naked and deadly form of injustice. But this question, despite its importance and despite the great names of Einstein and Freud, did not become central to global education, politics and institution-building. This itself is an important sign: humanity fears war, follows the news of war, and sees the victims of war, but does not place the question of why war occurs at the centre of its scientific, philosophical, educational and political work.
8. “Work in Wisdom” and Unproductive Activity
Here, the concept of “Work in Wisdom” becomes important. Since its inception, the United Nations has carried out numerous tasks: a charter has been written, declarations have been issued, conventions have been adopted, buildings have been constructed, institutions have been created, meetings have been held, statements have been issued, and disasters have been condemned. But the question is: have these activities transformed Reality into Truth?
In True Philosophy, “Work in Wisdom” means transforming Reality into Truth. That is, work is not merely physical movement and activity, spending money, constructing buildings, creating institutions or delivering speeches. Work becomes Work in Wisdom only when it transforms a chaotic, unjust and unbalanced reality into a clear, just and balanced truth.
If an institution works for peace, it must bring the world closer to peace. If it works for human rights, it must reduce human rights violations. If it works for justice, it must transform injustice into justice. Otherwise, we are dealing with activity, not with work in its wise sense.
The United Nations does not have a clear understanding of “Work in Wisdom”, just as the professors of medicine in the fourteenth century did not have a clear understanding of microbiology. They looked to the heavens through the mental assumptions of their time and sought the cause of the plague in the planets. The United Nations likewise looks at the world through the mental assumptions that govern Realpolitik and seeks peace through diplomacy, building construction, charters, declarations and statements. But if it does not define peace and does not understand the origin of injustice, it is dealing with symptoms, not the cause.
When the concept of “Work in Wisdom” finds its proper place, human beings will consciously distinguish between physical work and Work in Wisdom. In such a situation, the performance of the United Nations and its Secretaries-General in the face of war and injustice will be as strange to future generations as the report of the 49 professors of medicine in Paris is to us. Future generations will ask: how did the human beings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries imagine that, without defining peace, without understanding the origin of war, and without implementing the education necessary for the full development of the human personality, they could establish peace and justice through building institutions, holding meetings, issuing statements and making condemnations?
9. Organised Silence
Injustice is more dangerous than the plague and any other microbial epidemic. Microbial diseases, even if they are lethal for a time, usually have a cycle and are brought under control through scientific knowledge, vaccines, medicine, hygiene and herd immunity. But injustice is always present in human society, because its origin lies in the human mind, human personality and human structures. Until its internal origin is known and its treatment begins through Wise Education, injustice will be reproduced in various forms.
If we want to understand one of the modern-day mechanisms of this reproduction of injustice, we must examine the concept of organised silence and its destructive effect. The silence of officials in the face of logical questions is not a simple, accidental or meaningless silence. When a clear question is raised, when the definition of peace is demanded, when the origin of injustice is brought into discussion, and the responsible institution gives no answer, this silence itself becomes a piece of evidence.
Organised silence is a mechanism for evading accountability. Institutions assume that by not answering, they leave no evidence for judgement. But on the contrary, their silence is itself evidence. Through their silence, they say: we do not know, but we do not have the courage to say “we do not know”. We do not know, but we do not want to try to find out. We see the question, but we do not bring it into the dialogue, because entering into dialogue places us in a position where we must answer, and answering means accepting responsibility. Hence, silence becomes an instrument for evading accountability.
For years, questions concerning peace, justice, Wise Education and the origin of injustice have been placed publicly and with documentation before United Nations officials, including the office of the Secretary-General. The question is clear: What is peace? What is justice? Why does the United Nations have a mission for peace, but does not provide a clear definition of peace? Why has the education demanded by Article 26, which must lead to the full development of the human personality and respect for human rights, not become central to the United Nations’ work?
What has the response been? Silence.
A documented example of this very mechanism is recorded on the page “A Sample of Organised Silence“: a clear question is raised about peace, the definition of peace, and the role of education in planting peace in the human mind, but the responsible institution gives no answer. This example shows that organised silence is not merely an isolated incident; it is observable, recordable and open to judgement.
In the fourteenth century, ordinary people and even many scientific circles took the report of the 49 professors of medicine in Paris seriously. That report became one of the official and authoritative medical answers of that era. Today, too, many people consider the condemnations, statements and expressions of concern by the United Nations to be “work for peace”. But condemning war is not understanding the origin of war. Condemning terrorism is not understanding why terrorism is produced. Expressing solidarity with victims is not preventing future victims.
Just as we must have a historical distance from the year 1348 to see the inadequacy of the Paris medical report, perhaps we must take a few hundred years of historical distance from the twenty-first century to see the inadequacy of many of the statements and behaviours of today’s institutions. But historical distance is not the only way to see the truth. A questioning scientific mind can, even in its own time, see what others do not see.
10. From the United Nations to Sweden
Organised silence does not only occur at the global level. The very same pattern is repeated at the national level.
Regarding the case of children being left hungry in Sweden, 390 emails were sent to 390 Members of Parliament. Five irrelevant replies were received, and 385 individuals remained silent. These silences have been recorded. This documentation is important, because silence in the face of a logical question is itself a kind of answer.
Furthermore, in a letter to the Speaker of the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag, a request for access to an independent court was raised. The reply from his office demonstrated that the citizen, in practice, faces a serious impasse in accessing an independent court. This issue is not merely an administrative problem. If the citizen cannot have effective access to an independent court, the rule of law is paralysed, and injustice moves from the level of an isolated error to a structural level.
These examples show that the plague of injustice is not solely at the level of the United Nations. From the global level to the national level, from the political institution to the legislative and judicial institutions, the pattern of silence, evading accountability, and the inability to confront a logical question is repeated.
This silence is full of implicit admissions. Through their silence, officials say: we have seen the question, but we do not want to answer. We do not know, but we lack the courage to say “we do not know”. The pain and suffering that injustice inflicts upon human beings does not awaken a sufficient epistemic and moral response in us.
11. The Price of Hubris
In the fourteenth century, human beings paid the price for the epistemic hubris of medical circles with their lives. In the twenty-first century, human beings are paying the price for the institutional hubris of political and legal circles with their lives. In both cases, the problem is not merely ignorance. The problem is that institutions consider their ignorance to be knowledge, their silence to be responsibility, and their rhetoric to be work. In this way, they leave human society defenceless in the face of the disaster of injustice.
When a question has not been raised, negligence might be called ignorance. But when a clear question has been raised, when the definition of peace has been demanded, when the origin of injustice has been explained, when Wise Education has been introduced as the fundamental treatment, and the responsible institution still remains silent, we are no longer dealing with simple negligence. We are dealing with a deadly evasion of responsibility. This is the very situation that has been explained under the title of hubris in the article “Institutional Hubris: Why the Conduct of Those Who Govern Human Society Deserves This Name“: a condition in which ignorance, power, arrogance and the refusal to answer combine, and the responsible institution, instead of stepping down from its false position and answering, ignores the rational question.
Breaking this silence is the moral duty of all those who truly want justice. The silence of officials cannot be broken by a single question. But it is documented by repeated questions. Every question becomes a document for future generations. Every silence is an admission of ignorance, irresponsibility and hubris.
12. Do Not Abandon the Question
We must not abandon questioning. We must ask national and international institutions, governments, parliaments, courts, universities and those who claim to defend human rights:
- What is peace?
- What is justice?
- Why does a human being violate the rights of another human being?
- Why has the education demanded by Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights not become central to global educational and political work?
- What kind of education can lead to the full development of the human personality?
- If the United Nations has a mission for peace, why does it not provide a definition of peace?
Injustice is the plague of human society. This plague is not cured by lamenting it, condemnations, issuing statements, constructing buildings, formalities and silence. Its treatment begins with recognising its origin. Its origin lies in the incomplete human personality and the fact that two-thirds of human homeostasis do not function correctly. Human beings have not yet learned to establish and maintain order and balance among human beings, and between humanity and nature.
The treatment for this deficiency is Wise Education; an education that enables human beings to know, understand and preserve rights and life.
The plague of the body was brought under control when humanity recognised its real agent. The plague of injustice will also be brought under control when humanity recognises its real origin and has the courage to transform this knowledge into Wise Education, True Law, constructive politics and proper judgement.
Until that day, any silence in the face of a logical question is part of the mechanism of death and destruction.