I do think that at this point we need all the alternative thinking we can muster. My alternative lies along the opposite vector — away from tribalism and towards universal human existence.

I’m not talking about challenging, much less compromising the sovereignty of nation-states. I’m talking about a new approach to justice, one that recognizes the given commonality of the rational capacity we share as human beings.

Heretofore, humanity’s ideas of justice have been based on beliefs — either religious (theological) or secular (ideological). Beliefs divide people. Our rational capacity (which I happen to believe was given us, one way or another, by the Lord) is our only given intersubjective commonality.

For us humans, the ultimate problem is to be able to know what justice is. Justice is present when human life is being governed by the ethic of justice. By “the ethic of justice” I mean a universally valid ethic for governing interactions among human beings (to include those that comprise the ubiquitous social processes that we create as a matter of our existence — i.e. political process; economy).

For such an ethic to be intrinsically intersubjectively valid it would have to avoid involving even one belief. People can accept or not any belief, but only assertions that can be validated within that material existence can be necessarily applicable to all human beings sharing that existence.

For anyone to be legitimately governed by any proposed ethic of justice, that person must validate it for oneself. To accept a belief is to “validate” it; also, though, to reject a belief is to “invalidate” it. For anyone to be legitimately governed by an ethic arising within the conditions of material existence, that person must be able to validate that ethic for oneself within that existence.

I have developed an ethic that resolves all of those issues. It applies to anyone who perceives that one is a ‘human being’ experiencing a material existence that includes other human beings and that all such beings have no choice but to effect choices (which I got from Warren J. Samuels). To respect others’ given, necessary capacity to choose for themselves (beginning with whether/how/to what extent to be involved in the process in any way — as means or ends, directly or indirectly, purposefully or not — whenever any choice is being effected) is to recognize them as fellow human beings within that material existence. To act otherwise is to assert some status regarding ‘thee and thou’ that cannot be substantiated within that material existence. So the ethic of justice for ‘human beings’ (as we call ourselves) must be mutual respect in effecting choices. I call the account of justice that includes that ethic and its implications for human life “real justice.” [A fuller but still brief (“5 min read”) summation of it is here in Medium.]

I do not say that knowledge of this ethic to govern human interactions can create a Utopia. I do say that knowledge of it is a quantum leap for justice.

This idea needs advocates. The world needs for this idea to have advocates — unless there is a more impelling account of justice of which I am unaware..