Injustice Is Torture
as my Daddy would say, “That’s all they are to it.”
Torture — being confined and subjected to actual torture — would have to be the penultimate experience of being subject to the arbitrary will of any other person(s). I believe torturing another person is worse than murder.
People can be tortured physically or psychologically. The experience of being tortured, either way, is itself torture of a psychological kind.
Being “subject to the arbitrary will” of any other person(s) was John Locke’s definition of injustice. In my 68 years of life I have read a lot of philosophy. I have never seen anyone even suggest that Locke was wrong about that.
So not only is torturing another person the ultimate injustice, but injustice is literally, everywhere and always, torture. Wherever arbitrariness exists in human relations injustice exists. Wherever injustice exists people are suffering torture.
I would say that we can feel the psychological effects of injustice whether we are consciously cognizant of it or not. People who live in a society that has injustice at the core of the structure and functioning of its political process or its economy (much less both) suffer a constant form of degradation. As participants in those processes we are both perpetrators and victims. We are not (always) consciously aware of it, but it constantly affects our sense of ourselves, our feelings about ourselves. It most often manifests itself as a vague presentment of guilt or shame. It makes us a bit ill at ease in our lives in some way that cannot quite be named.
We must have as our goal a society that is as free of arbitrariness— injustice — torture — as possible. To accomplish that goal, “Equality Is All We Need” (here in Medium).