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Yeah, go ahead.
Oh wait! Alright.
Ok. So anyway. So tonight I wanna to talk about my personal linguistic journey to understand
Social Justice. I know very little about Social Justice. I'm active in government, and in
health, and technology. So to prepare for this, I decided to find out the truth of Social
Justice. So where do we go for truth?
Wikipedia. So, the Wikipedia entry is pretty good. It had information on the basics: theory,
religion, politics, and even criticism by groups such as non-cognitivis, moral skeptics,
and logical positivists. Alright, so I'm still feeling a little bit lost.
So I tried Dictionary.com. They had a definition I couldn't use. I tried wiseGEEK. They had
advertisements. And I tried Urban Dictionary, where I could "buy social justice mugs, t-shirts,
and magnets." So then I started to think, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places here.
So in school I studied Latin. And I remember the first I saw the word "agrarian", I remembered,
wait, "agricola" is Latin for farmer. So therefore "agrarian" must have something to do with
farmers. But to understand Social Justice, I'm going to need to do something a little
more sophisticated than this.
So for the last few years, I've been studying Japanese. And Japanese words are usually written
with Chinese characters, called kanji. And the reason I really like kanji is that every
character is a picture. The pictures combine to tell stories.
So, the Japanese language has a number of four character idioms that tell stories or
teach lessons. We all know this one. "One stone, two birds." To kill two birds with
one stone.
The next one is pretty popular here in Washington, DC. We hear about it a lot. The font's off
a little bit, but the kanji in it mean, "exceed" "authority" and "to go" and "advantage". Any
guesses what that one means? It means "to exceed or abuse one's legal authority."
So this one really speaks to what we're doing here at this conference and this weekend:
honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "One vision, equal humanity." But I think a better translation
is really "equality without discrimination."
Dr. King said, "we hold these truths to be self-evident." "Equality without discrimination."
Dr. King's famous speech included a four-word idiom. "I have a dream." Four words that tell
a story. Four words that teach a lesson.
So, let's get on to Social Justice. So there's different ways to translate this. This is
the one that I picked, here. It's pronounced, shakai seigi. It isn't a four-character idiom,
but I'm going to interpret it as if it were.
So the first kanji of Social Justice means company. So, companies are organization that
exist to facilitate transactions. An by itself, the character means shrine. What they have
in common is that both are providing something of value.
The second character of Social means "to meet" or "join", so in the sense of two people meeting.
If you put "city" and "join" together, you get the word for city council. So the focus
of both of these words is the connection between two individuals.
So, taking a look at Justice, the first character means "correct" or "righteous." And if you
put it before a number, it means "exactly." So to me, this is exactly like the oath we
take in court "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
And the last character of Justice means "morality" or "honor." But it also means Buddhist teachings.
So if you put these together, you have "moral and honorable teachings." And incidentally,
if you put the number 1 before that, it also means "one honor" or "prime consideration."
So, for Star Trek fans, this would be an approximate translation of The Prime Directive. So putting
all four of these characters from Social Justice together, we can make a four-kanji idiom.
So the meanings of each of the four characters are: a company or a shrine, to meet or to
join, correct and righteous, and honor, morality, and Buddhist teachings. But what's the story
these characters are trying to tell us?
Facilitating transactions of value. The connection made by two people. The truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth. And honorable and moral teachings. So, the lesson I see in these
four characters is this.
Only when there is respect for all aspects of another's humanity, can the connection
between two people be truly equal. And that is truth I found in Social Justice.