Why does Social Justice Create Injustice?

Some ideas from the Buddha, and Dr. Phil McGraw

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

By Shannon B Douglas

When I was in my twenties I found myself in a life-skills workshop with a former business partner of Phil McGraw.  It was a five-day event that led many to ask, “Why didn’t we learn this stuff in school?”  I took this training in Vancouver years before McGraw became famous for his aphorisms and quips like, “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got,” and “How’s that working for you so far?” One of the central truisms that we learned about in this workshop was, “what you fear you create.” Years later, my curiosities led me to study some of the deep psychological, neuroscientific and even religious explanations why these statements are true, so despite what you might think of Dr. Phil, these ideas aren’t just pithy quotes, they’re important enough to be viewed as foundational tools for building a better understanding of ourselves and how we move through the world.   

Modern activists love to claim that our reality is socially constructed with language, and it is true that our perception of the world is shaped by the language we use; however, Social Justice activists fail to recognize some of the simplest ways this works. McGraw’s adaptation of much older ideas into, “what we resist, persists,” is also rooted in our modern understanding of cognition.  It takes our brains more energy and time to process negative statements than positive ones.  As it turns out, when formulating policies in institutions like schools, universities, and workplaces, language is important because the words we use and how we use them shape our perceptions, motivations, and outcomes.  Are we setting up structures of resistance, fighting what we don’t want, or are we putting our energy into outcomes that we do want and into the kind of society that we want to create instead? 

To illustrate this, as I explore issues in our schools and universities that are harming children and driving good educators out of their professions, I ask for your indulgence.  Try the following: no matter what you do, don’t think of the evil doll Chuckie from the slasher films.  Don’t imagine the trailer for “Chuckie XXIII, Chuckie the High School Hall Monitor.”  Do not think of Chuckie!  What happened? Despite my warnings, if you know who Chuckie is and you read the sentence, you thought of the murderous doll; maybe with a clip board in one hand and a giant knife in the other.  

Whole schools of personal development, empowerment and professional communications training are founded on the simple yet too-often overlooked idea that if we want to create positive outcomes, how we use language is crucial.  It shapes the way we think and act.  For example: Professional development for police officers includes lessons on why to say, “Stop There!” or “Stay where you are!” instead of “Don’t move,” or “Don’t try to run!” when apprehending a suspect, because, especially in stressful situations, people can’t process negative directives.  Suspects more often hear only “move!” or “run!” if police use the wrong words, leading to more potential conflict and aggression instead of diffusing tensions. 

When it comes to education, modern hall monitors police language insisting that their words are the only appropriate ones to use.  Kids are not getting the education they need and deserve, and great teachers are being silenced and even forced out of their careers because of these failing policies.  So-called Anti-Racism, Anti-Bullying and Anti-Colonialism is now visibly a catastrophic failure in public institutions because it gives life to the things we don’t want. Adherents of this political movement are so prudish and zealous for their cause, like the over-eager hall monitor that abuses their power to punish others, they use institutional policies that they claim are against systemic racism and discrimination, to divide people, and to abuse and bully those who question them.  Centering fears of racism, bullying, colonization and systemic oppression perpetuates those things in Orwellian ways.   

We hear a constant refrain from the activists in our institutions, that schools are not teaching history, but if one looks at history, it is obvious how movements built on what we don’t want, inflame resentment, grievance, frustration and anxiety and lead to outcomes more frightening than horror movies.  The reason is that these movements install indignation and injustice, which trigger very primitive emotions related to vengeance and punishment instead of constructive action to create a better world.   

So what is the linguistic counter-part to this problem.  How could we reframe the equivalents of “Don’t Move!” commands instantiated in the policies of our public and post-secondary education institutions? Some people will immediately associate the expression “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” with Christianity but we can find the same idea in different words in many traditions.  A version of the Golden Rule is attributed to the Buddha who lived centuries before Christ.  We find it in philosophy, psychology and even in occult traditions like Wicca and Paganism.  It’s the Golden Rule, the Golden Law, or the Rule of Three. I view this idea as a commandment, a promise, and a warning with many layers.   

It seems to be true that we treat others as we treat ourselves.  In Taoism, there is an expression that says, “He who does not trust must not be trusted,” which observes that people who lie and cheat and con others, project their untrustworthiness on everyone around them.  Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow and Shadow Projection is related to this idea.  The golden rule can also be viewed in reverse as an observation that the way people treat us is a response to how we treat them and begs of us the question: how righteous are our own actions?  

Right now, as we are realizing that the outcomes of wokeness are producing exactly the kinds of results it claims to oppose, with measurable increases in racism, antisemitism, violence and chaos in our schools; with systematic bullying of teachers and parents who question it; with increasing division, fear and animosity on university campuses, we really do need to consider the simplicity of Dr. Phil’s blunt demand, “How’s that working for you so far?” and his pithy warning: “If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got.”   

All of this leaves us with an important question about our personal and collective responsibility:  If we’re not happy with the current state of affairs, what do we want instead? Perhaps we should focus on teaching kids how to treat each other, instead of obsessing about how not to.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, checkout the long-form essay Confronting Activist Myths: Decolonization, and the Spirit of the Times

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