11 - Justice

Justice!

Some cards have a lot of interpretations. Justice is a simple one: JUSTICE!

It's also incredibly complicated, because what is justice?

Guess what, it's violence! Look at the sword that Justice has. That's not ornamental.

Deep inside your brain, in a dark place, there's a part that's been there for as long as people have existed: people who cheat or do wrong need to see consequences. Everything must be fair.

There must be such as thing as karma: the smart version of chaos that doles out punishments. That's a real thing, right?

The mob have killed your family, or your dog: the only reasonable recourse is a roaring rampage of revenge. This is Justice in the John Wick, The Bride, The Punisher sense: what has been taken from you is immeasurable so what must be taken in return is endless.

The thing is, the desire for vengeance is... outsized, hungry. We desire consequences that are way out of line with the original violation. I know I've laid awake in my bed dreaming of finding the person who stole my bicycle and hitting that person with a crowbar until they'd need wheels.

Of course, violence only begets more violence: lots of people are somebody's whole world, so every John Wick creates ten more John Wicks in their Wick wake.

This is the cycle of violence: Person X, demanding vengeance, enacts violence on Person Y, possibly doing collateral damage to Person Z, and now Person Y and Person Z are out for their own vengeance, leading to an eternal cycle of violence. Hatfields and McCoys. Montagues and Capulets. What's even worse is that sometimes Person Y didn't even do whatever thing that got them justiced-upon in the first place.

If you're wondering 'why is vigilante justice a bad thing?', well, this is why.

As a result of having to deal with the fallout from a few too many John Wick Scenarios, thousands of years ago, society as a whole (and/or one cool Hammurabi dude) decided that in order to keep every conflict from escalating wildly out of control, an impartial third party should step in and dole out a reasonable amount of vengeance. An eye for an eye. Reciprocal justice.

Thus the scales: for every harm done to you, an equivalent amount of harm must be done in turn. It's only fair.

Some people believe in non-retributive justice: restorative justice. Forgiveness, rehabilitation. Doing what's best for society. But that doesn't satisfy our lust for vengeance.

Jurisprudence is supposed to sound clinical, boring, legal, but at it's heart, it is a tall frosty Big Gulp full of violence.

When you get to the bottom of the Big Gulp, there's only one thing left. Just ice.