Justice and Enlightenment

     The measure of the ethical and moral advancement of a society is gauged by two primary things; How that society treats its sick and weak, and how that society treats its rule-breakers. An enlightened, morally and ethically sophisticated culture would have an insight and understanding of the causes and progressions of these things beyond most others. That society would treat its sick and weak with dignity and compassion with the intent of healing and strengthening them. 

    It would see sickness and weakness as correctable and redeemable and wouldn't base the endeavor to do these things solely on profits and power. It would have a moral obligation do to do so, and morality and ethics are the highest virtues of an enlightened, advanced society.

     But what really gauges a society's advancement and enlightenment is how it treats its criminals and "sinners." A society with a significant advancement in morals and ethics would have a complex understanding of the complex problems and circumstances that lead to violations. As a result, it's justice would be more complex and more effective, where punishments and corrections are much more fitting and useful in solving the problem.

    An enlightened society doesn't throw away people, nor does it permanently condemn and mark people.  An enlightened society with advanced justice would understand the intrinsic value of redemption for people who make mistakes and for society as a whole. It would understand that it is far more useful, for more helpful, and far more benevolent to redeem and correct a person instead of condemning and destroying someone.  There is no justice without mercy, and a culture that doesn't pave a path to redemption will always be oppressive. An advanced, enlightened culture would understand this, and have the sufficient moral and ethical sophistication to implement such a system. 

Now don't get me wrong, crime needs to be punished, but I've noticed the cultures with the least mercy and most brutal approach to criminality have the biggest problems continuously with crime regardless of how tough we are on it. Punishment doesn't often lead to an understanding of the cause of a problem. It's simply a reaction to the problem and its outcome.  If you can't find and understand the cause of something, you can't correct it effectively or permanently, and the problem continues to occur for the indefinite future. 

     The true measure of a society's advancement and ethical standing is how advanced its justice system is, and how it treats the lowest and worst off amongst their people. This will always be true, regardless of how technologically advanced or how rich and powerful the society is. 

So far, from my observation of my country, we are incredibly technologically advanced, incredibly rich and powerful, but we have extreme lapses collectively in moral and ethical advancement, and you can tell this just by how people treat each other and talk to each other.

 Our justice system is almost purely retributive with little mercy, and its a very broken system. The fruits of a broken and strictly retribution based justice system is, naturally, rampant injustice. But also, a broken justice system is a recipe for oppression and exploitation. People take advantage of broken systems all the time to further their interests and power and line their pocketbooks. 

 If you want to remedy injustice, have an advanced and functional justice system. Kind of self-explanatory.