Who fights

Against injustice is destined to lose. No human being, after all, is destined to inherit the earth. This battle begins at birth and ends only with the last agony – a term that, not by chance, in Greek means precisely “struggle.” An obviously losing struggle.

In front of this scenario, there are two options: to fight always, even when one knows they will lose, or to surrender early. Those who survive injustice often have just surrendered in time, avoiding worse troubles. It almost seems that only those who are more unjust than the unjust can come out on top.

This training in submission begins in childhood, when adults prevent us from continuing to play, imposing unnecessary rules just to make us understand one thing: the world is unfair. One must learn to lose, to lower one’s defiant gaze, to submit. It has always been this way.

As young people, we are subjected to judgments without explanations (“you must do this because that’s how it is”), and it is profoundly unfair. As we grow older, we are forced to accept inertia, loneliness, and the dictates of our children, submissive to what is most convenient for them. And this is not fair either.

Even those who operate “according to justice” end up committing small and large injustices, showing indifference to common sense in the name of the law. “To jail, to jail!” shouted the comedian from an old radio series in a hoarse voice. Yes, because punishment satisfies injustice, making it obvious and legitimate, even when it is not at all.

If a robot receives conflicting orders that interrupt its operational sequence, it stops, it freezes. We humans do not. We keep moving forward, and that is the real difference. But we move on with a head that hurts, with guts twisting in pain, or with a throat tight from a noose that prevents us from breathing.

In order to move forward despite injustice, we end up developing those strange diseases that medicine calls “autoimmune”: conditions where the body attacks itself, which we bring upon ourselves due to internal stress. And doctors, instead of helping us stop this mechanism, fill us with medications to allow us to keep walking, despite the pain.

Yet, sometimes, small acts of rebellion remind us that fighting is still possible.

Let’s think of the officer who pretends not to see the hungry child stealing a sandwich: at that moment, he commits an act of disobedience, but of profound justice against the original injustice of not being equal in needs and desires. You don’t need to be heroes or martyrs to fight against injustice. It’s enough to think for yourself, refusing to do what the crowd considers “normal”.

Those who commit injustice do not reason: they simply follow orders, without thinking about the consequences. On the contrary, the act of thinking is the only thing that truly makes us free. And just, despite everything.