Getting what we deserve.

IN HIS 1980 BOOK, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion, social psychologist Melvin J. Lerner presents empirical evidence indicating that we seem to have a strong need to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get--that the world is just in that sense.

Indeed, the famous biblical story of Job expresses the timeless longing for a just world, understood in that way. Job insists that he did nothing to deserve the disasters and tragedies visited upon him, presumably by God. But his friends who are trying to "console" him insist that the very fact of these calamities proves that Job hasn't been as righteous as he claims to be.

Job's riches, including his children, are finally restored to him. But what is often overlooked in this story is that his previous children, all of whom were destroyed, aren't brought back to life and didn't get what they deserve. Rather, they were merely enlisted as instruments in the infliction of Job's suffering.

The concept of justice as desert, of course, requires human enforcers of desert if God fails to act. If people don't get what they deserve, then it is up to us, to society, and to government to ensure that they do get what they deserve, in the name of justice. Our social policies are pervasively grounded in--or at least justified by--notions of justice as desert. But human attempts to give people their just deserts, like God's, often stray from their presumed targets. Especially delusional are attempts at social engineering through which incentives and disincentives are employed in social policies intended to control behavior, the premise being that people will "deserve" benefits only when they engage in the desired behavior. Through such policies, many individuals don't in any sense get what they deserve. For example, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program often denies welfare benefits to children in the process of sanctioning their mothers. Such children are used merely as instruments, much as in the story of Job.

In attempts to provide people with what they presumably deserve, the modern welfare state has constructed policies distinguishing between its "deserving" and "undeserving" citizens along highly contestable lines. Deep-rooted attitudes of desert drive myriad policies that selectively reward and punish groups of individuals based on stereotypes concerning, for example, the elderly, homeless people, and poor single mothers, not to mention foreigners. Indeed, we are adept at deciding what we deserve and others don't. These feelings of "justice" can and do arouse intense passions and extreme anger, and often even desire for revenge when others get what we believe they don't deserve. Yet the idea of people getting what they deserve is commonly identified as synonymous with justice itself. We have a sense that people should get what they deserve, in the form of punishment, reward, or compensation. Our intellects--not to mention our emotions--are pleased by this symmetry of justice, by justice as balance.

The arguments proffered for the desert of certain people to receive benefits from various government programs often refer to justice construed in terms of an imagined social contract, or reciprocity arrangement, according to which people are owed benefits from the society if they have fulfilled certain vaguely defined obligations to it. If they have not, however, then they are due nothing at all. But such ideas of contracts and reciprocity are myths. The community has benefited most of us far beyond anything we can imagine to have deserved, and most often in no way commensurate with any contributions that one has or has not made. Most of us have greatly benefited from our national community merely by having the good fortune to have been born into it. As a university professor in a near anarchic society such as in Somalia, I would obtain an exceedingly small fraction of the wealth and well-being that accrues to me by occupying the same position and putting forth the same effort in the United States. My wealth is more a function of place than of individual effort or contribution. The truth is that most of us have been getting "something for nothing." That is in the nature of a viable and successful community. The question is in what manner the revenues from the taxing of such excess wealth--wealth which is above and beyond that which would have accrued to individuals in the absence of the community--should be distributed.

There would be nothing wrong with our spirit of entitlement to benefits from the community--to the feeling that we deserve those benefits--if it weren't for the fact that it encourages us to belittle and judge others, and begrudge them even governmental attention to their minimal survival needs. We convince ourselves that while we are deserving of everything we get, there are some individuals within our midst who are deserving of nothing at all. At this point, a sense of deservingness slides into greed and self-righteousness, to be nourished through prejudice, stereotype, narrow reasoning, arbitrary distinctions between "us" and "them" and active derogation of those we learn to despise as we pursue the process of suspecting their desert.

In reality, a philosophy of desert leads to contradictions, inconsistencies, group oriented policies shaped by stereotypes, and highly subjective determinations that raise questions of individual justice, arbitrary exclusion, and discrimination. Attributions of desert serve as excuses not to house the homeless. And although our policies have traditionally proclaimed veterans to be especially deserving, those veterans living on the streets are scorned no less than other homeless people. They are denied the beds, heated shelter, and hot showers provided even to convicted criminals in prison. It is clear that many people read into the situation of the homeless their desert, much as Job's onlookers did to the personal catastrophes that had befallen him. But as only Job's circumstances were real and present, while onlookers' inferences of desert were in the realm of idle speculation irrelevant to the actuality of Job's suffering, so too is only the homelessness real. As Rabbi Harold Kushner suggests in his 1981 book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People: "Blaming the victim is a way of reassuring ourselves ... that there are good reasons for people's suffering. It helps fortunate people believe that their good fortune is deserved, rather than being a matter of luck. It makes everyone feel better--except the victim"

In fact, invocation of the concept of desert presents major challenges to justice. The principle of nondiscrimination dictates that individuals similarly situated be treated similarly. Desert arguments, on the other hand, are attempts to distinguish one's circumstances from those of others, to establish that one is deserving of something that others are not. In fact, the arguments invariably address irrelevant factors, such as whether the individuals in need are elderly or not. Mythical notions of desert serve to justify discrimination by obliging us to judge who are the "deserving" and "undeserving" among those who are already similarly situated in regard to need. Moreover, these notions of desert distinctions are based on generalizations about categories of people, such as the elderly or single mothers, that, even if valid as generalizations, aren't individually valid for all individuals within those categories.

Yet the conception of justice as desert goes largely unchallenged. Arguments for differential treatment of individuals and groups based on assertions of differential circumstances (and histories) permeate the political arena and are the crux of modern politics in the United States. Interest groups clamor for special treatment, proffering all manner of creative justifications for why they, as opposed to others, are deserving of particular benefits. Such arguments are used to establish the "justice" of differential treatment, to appeal to the sympathies of the electorate, and to tempt that segment of the electorate that would qualify for differential positive treatment (that is, qualify as "deserving") under the proposed policies. Politicians foster a spirit of entitlement among the groups they are attempting to attract by telling them what they want to hear, namely, why they deserve the special favorable treatment offered to them for their votes. This is couched in terms of justice--the justice of desert.

The formulation of justice as desert allows vengeance to be carried out in the name of justice, even if only to the extent that balance, in the eye of the judge beholder, is achieved. It is famously expressed (in its negative form) in such legendary principles as the "eye for an eye" law of the talion. Desert facilitates the ease with which people can be harmed with good conscience, and selected for exclusion, along the lines of ostensible desert.

In recent years, for example, Serbian political leaders inspired the indiscriminate Serbian slaughter of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo by stirring up "memories" of the Serbian defeat there at the hands of the Muslims' supposed ancestors (the Turkish Ottomans) 400 years prior. In Bosnia, Serbs visited indiscriminate atrocities upon Croats as well as Muslims, partly inspired by the massacres of Serbs led by the Nazi-sponsored Croatian government more than four decades earlier. In Rwanda, Hutus massacred hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, no doubt in the name of justice as desert. In many wars, the innocents are theoretically distinguished from the culpable within the enemy group, and while the latter are considered to be deserving of the fate to be inflicted on them, the sufferings of the innocents are construed as unavoidable damage in the pursuit of justice, as "collateral damage."

Justice as desert is routinely used to justify terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and war. Ted Honderich (The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 28, 2003), for example, speaks of the possibilities of "terrorism for humanity" and "the categories of clear innocents, half-innocents, unengaged combatants, and non-combatants." Presumably, individuals in each of his judgmental categories are deserving of different fates. The Islamist terrorists, in their own eyes, seek retribution against the heathen enemy, an enemy that is decadent, brutal, and arrogant, and has strayed from God. Violence is good when committed in the name of God. According to Jessica Stern, in her 2003 book, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill: "Because they believe their cause is just ... they persuade themselves that any action--even a heinous crime--is justified." They believe, Stern suggests, that they are morally as well as politically right, and that God is on their side. It is righteousness driven by a sense of justice and by justice as desert that allows such views to have any credence at all, or to win the sympathy of, or be convincing to, anyone at all. Without these conceptions of justice, no adherents could be won. The Islamist terrorists believe that Islam is under attack and must be defended. The enemy deserves what it gets from us, we have a right to defend ourselves and our religion, we are justified in doing what we do.

We face the paradox that even terrorists have a sense of justice, and that from the sense of justice, evil can ensue. Persistence in the formulation of justice as desert allows much leeway for human thought and action to facilitate the violation of life, and the ends of desert to determine and overwhelm the means in the name of justice. Perceived injustice, after all, is a dangerous thing. It is, in fact, perceived injustice that invokes our anger like nothing else can, and in turn may lead to revenge. This fact, I suggest, is available to everyone's own introspection. Many of us have had fantasies of taking hold of some terrorists and doing all manner of horrible things to them, making them suffer before they die, for what they have done to others. I have always wished that Michael Dukakis, in his famous second 1988 presidential debate with George H.W. Bush, would have responded differently than he did to the question of if his wife were raped and murdered, whether or not he would favor the death penalty for the killer. Emotionally, I am certain, he would have wanted to do what many of us have envisaged doing to the terrorists. If only he would have said so, and then argued that in government we have the opportunity to rise above the rule of emotions, to formulate principles that uphold the sanctity of human life even of the murderer, and to stay the hand of revenge.

Justice as desert involves cognitions steeped in emotions toward others both positive and negative, and deep-seated urges toward revenge. They are the very things we attempt to rise above in the formulation of community, government, and principles. We must try to understand why justice as desert persists and predominates in human minds and societies, what functions it serves, and how it perpetuates the violation and neglect of human life. We must consider the possibilities of starting from another perspective on justice, grounded in the unconditional and non-exclusionary affirmation of human life. The language of desert and our emotions of desert are preventing us from moving on.

Our sense of justice is revealed in many ways. We can discuss as a community, as we do, who is "deserving" of receiving governmentally funded health care coverage and who is not. Yet, in fact, we violate our own policies of supposed desert and proof of reciprocity when we decline to allow a dying homeless man to be denied medical attention merely because he doesn't have medical insurance coverage. He is treated at government expense, indicating that we hold to a moral value the sanctity of human life that overrides any presumptions of desert, contract, and reciprocity. In short, we recognize at times that it is the community as a whole that has an obligation to each individual to respect and promote human life. In the end, our policies proclaim that the homeless deserve and yet don't deserve to suffer and die, because the valuing of life comes into conflict with the valuing of desert. Since we do currently give a dying uninsured person medical treatment, whether he or she can pay for it or not, and without judgment of desert, we act inconsistently when we withhold from any individual the basic material necessities for survival. Yet in many cities in the United States, many homeless people are currently neglected and denied shelter and social care. They are left to sleep in the streets and then are chased, stereotyped, vilified, and despised.

Our sense of justice includes a belief in the sanctity of human life. But a value on life makes no distinction between my life and others' lives. If my life is not to be violated, then equivalently, others' lives are not to be violated. If life is to be valued in accordance with principle, then all life is to be valued, and to prescribe the valuing of my life and not others' is to raise a contradiction. Human life, in our social policies, must not be violated but should be supported and nurtured in a nondiscriminatory manner. The reverence for human life, without condition, judgment, or exception, is contrary to the desert conception. We violate the value we place on the sanctity of human life, for example, when we continue to allow capital punishment within our criminal justice system. Ironically, the value we place on human life is simultaneously revealed and violated in the consequences prescribed, in this case the death penalty prescription for murder. From the perspective of the principle of life affirmation, to support life through life-destroying acts is itself a contradiction.

It is the principle of life affirmation that obliges us to address the homeless, not any notions or principle of desert. On the contrary, the concept of desert paves the way for condemnation, speculation, neglect, and inaction. It opens a door to the rationalization and justification of callous public and official disregard for (some) human life. When we recognize that the same conception of justice as desert that we act from allows the terrorists to act as terribly as they do, we might seek a conception that distinguishes us from such capability. In accordance with the life-affirmation conception of justice, whenever individuals are violated, justice is violated, and life cannot be destroyed in its name. From the perspective of life affirmation, justice is derived from reverence for human life and not from implicit social contracts.

If we were to be guided by the precept of reverence for human life in the construction of social policies, then basic human needs would be addressed without reference to desert and without condition. Welfare benefits would be distributed in order to address dire need and not to control the behaviors of the needy. Policies designed to address financial need would do so in a universal manner, and so there wouldn't be separate policies, each with their own eligibility requirements, for financial aid to the elderly, women with children, disabled people, veterans, and victims of disaster. Homeless people would be provided housing without condition. If health care insurance is to be provided to some, such as the elderly, then it would be provided to all. People would be left to pursue whatever they think they deserve in the marketplace, not through government. Government wouldn't be in the business of desert. Government would avoid the temptations to reward, punish, provide incentives and disincentives for behaviors, and to engage in social engineering through its social welfare policies.

Greater reliance on the life-affirmation perspective would require valuing human life unconditionally and without exception, and returning good for evil rather than giving people what they deserve. There is no symmetry in this. The life-affirmation perspective doesn't accord with ideas of balance or reciprocity. It is true that even many Christian scholars have tried to interpret the Sermon on the Mount--arguably the most eloquent, although certainly not the first, expression of the life-affirmation perspective--in its narrowest possible sense. They have claimed that one or another statement in it was meant to apply only to the courts, or to personal affairs, but that it cannot be applied in the form of governmental policies. Our task is to start imagining how it can be. The alternative is to continue to entertain justifications for policies that select and exclude, that address desert rather than need and the nondiscriminatory promotion of human life, and that perpetuate the violating and devaluing of human lives.

Leroy H. Pelton is a professor of social work at the University of Nevada, LasVegas. His most recent books are Doing justice: Liberalism, Group Constructs, and Individual Realities (1999), and Frames of Justice: Implications for Social Policy (2005).