1. Universal Aspirations

The root causes of injustice and oppression run very deep, including some of the foundational values, assumptions, ideas, and relationships that constitute modernity. Modernity has been characterized by many laudable advances in human creativity and productivity, the arts and sciences, technologies and social innovations. But these advances have not accrued evenly within or among diverse populations. Vast numbers of people today live in intolerably oppressive conditions. These conditions have given rise to a global ferment in human affairs, leading to the proliferation of diverse movements for social justice across the planet. Universal aspirations for social justice can thus be understood as a fundamental characteristic of modernity. In this chapter, we briefly survey the global proliferation of movements and examine how they embody diverse aspirations for social justice. We then examine the inherent human sense of justice that gives rise to such movements, along with human susceptibilities toward egoism and othering that impede or distort the sense of justice, and the implications of both for the pursuit of social justice. We conclude by noting the need for diverse movements to move beyond reactive tendencies in their pursuit of social justice. Reacting to particular injustices arises from an intuitive recognition of what social justice is not. It is much harder to articulate a broadly shared positive vision of what social justice is. But the latter is needed to inform and align the efforts of diverse movements in order to increase their coherence and collective efficacy.