Flower Llounge (22) -- Mirage of Justice

After a bit of thinking behind bars, I concluded that freedom could be more intimidating than liberating. Deep down, tugged under our subconscious, most of us don’t really want freedom because we simply can’t handle it, not the real thing anyway. We claim we do because we don’t know we don’t, and it’s not cool to not love freedom, whatever it is. Though we may not know what freedom is, however, we can at least concur on what it isn’t most of the time. For example, prisoners are indisputably not free.

Fairness is way trickier; it’s controversial either way. We often cannot agree on what is and what isn’t fair at the same time. Justice is a matter of opinion which shifts with time, situation, experience, self-interest, and bias. Even on the rare occasions that we concur on what constitutes fairness and justice, we cannot reach consensus on how they should be achieved. While few would dispute that totally unrestricted freedom may descend into chaos and wipe out all sense of fairness, the means and degree of restriction are inevitably controversial, subjects of endless debates. In the end, everyone finds the final compromise unfair at least sometimes, under some circumstances. 

Justice is paradoxically unique and universal, intuitive and complex all at once. 

Every community has some form of a code of justice going way back. Unfortunately, time, experience, and sophistication have not delivered progress. Every community has a justice system which is imperfect in the eyes of those it governs, and at least partly baffling to outsiders. These days, as the global population of progressive people increases, common sense has been made subordinate to lofty principles and untested ideologies, further confusing the already erratic evolution of justice. Sure, common sense alone clearly isn’t enough to define or administer justice, yet a legal system which defies common sense will never seem equitable to the majority. 

In short, humanity appears to have moved further away from universal justice after millennia of contemplation, deliberation, and experimentation by philosophers, rulers, politicians, academics, revolutionaries, and counter-revolutionaries. Worse, as justice gains unprecedented complexity and sophistication over time, it has arguably become more arbitrary and controversial than ever.

Nevertheless, there remains in the human psyche a nagging dissatisfaction with inequities. Witnessing gross injustice disgusts us. It’s our nature to demand fairness for ourselves and others, as long as fairness to others doesn’t come at our expense.

It was high time that some prisoner gave this dead-end issue some good thinking in his plentiful spare time. I volunteered.

Confucius sagely warned that maldistribution is a more threatening social ill than general poverty. But human experience before and after him has shown that equitable distribution is an unattainable goal among people who constantly move the goalposts in unpredictable directions. Perhaps chasing after something we cannot adequately define is doomed to fail. More alarmingly, maldistribution has worsened with increased affluence and heightened expectations. If Confucius was right, the world is very ill indeed.

According to surveys rapidly becoming obsolete, Americans are more ready than others to believe that ‘life is fair.’ I suspect this is a reflection of blissful naivety, or relative satisfaction with a disproportionately fair share of global resources to themselves. Unfortunately, their domestic distribution fails to catch up. The rich-poor gap is growing out of control. Letting money do all the talking has also eroded the work ethics which once underscored the American spirit, further detaching their moneyed caste from the modern peasants. A society in which wealth means political power is not different from a feudal state in essence.

Trying to conjure justice out of a mixture of powerful money and complex legislation is a new experiment. Over-reliance on legal technicality coupled with dollar-driven lobbying has made the law book impossibly thick, loaded with convoluted provisions tilting wordily towards those who sponsored its authorship. The law is now unnavigable without expensive lawyers. The befuddled masses are marginalised and disadvantaged, lost in sea but are told to count themselves lucky because they live in a sophisticated society governed by the rule of law. Social inequity has been neatly institutionalised.

Hong Kong’s legal theatre remains reasonably sensible by comparison, but the worrying trend should not be overlooked. There are many things we can learn from the American experience.

Legal technicality seems to be gaining popularity among the lawyers I have talked to. Having a well defined and strictly followed procedure sounds good, but promoting it above all else, equating it to justice itself, is ridiculous. Acquitting a felon who is guilty beyond doubt on reason of technicality is grossly unfair, not progressive. If procedural compliance is all it takes to ensure justice, then computers would make far better judges and prosecutors than humans. Perhaps they do in minor offences. But a competent judge remains the preferred option in cases which require discretion and compassion. The traditional Chinese legal spirit tries to balance fa, li, qing — letter of the law, reasonableness, discretion. In essence, this is also how the common law operates. Technicality should only be a part of the equation, not a determining factor.

Another legal tradition inherited from Hong Kong’s colonial era is independence of the judiciary. The concept is functional enough — at least harmless — in everyday petty disputes. But to embrace it mindlessly and absolutely is naive and counterproductive.

A totally independent judiciary can elevate the judges above the law like medieval Lords. Credible corruption allegations made against US Supreme Court Judges, for example, don’t make it past the gossip columns of mainstream media because there isn’t any point in asking these ultimate judges to judge themselves. Is that fair? Regardless of appointment mechanism, judges are there to serve a social function, not to act as overlords. In fact, due to the honour and power bestowed upon them, they should be held to higher standards.

At the grimy political level, countries which advertise ‘separation of power’ have tacit understanding and latent communication means between the ostensibly independent power branches. Julian Assange, Meng Wan Zhou of Huawei, Frédéric Pierucci of Alstom are but a few well-known names which come to mind immediately to illustrate the point. A truly ‘independent’ judiciary has never really existed when it comes to political cases, especially those involving a foreign state in geopolitical affairs. Otherwise, the appointment of US Supreme Court judges would be a sleep inducing bureaucratic process unworthy of the attention of political parties. Being too literal with the slogan ‘separation of powers’ without understanding how it operates in the real world would be kind of stupid.

That said, the absolute majority of cases are simple and down-to-earth, requiring judges to understand everyday things rather than political scams and objectives. Unfortunately, the average judge does not reside in down-to-earth reality.

For more than a century, Hong Kong natives were told that magistrates from faraway lands totally ignorant of the local language and customs were actually more fair. Ignorance, according to this logic, had freed up extra mental space under their wigs, allowing them to judge without conflict of interest. This argument might have been derived from the medieval practice of asking celibate clergies to rule over family disputes. I find it ludicrous.

These days, most judges are ethnically local. But many if not most of them don’t know how to take public transport or function in a lawful business environment. Negotiation, compromise, concession, and queuing for goods and services are alien to those who make legal judgements for a good living. Stanley’s and Ringo’s cases highlighted some typical but unmentionable deficiencies in the system. In my own experience, the magistrate demonstrated that he resided in a universe markedly different from my humble one. I wouldn’t say which universe makes better sense. I’m merely stating my impression that a gaping cultural difference exists between us members of the masses and the average magistrate.

Back at the dorm, I was jotting down my playground thoughts while the boys played an alcohol-free drinking game. 

The thuggish young man with a rose bouquet tattoo on his back had just lost two consecutive rounds. Downing two big mugs of water in five minutes was evidently more distressing to the stomach than alcohol.

In an ideal world (why am I using the cliched ideal world for reference, knowing that it doesn’t exist, and never will?) success would be proportional to merits. But what appears meritorious to one may seem criminal to another…

‘Not fucking fair!’ screamed Rosie the Thug. He had just lost another round, and was quitting due to medical concerns.

After giving the subject of fairness due consideration all day, I had become more confused. The only insight I had managed so far was a no-brainer which everyone knew: It’s impossible to be fair to everyone at all times.

What a waste of time, but I couldn’t care less.

Does that mean fairness doesn’t exist?

Apparently so.

Unless…unless there are multiple lifetimes? Once again, my mind ventured into forbidden areas.

Multiple lifetimes, from my pseudoscientific perspective, is infinitely more convincing than other afterlife tales such as feigning an everlasting smile next to the Almighty. Voltaire had a point there: Being born twice is no more surprising than being born once. 

As far as we know, which isn’t a lot in the big picture, things get transformed and moved around, converted between matter and energy and so on. Nothing’s really, utterly, taken out of existence. Could the unknown, perhaps unknowable, force which sustains life in our bodies — mere transient assemblies of primordial carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, nitrogens et cetera which supposedly popped up during the Big Bang — be the only exception? Is it so unimaginable that this unknown life force is also reconstituted, recycled and recirculated like everything else we see or speculate in the universe?

The concept of karma once seemed bizarre to me. Now it seems the most plausible and ‘scientific’ among all the blind guesses humanity has come up with.

Under this spiritual recycling programme, justice looks different.

If I observe a stranger’s life over a twenty-four-hour period, it may appear grossly unfair: He’s done nothing all morning, yet a fat cheque arrives in the mail. What has he done to deserve that? Just as unbelievably, while enjoying a book and a glass of wine at home in the evening, not bothering anyone, the cops kick down the door and take him away. None of that makes sense.

But if I know his earlier history, these events may seem reasonable, even inevitable.

If there are multiple lifetimes, observing just one of them would be no less incomplete and out of context than spying on a stranger over a twenty-four-hour period. And if humans are not cosmically exceptional, then some form of transcendental karmic accounting system similar to mass balance and thermodynamics would be expected. Our accounts would be balanced down to the last penny, the final micron, like everything else. Only a matter of time.

Unfortunately, a multi-lifetime view will lead to tenuous territories. 

Karmic determinism has been used to rationalise heartless exploitation and caste enslavement. It also leads to a fatalistic resistance against our fairness instincts in the present life. Even if true, therefore, karma should be rejected for pragmatic reasons.

I was stuck in a labyrinth without an exit.

Restraining myself to just the present lifetime, I contrived an alternative interpretation of fairness. 

The overall quality of life as experienced by the person living it is often overlooked. Wealth, power, and fame are commonly used to measure success. But whether due to personality, karma, or whatever, many hugely successful individuals are not remotely content, especially towards the final terrifying years, as illness, disillusionment, and loneliness sink in. On the other hand, some paupers live and die happily. 

Money and power may be related, but happiness isn’t. As happiness is arguably the paramount goal in our existence, life is therefore fairer than it seems. Fair enough?

To my surprise, most See Hings disagreed. Their logic is clear: Money is the solution to all problems, and problems make them unhappy, money is therefore related to happiness. Since they had plenty of problems, presumably due to a lack of money, the obvious solution was to make as much of it as quickly as possible, in order to attain problem-free living and perpetual happiness. How could I have guessed that my See Hings, with a combined net worth too minute to be counted, actually had something in common with Soros? 

When I sought their views on justice, they yawned. They knew from experience that justice was biased against them. Always has been, always will be — so, let’s talk about something else. They weren’t bitter though. Like feudal peasants, acceptance was essential for survival and self-preservation. Only people with nothing better to do than eating and defecating would bother to think about the meaning of justice. 

‘You have money, you have justice, it’s that fucking simple!’ Mr. See Hing simply couldn’t understand what I was after.

Following that simple logic, the most practical way to maximise personal justice is to make more money by hook or by crook. When desperate, even the highly intelligent take extremely stupid chances, giving clever lawyer Derek the impression that they’re all idiots.

From the perspective of my fellow inmates, hope and prudence don’t mix. Breaking the law brings money, hence hope. Justice will follow automatically. On the other hand, being prudent means life would be more stable and predictable — they would be predictably poor and without favourable justice. Heck, what the hell. And once they have ventured outside the law, they have to keep going. Turning back is difficult. Just keep going, whatever the consequence, don’t think. Soldiers in the battlefield don’t analyse the chance of getting shot during coffee breaks.

Experienced See Hings try to beat the system the best they can until getting caught. Then they accept and rationalise. If they get an obviously unfair verdict or disproportionately stiff sentence, they shrug. ‘Oh well, it’s pure fucking bullshit this time, but I’d gotten away many times before,’ wink wink. That was the mentality of the Car Thief at LCK. Receiving two parking tickets on a bad day after having parked illegally and gotten away with it for a whole month is obviously a good deal if one has a big heart, fair mind, and transcendental rationalisation skills.

Are money and justice as intimately related as they believe? 

Some data seem to support this cynical view.

Using the USA as a learning example again, only about 2% (yes, two percent) of all convictions are the results of due process. The rest are reached through plea bargains. The reason is simple. The Attorney General has unlimited resources, most people don’t. After a lengthy process, the average guy will rather plead guilty to end the ordeal quickly, especially if they have been remanded long enough; pleading guilty could mean going home next week, if home is still there. 

What about civil cases? Well, if you’re in a legal battle against Bill Gates or Soros, good luck, unless you’re Elon Musk.

Enough. Mental rambling had given me a glimpse of an age-old phenomenon which appeared real, yet unreachable, like a mirage.

I closed my notebook and put justice away, happy that I had exercised a prisoner’s prerogative and wasted a lot of time.

* * *

Next Episode

Think of not...here I am

will be uploaded around 15/11/2025

Humans exchanging insults often call each other ‘animal’

while we are all indisputably members of the Animal Kingdom.

Objectively, we are inferior to wild animals in many ways...