painting courtesy of wikipedia.org
While researching material for an earlier blog, I came across an interesting statement about aging. …every decade after our fortieth birthday, our brains spend more time contemplating our own thoughts versus taking in information from the external environment. (Successful Aging by Daniel J. Levitin, Random House, Large Print, 2020, pg.50) While I found no explanation for why this self-reflection occurs, several studies affirm the finding.
One speculation is about structural changes in the brain...older adults display lower within-in-network connectivity and higher between-network connectivity than younger adults. That higher degree of within-network connectivity is what gives younger minds agility, an aid to creativity. Mathematicians, for example, do their best work before reaching 40.
For other disciplines, the peak age differs. …historians and philosophers are prone to later peaks and gradual, even negligible declines. Other mental processes may increase slightly across the lifespan, such as vocabulary and general knowledge.
While we retain our verbal skills throughout life, languages, themselves, die. At the moment, 7,168 living languages exist on the planet, though 96 percent of the population speaks only 4 percent of them. The rest are dying off, reducing the pool of linguistic diversity. This loss is important because these lexicons reflect different priorities, lifestyles, and environments that give us different windows to the world. Who hasn’t heard about the Inuits and their many words for snow? (“The Leaning Tower of Babel,” by Ross Perlin, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2024, pg 185.)
Even dominant languages change. Who would have imagined that “cool” could express its opposite and come to mean that a thing is “hot”?
“Justice” is a word under threat of change in our language. Former U. S. President, Donald Trump wants to extend its meaning to include revenge. He’s not alone. Victims of war atrocities might feel the same. Imagine the rage of the Bosnian woman interned in Foča, a Serbian rape camp during the Bosnian war. Returned to her home after the conflict, she discovered several of her former attackers were her neighbors. With no court to administer justice, she kept her sanity by lowering her eyes whenever she passed one of her assailants in the street. (“Justice is Without Borders,” by Janine di Giovanni, Vanity Fair, June 2024, pg. 40)
When accountability ceases to exist as it does for these Serbian men, evil flourishes. Give a coward a gun and watch his chest expand. Thankfully, not everyone yields to their heart of darkness, but those who do are the perpetrators of history’s countless atrocities. Genocide is among them.
Today, that infamy burns in Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Nigeria, Congo, China, Yemen, and Ethiopia. Few of the victims will live long enough to see justice done. The World Court designed to address war crimes is underfunded and too often lacks jurisdiction.
That vengeance threatens to usurp the meaning of justice is no surprise. Yet, little that is positive flows from hate. If our leaders fail us, we must impose on the corrupt and the violent a different form of accountability.
The Reckoning Project (RTP) offers one remedy. Working in Argentina, a country bloodied by decades of war crimes, the organization has set up tribunals where the wicked are judged in absentia. True, those found guilty of unspeakable acts may never see the inside of a prison, but their deeds will be exposed and broadcast to the world. (“Justice Without Borders,” by Janine di Giovanni, Vanity Fair, June 2024, pgs. 40-41)
We need more of these tribunals. The world hungers for Justice. Its necessity bleeds across our psyche and leaves victims not only bitter but willing to accept personal revenge as their right. Many of us want to sympathize but vigilantism leads to social chaos.
If we are to add a new synonym to our concept of Justice, it should be Shame. Let the guilty see our contempt as we single them out from the crowd. Let them walk among us afraid to meet our gaze.
