Posted on 06/17/2014 7:31:51 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Is There a Brain Region Associated with a Belief in Social Justice?
Some people believe that we could live in a just world where everybody gets what they deserve. Others believe that's impossible. Now, neuroscientists say they have evidence that the "just world hypothesis" is a cognitive bias that's connected with a specific part of the brain.
This does not mean there is a "social justice center" in your brain. What neurologist Michael Schaefer and colleagues discovered is that there is a slightly different pattern of electrical impulses shooting through the brains of people who believe in a just world. They asked people whether they believed in a just world, then put them in an fMRI machine and then asked them to ponder scenarios where people broke from social norms or conformed to them.
Previously, other neuroscientists had identified brain areas that become active when people perceive norm violations. So the group knew that if those areas were lit up in the fMRI, all they were seeing was a response to norm violations in general. But what they found was that a few additional brain regions became active in people who believe in a just world. So they now believe there could be some physiological component to a belief in social justice.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
I think the region is at the other end of the body, where most of the hot air issues forth.
I’ve always believed that “social justice” was qualified justice. Qualified justice is unequal justice. If you meet the qualifications, you get justice. If you don’t match the qualifications, you don’t get justice. Justice for some, not for all is unequal justice.
I was going to say the same thing. “Social Justice” is no more true justice than Poetic Justice, Frontier Justice, Rough Justice, or Mob Justice.
We just spent some time with my husband’s relatives, and his liberal sister, a professor of engineering, told us (with a straight face) that she had just made one of her classes read and make a book report on a tome about “Engineering and Social Justice.”
I just bit my tongue.
The whole thing is polluted by special pleading.
This is where gospel concepts, including a personal God, cut through the proverbial Gordian knot. By identifying a God who cares for all and yet desires all to care about all, we do come up with some classes to which special attention is afforded, but they are biblical — the orphan, the widow.
Biblical wisdom has slowly been replaced by hard heartedness. And now that piper has strutted up with the bill.
Here is social justice:
Honor thy father and thy mother.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s goods.
Speaking specifically about “Catholic” social justice teaching: Everything from Rerum Novarum forward has been one massive blunder and dead end. It all amounts to saying things like “unemployment is bad” and “decent housing and medical care are good.”
The seven commandments above are all anyone needs to evaluate whether a “social” situation is just or unjust.
There is no such thing as “Social Justice.”
Justice is a process not an end.
“Social justice” is a name for injustice serving agendas.
“What neurologist Michael Schaefer and colleagues discovered is that there is a slightly different pattern of electrical impulses shooting through the brains of people who believe in a just world.”
I believe in the world of electricians it’s called a short circuit. Short circuits cause malfunctions and need to be corrected.
Speaking specifically about Catholic social justice teaching:
...don’t you just love the Bidding Prayers section of the so-called contemporary Mass, in which we petition the Lord to provide wisdom to world leaders, for sufficient rain to fall, and for charitable actions in all of our activities...and as an afterthought we ask prayers for those who are ill...
...suburban Catholicism...yeesh...
...Lord hear our prayer...
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