It is a noble thing indeed to recognise a past injustice inflicted upon another, and to take the necessary steps to rectify it.
What is less noble is to invent injustices to rectify, and to escalate the rectifications to both real and invented injustices beyond what’s reasonable with ever increasing zeal, and ever decreasing satisfaction at how far yet there is to go. Such warpaths of myopic pathological altruism cannot be tamed by reason, and they will hear no opposing viewpoint, because such a viewpoint can only come from a place of hatred and intolerance, and as such must be stamped out, adding yet more fuel to the fires of an already all-consuming fervour.
Enough will never be enough.
Such shows of blatantly disproportionate overcompensation are an act of self-flagellation, of acknowledgement and atonement for a deeply held guilt.
Q. But with the injustice acknowledged and rectified, the truly guilt-ridden would surely be vindicated?
A. Partially true. Those wracked by guilt over a past wrong having been committed would indeed be vindicated and, however sheepishly, satisfied once reasonable steps had been taken to correct it.
Self-flagellation is reserved for a particular kind of guilt though. Their's is the guilt that knows a wrong had been committed, yet continues to believe at however deep a level that the wrong was justified; that it wasn’t really wrong at all.
This internal conflict cannot be addressed by social change. Yet social change is what is invariably craved, and it is society that must pay the price.
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