Right Thing, Right Now: Justice in an Unjust World

by Ryan Holiday

just as moderation is impossible without the wisdom to know what is worth choosing. What good is courage if not applied to justice? What good is wisdom if it doesn’t make us more modest?

North, south, east, west—the four virtues are a kind of compass (there’s a reason that the four points on a compass are called the “cardinal directions”). They guide us. They show us where we are and what is true.

The clearest evidence that justice is the most important of all the virtues comes from what happens when you remove it. It’s remarkably stark: The presence of injustice instantly renders any act of virtue—courage, discipline, wisdom—any skill, any achievement, worthless…or worse. Courage in the pursuit of evil? A brilliant person with no morals? Self-discipline to the point of perfect selfishness? There’s an argument that if everyone acted with justice all the time, we wouldn’t have so much need for courage. While discretion moderates bravery and pleasure provides us relief from excessive self-control, the ancients would point out that there is no virtue to counterbalance justice.

Earlier in this Stoic Virtues series, we defined courage as putting our ass on the line, and self-discipline as getting your ass in line. To continue this metaphor, we may define justice as holding the line—or drawing up our “Flat-Ass Rules,” to borrow a phrase from the great General James

Mattis. That is, the line between good and evil, right and wrong, ethical and unethical, fair and unfair.

Indeed, the tastes of human beings have changed constantly over the centuries, yet a consensus remains: We admire those who keep their word. We hate liars and cheats. We celebrate those who sacrifice for the common good, abhor those who grow rich or famous at the expense of others. No one admires selfishness. In the end, we despise evil and greed and indifference.

The “right thing” is complicated…but it’s also pretty straightforward. All the philosophical and religious traditions—from Confucius to Christianity, Plato to Hobbes and Kant—revolve around some version of the golden rule. In the first century BC, Hillel, the Jewish elder, was asked by a skeptic if he could summarize the Torah while standing on one foot. In fact, he could do it in ten words. “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Hillel told the man. “All the rest is commentary.”

You know justice when you see it—or, on a more visceral level, you feel it, especially its absence and its opposite.

The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts but by his everyday behavior. —Blaise Pascal

It would be with this philosophy, and the teachings of his parents, that Truman built a kind of personal code of conduct. One that he lived by unfailingly, in moments high and low. “If it’s not right, do not do it,” Truman underlined in his well-worn copy of Meditations, “if it is not true, do not say it…. First do nothing thoughtlessly or without a purpose. Secondly, see that your acts are directed to a social end.”

Truman was punctual. He was honest. He worked hard. He didn’t cheat on his wife. He paid his taxes. He disliked attention or ostentatiousness. He was polite. He kept his word. He helped his neighbors. He carried his own weight in the world. “Since childhood at my mother’s knee,” Truman would recount, “I have believed in honor, ethics, and right living as its own reward.”

To his daughter, he would admit he was a financial failure, but say with pride that he had tried to leave her “something that (as Mr. Shakespeare says) cannot be stolen—an honorable reputation and a good name.”

When men say injurious things about you, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. You will discover that there is no reason to take trouble that these men have a good opinion of you. However, you must be well disposed towards them, for by nature they are friends.

Perhaps you don’t see why it matters whether a president insists on paying the postage for letters he sends to his sister—“Because they were personal. There was nothing official about them.” But that’s the point. You’re either the kind of person who draws ethical lines like that or you’re not. You either respect the code or you don’t.

It takes a special kind of person to even have the bandwidth to care about other people during what was arguably the most stressful period of their life and quite possibly one of the most stressful periods for literally everyone alive at that moment.

We must understand: Justice is not this thing we demand of other people, but something we demand of ourselves. It’s not a thing we talk about, it’s a way of life. Nor must it be always an abstract, cosmic thing. It can be practical, accessible, and personal.

Yeah, it’s true, keeping your word can cost you. You’ll get stuck doing something you’d rather not. You’ll have to pass on the better opportunity that came after you’d already agreed to do something else. By sticking to what you’ve agreed to, you end up with something worse than market price. But it’s not without cost to break your word either. Nor is your reputation usually the only one at stake.

Each time we keep our word, we make a deposit, we add a strand to the rope that binds the world together.

When someone says they’re going to meet a deadline, that it would cost this or that much, to consider the project approved, that they’d be there—people should be able to take that to the bank. In fact, oftentimes that’s what people end up needing to do. They make plans based on your assurance, they spend money based on your agreement, they put in their two weeks after you said the job was theirs. They tell other people that it’s set, that’s happening, that it’s a done deal. When we say that a person’s word is their bond, that’s in part what “bond” is referring to.

A handshake should be enough. Your word should be enough. Because where are we if it’s not?

Promising to help a friend move is one thing, but what about keeping a promise to a friend who has broken their end? Paying back someone whom you dislike? What about an agreement that has gotten a lot more expensive, that is now liable to really upset people? Lawyers might be involved. Threats might be made. Uncertainties will loom. Reciprocity might not be forthcoming if the shoe was on the other foot. It’s natural to experience doubt. It’s natural to hope it resolves itself, or even to ask for grace or latitude. To want an exemption or a pass. But in the end, there should be no escaping a word freely given and taken, a contract signed in good faith.

We will regret many things in this life. But we’ll never regret being the kind of person who keeps their word. Who swears truthfully with their actions the promises they made with their mouth.

It’s a reminder that for all the lip service we pay to the truth, in fact, honesty is often a radical, even dangerous act. It may well be one of the rarest things in the world.

How many truly honest people do you know?

People who tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient? Who make it clear where they stand? Who don’t equivocate? Could you hon...

We put overly optimistic projections in our pitch. We buff up our résumé. We dance around the unpleasant answer, we let omission do the heavy lifting. It’s a bit of a journey from “fake it until you make it” to outright fraud, but not as far as you think.

There is the old fable about the emperor who had no clothes and the sycophants who didn’t want to tell him. In real life, the emperor Hadrian lorded over a court filled with such people. It was why he saw so much potential in a young boy named Marcus Aurelius, who was drawn early to philosophy and who always seemed to say what he thought, even to the powerful. Hadrian nicknamed him Verissimus, which meant the “the truest one.”

Honesty should not need a preface. An honest person should be like a smelly goat in the room, Marcus would say—you know when they’re there.

An honest person keeps their word. They don’t hide behind jargon. They don’t sneak around. If there’s going to be a delay or a problem, they’ll tell you. If they have concerns, they’ll voice them—they won’t nod their head, only to say “I told you so” later. They don’t fool themselves with wishful thinking or the desire to be well received.

There is a distinction between telling the truth and attacking people, between saying what you think and giving people your unsolicited opinions about how they should live or look or act. “Speak the truth as you see it,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, “but with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.”

Which brings us back to the whistleblowers. Often they are accused of seeking attention or trying to make themselves famous. This is laughable, because they have almost always

attempted to first politely, privately address what they have discovered. They have exhausted every internal (and official and unofficial) channel, sometimes over the course of years. They have given their bosses all due respect. They tried to keep the laundry in-house, trying to clean it instead of washing it in public. It was only after this failed—after every good-faith effort was rejected—that they sought the attention of the media or the law.

But it changed Maxwell Perkins forever. “I then made the only resolution that I ever kept,” he

would later tell a friend. “And it was, never to refuse a responsibility.” It is the first decision one makes in a life built around justice.

We evade responsibility because it’s hard. Because it comes with risks. Because we have a tough enough time taking care of ourselves. Because we’d rather someone else be responsible. But what kind of world would it be if everyone did this? If no one would pick up the...

The most basic decisions about our conduct—deciding what kind of person we’re going to be—are not just matters of discipline but also of justice.

The world is filled with these types of people. People who don’t care that they said they’d do something. People who are only honest if they think somebody’s watching or if they’ll get in trouble. People who fritter their gifts away, thinking they have unlimited time or multiple lives to lead. People who never stop to think about how their decisions affect anyone else. People who are weak and incapable of doing anything

for themselves or others. People who step back, assuming someone else will step forward in their place.

“We make an agreement with children that they can sit in the audience without helping to make the play,” the doctor tells her as they sit on her couch, “but if they still sit in the audience after they’re grown, somebody’s got to work double time for them, so that they can enjoy the light and glitter of the world.”

And then the doctor delivers to his stunned patient a definition of justice that Rickover would have approved of, one that we must each aspire to if our lives are to be aimed at it. “It’s your turn to be the centre,” he said, “to give others what was given to you for so long. You’ve got to give security to young people and peace to your husband, and a sort of charity to the old. You’ve got to let the people who work for you depend on you. You’ve got to cover up a few more troubles than you show, and be a little more patient than the average person, and do a little more instead of a little less than your share. The light and glitter of the world is in your hands….” “It is your turn,” he tells her, “to make the fire.”

We are burdened but also privileged now. Because from this responsibility comes meaning and purpose—comes intense, life-giving warmth. Which is why we must swear never to refuse it.

It doesn’t matter that we had a good reason. Or if it worked out all right in the end. We have to hold ourselves to a high standard, higher than perhaps even the organization itself. And we have to be brave enough to willingly accept the consequences when we fall short of those

standards, in fact, calling them out even when nobody notices.

Look, when you’re making distinctions between cheating and rule-breaking, you’ve already lost…

Sure, let’s say that cheating can help a person get ahead, but to where? Are you sure you’re going to like where it takes you? Being honest, holding yourself to account, can hold you back, sure—but it also holds you back from shame. Honesty prevents you from having to keep secrets or hoping you don’t get exposed.

The Spanish runner Iván Fernández Anaya, close behind, could easily have used it as a chance to win. Instead, he gesticulated, ultimately pushed his competitor ahead—thus losing his own chance to win. Yet they both won, in a way, and so did everyone watching, by being and seeing humanity at its best.

In ancient Greece, there was a Stoic named Chrysippus, who was also a runner. He, like competitors today, wanted to win—he wanted to win badly; that’s what sports and life is about. But he also understood that without a sense of honor, without a commitment to rules and fairness, victory is meaningless.

Letting the cashier know that they forgot to ring you up for something, letting the customer know that you overcharged them, pointing out to the ref that they made the wrong call to your advantage…it’s not free to do this…but freely paid, it’s better than being a free rider. Better than being a cheater. No one would know but us…but that’s who counts, right? That’s who you have to look at in the mirror at home.

It doesn’t matter if you could get away with it, because that doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t get you anything worth having.

So we call the penalty on ourselves. We don’t accept “freebies.” We pay our own way…we pay our taxes gladly. We’ll gladly give someone else a break, but we’re much stricter with ourselves. Out of an abundance of caution, we’ll flag it. We’ll disclose the conflict of interest and recuse ourselves. We’ll issue the correction. We’ll call the judges over. We’ll plunk down the fine even if the coach didn’t ask. If we’re wrong—or if someone claims to have been wronged—we’ll apologize.