Too often, however, we proceed as if we did not recognize this distinction

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 15.

Much of the quest for cosmic justice involves racial, regional, religious, or other categories of people who are to be restored to where they would be but for various disadvantages they suffer from various sources. Yet each group tends to trail the long shadow of its own cultural history, as well as reflecting the consequences of external influences. The history of every people is a product of innumerable cross-currents, whose timing and confluence can neither be predicted beforehand nor always untangled afterward. There is no "standard" history that everyone has or would have had "but for" peculiar circumstances of particular groups, whose circumstances can be "corrected" to conform to some norm. Unravelling all this in the quest for cosmic justice is a much more staggering task than seeking traditional justice.

To apply the same rules to everyone requires no prior knowledge of anyone's childhood, cultural heritage, philosophical (or sexual) orientation, or the innumerable historical influences to which he or his forebears may have been subjected. If there are any human beings capable of making such complex assessments, they cannot be numerous. Put differently, the dangers of errors increase exponentially when we presume to know so many things and the nature of their complex interactions. In particular, it is all too easy to be overwhelmed by clear and tragic historic injustices - and to glide easily from those injustices to a cause-and-effect explanation of contemporary problems. We know, of course, that causation and morality are two different things. Too often, however, we proceed as if we did not recognize this distinction.