Mon 19 May 2008
Broad-brush topic — this could spawn a dozen future (big big) questions:
What’s not fair? Locally or globally, personally or systemically, emotionally or economically: what are some big and small things in the world that are unfair?
Bonus questions: why isn’t it fair? And if it isn’t fair, why does it persist? And who might disagree about it not being fair, for that matter, and why?
Posted by Josh Millard6 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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It’s an interesting question. We all know the feeling, but what does “unfair” mean? Doesn’t it presupposed that a consciousness of some sort is running things? It could choose to dole out good fortune one way, rewarding the virtuous (or at least not harming them), yet it perversely chooses to do the opposite. (Humans — if you grant them free will — can be unfair, but that’s boring to think about.)
Can you be an atheist and think things are unfair? I’m sure many atheists do. They’re walking down the street and get splashed by a car driving through a puddle, and they think, “How unfair!” Well, we all have irrational feelings, but is this feeling in any way consistent with their atheism? Consistent or not, is it a basic human feeling — one that people will have whether it’s rational or not?
With me, it’s faded over the years. I rarely feel that anything is unfair these days (unless we’re talking about human-generated injustice). When I first became an atheist, I still had a vague feeling (as opposed to a belief) in a God. Interestingly, this vague God didn’t do much besides sending out good and bad luck. I would want something really badly and think, “Please, please PLEASE make it so!” I would be having a bad day and think, “Why? Why are you DOING this to me?”
But over time, my atheism broadened into a cosmology — a profound feeling of living in a “cold” universe, one in which there is no one in the driver’s seat. There was no one to BE fair or unfair. Shit just happens.
When I started to really FEEL this way — and not just give it intellectual lip service — I changed. People don’t talk much about this sort of change, but to me it was much more profound than letting go of God. I stopped pleading; I stopped railing. There just didn’t seem like anyone to plead or rail to. (I still get sad, angry and joyful. But now I’m sad and happy that stuff has happened to me, whereas before I was sad or happy that “he” did things to me.) I’ve been like that for so many years now that it’s hard for me to get in touch with what it’s like to feel like the universe is against me — or that the stars are aligning in my favor.
I often regret this. I think I’m factually right, but who cares? It worries me that my gut-level thinking and feeling is so out-of-line with the way my friends think (and, more important, the way they feel). Recently, my wife, who was on a diet, came home from work and ate a slice of cake. She said, “I know I’m not supposed to have this, but I feel like after what I went through today, I deserve it.” And I realized with a shock that I could barely parse her words. You’re not supposed to have it? You deserve it? Who says?
It isn’t fair that a lot of sites, when taking a survey or whatever, have the options: High school graduate, Some College, Bachelor’s degree. Hello, I have a degree that I worked hard for – it’s called an Associate degree. It’s also not fair that an Associate degree is just about the equivalent, in looking for a job, as only having a high school diploma. The best job my degree got me was a PC Tech at Best Buy (before Geek Squad came in.) The local computer-related businesses won’t even consider me without a Bachelor, and I don’t want a Bachelor – I hate programming.
Well, lots of things, but I really want to say that to me, fairness/unfairness has nothing to do with God. (This is in response to Grumblebee’s mention of atheism.) When I think, “That’s not fair,” it has nothing to do with religion, faith, or the big scheme of things. “That’s not fair” is when an equal at work is given more time off than I am for no apparent reason; in fact, the bitch doesn’t work as much as I do or as hard as I do, so these extra few days they’re giving her are just plain wrong and THAT’S NOT FAIR, damnit! It’s our boss I’m pissed at, and let’s be honest, the bitch too, but not God, nor my lot in life nor anything so dramatic.
Of course, I’m an atheist. But I guess the major reason why I’m an atheist is because the thought of an all-powerful being, or of there even *being* a “big scheme of things” makes absolutely no sense to me. It doesn’t occur to me. I never lost my faith; I simply never had any and have never missed having it. So when things happen to me, it’s because of what’s going on in my own little microcosm, not because of anything that I generally “deserve” or whatnot. So, when you ask me what’s unfair, it’s usually when something that I believe I or someone should “get” (or have or be entitled to or whatever the situation) based on a set of rules that apply to the situation, does not end up happening.
(You know, when Hubie Pyatt trashed Binx’s motor scooter, Billie Jean went to collect the $608 it cost to get it fixed, because FAIR IS FAIR! By the end of the movie, everyone came around to their way of thinking, except Mr. Pyatt, who is just an unbelievable prick bastard.)
The other day I was talking to someone whose husband is ill with cancer; this is a man who took very good care of himself his whole life through diet and exercise, and I said to my friend, “It’s not fair.” And I certainly did mean the sentiment. It’s not fair that such a good guy who seemingly followed all the rules may end up terminally ill decades before others who didn’t follow the rules by not taking care of their bodies, and so forth. But rationally, I know that’s just not how it works. Keeping oneself healthy through all available means *can* help prolong life, but genetics and other environmental factors are always at play. So, sure, in this little group of people it doesn’t seem fair that this nice man is so ill, but I also know that there are millions of other little groups of people containing ill members, and none of them think their lot is fair, either. This is purely a personal sentiment, and there is nobody (or no thing) to blame. We all get sick and die. It’s sad, but there’s no fair or unfair about it.
(You know, Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it. OK, enough with the movie references.)
So I just went back to proofread, and the statement that stood out as most needing a rewrite was the first part of my first sentence: “Well, lots of things.” But that’s not really true; there aren’t a whole lot of things. The things I find unfair are when people have gone against a set of understood rules, to their advantage. Cheating at a sport or game is unfair. Getting preferential treatment at work or school (above equals) is unfair. But I don’t find it unfair when a car splashes water on me. I think it sucks, but there’s nothing unfair about it. I could even turn it into “ironic” if it were in the correct circumstance, and almost nobody gets “ironic” right, but I can’t think of a way to make it unfair. But then, I never had any kind of feelings of god/the universe/the world being out to get me.
But I guess Josh was looking for some specific examples, wasn’t he. Shit, I don’t know. I guess it’s unfair that people born in certain geographic areas have opportunities that others do not. That is, if they want them. (I’d never want to force an opportunity on anybody who wasn’t interested in it.) But the women who do not enjoy being oppressed, the children who do not enjoy starving … these people didn’t choose their existences and I suppose I might call it unfair that they were born into them. This doesn’t fit neatly into my “going against understood rules” description. In fact, now I’m confused, because you take the human population on one hand: each individual was born someplace they didn’t ask to be born. Some lucked out, some did not. Unfair? On the other hand you take a group of people waiting at the curb for a bus, with a big puddle in the gutter that extends the length of the block: a car drives by and only one person ends up being splashed with that water. Unfair? Nobody in either situation could have done anything differently to improve their chances of getting an “unfair lot.” Does that mean that it was unfair?
But, no, I still think the worldwide example is unfair because we humans do have the ability to make our societies better for the children we bring into them. We even have the ability to *not* have children, and spare them any suffering. So I find it unfair that just because someone was born on the wrong continent, or the wrong color, or into the wrong family, or with the wrong set of genes, might have a sucky life without having had any control over it.
But the puddle thing has something to do with luck, chance, chaos theory, and fluid dynamics. It’s not unfair, it just sucks.
And neither has anything to do with God.
You know, for a long time I believed that unfairness existed. Bad things happen to good people, etc etc. Then I became a Buddhist. Honestly, I do not know that unfairness does not exist, but I choose to believe that it doesn’t. And now I’m a much happier person. Which still makes me relatively unhappy.
I think the most unfair thing is that where a person is born determines, in large part, approximately how long they will for, their living conditions, and how much food/shelter/clean water/consumer stuff they will be able to afford and that the difference between what the rich can afford and what the poor can afford is large. Essentially, nationalism is unfair.
iguana, I barely mentioned it, so you probably missed that at the top of my post, I said unfairness exists on the human level. Humans can be unfair to other humans. In fact, that’s the only way in which I can parse unfairness. To me, for sometime to be unfair, there has to be intention behind it. To me, acts of nature aren’t unfair. Earthquakes are tragic and unfortunate, but they’re not unfair — unless you think there’s a conscious agent behind them.
Or unless (regardless of what you think, intellectually), you FEEL like there is.