Is the world unfair?

Question

It's a cliche that the world is unfair. But it is used as a way to scold people--"Nobody ever said the world was fair. Get over it." Everybody will allow you with a tiny bit of complaining that the world is unfair, but if you try to go beyond reiterating the old cliche, people get mad. "How dare you complain that the world is more unfair to you than to anybody else! The world is equally unfair to all." That's the gist of the response you will get.

So, the accepted wisdom is the the world is fairly unfair. That is, the world is fair.

A corollary to that is that anybody who is suffering from some unusual unfairness must have somehow brought it upon themselves. That is, the ultimately fair world has proportionately responded to something you did and justice has been done. Again the world is fair.

Is there anybody out there who thinks that the world has been unfairly unfair to them? What response to you get when you try to tell somebody about it?

I'm not talking about flipping coins or the weather. Here's an example: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said this week that his Yale law degree is worth about 15 cents because he was unfairly turned down for jobs that were given to lesser qualified white people.

If he was denied a job because he was black by a human person taking a purposive action based on reasons, good or bad rational or irrational (not fliping a coin) that would be unfair.

If Justice Thomas was turned down for a job and the job was given to a lesser qualified white person this is not random:

If it were, job givers would be saying "No becase you're black" to all kinds of people, very few of whom would actually be black.

THEN, they would attempt to "give the job to a white person" by giving the job to all kinds of people who are not actually white (about 40% of the time).

THEN, they'd end up giving the job to MORE-QUALIFIED people at least occasionally.

Since we never see someone being denied a job because he was black and then the job is given to a higher-qualified black person, the act of denying someone a job because they are black is not random. It is actual unfairness.

This is what I mean by unfairness.

I'm not talking about rain on your birthday.

Answer 1

Not only is it unfair....it's mandated to be unfair by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (AKA: entropy).....as well as the corollaries found in Murphy's Law...

But then again, if the world didn't suck,.....you'd fall off!

Answer 2

Well to answer a earlier comment, someone typed that the world is not unfair, people are unfair. Well, the earth, before I continue, sorry if I'm wrong. The earth is unfair because we have gravity and every place on earth isn't symmetrical. When it comes to the gravity, people who grow taller might have it harder than people who grow shorter because they have to carry more gravity but this could be discussed cause taller people might have it easier cause they're most likely stronger. Now the places on the earth being unsymmetrical would mean that some people might be further away from water and further away from foods, resources, etc. Again, sorry if I'm wrong. Now when it comes to humans, we naturally are (it seems like we're basically forced) born unfairly, now it might not be as natural as you think because if God created humans and we chose to be human (if we had a fair choice) then the growth is not natural because humans were made by man. To the 1 that looks the worse, sorry that your life isn't that good but you were born not unfairly. What I'm trying to get at is that we all look different, some look better, some look worse. This makes life unfair because the better looking is probably going to have a better life than you, if y'all grew up together, had the same lifestyle, it's most def that the better looking is going to have a better life. He/she will have to do less, you will have to do more. In the end, this is a way that you can find out that God is real because there are imperfections, probable mistakes, probable wrongs. If we were natural throughout our lives we would probably have a closer life to fair, if not fair. Only a life could mess the earth and the people up, and by not perfecting the creation a unfair life appears on earth. I believe that if no 1 messed with the natural way of life and/or messed with life, that life itself would be better and that life would be more fair. I think that life would have no bad (sin) or at least closer to no bad if life was entirely natural. Looking at what the bible says, it says that all have sinned. Meaning there has to be a problem or more when it came to the creation of this earth and the humans because I don't think people are naturally bad. If this was the case, you couldn't punish people for being bad because it's natural. People are most definitely not naturally bad. There has to be a problem or more in the creations. This is where I come to that God and spirits from him might be evil. So the conclusion is, is that the earth and the humans have a unfair life because of God and if there are more creators besides him (the bible only shows that it was only God that created but there was a point where I read and it seemed like there were more creators). Well, my name is Thomas Kar-Won Chan if 1 day I don't seem like I'm alive or doing well, please remember me because I believe if I'm right, God and spirits from him don't want y'all to know this. Now not all spirits from God could be evil but most def, some, if not all. Take care all and may peace be with us. Be careful with this information since God and spirits from him might not want y'all to know. To all I am very sorry if I'm wrong but in my mind right now, there is no way that I can be wrong.

Answer 3

Without knowing what the meaning or purpose of life is, how can we possibly tell whether it is fair?

Fairness is a relative term. Events and phenomena are either fair or unfair depending on the subject that being influenced by them. Even within the same individual, events that are impacting some part of him or her in a positive way may be impacting some other part of him or her in a negative way. For example, being hired to a new job may be positive to a person's egoic and financial life, but detrimental to their physical health and personal relationships.

Without knowing what subject life is ultimately concerned about, how can we say whether life is ultimately fair or unfair? Thomas may have been unfairly subject to racism, and while that is certainly unfair in its own particular realm, can we say that it is ultimately unfair? How are we to know what life lessons, inner strength and growth, and future opportunities he may have gained from those unfair circumstances? How do we know whether the cruelty done to him was balanced with cruelty he may have imposed upon others at some point? (Certainly, being a Supreme Court Justice doesn't sound like he did too badly in the end . . . ) What is it in Thomas's life that is of ultimate concern? Is it his physical health that is of ultimate importance? His financial well-being? His happiness? His influence and impact upon others? His ethical choices? His self-awareness? What ultimately matters? If we knew that, we might be able to answer the question.

Because without answering what ultimately matters, then we are left with particular situations and events that weigh as being fair or unfair. How can we possibly extend such isolated circumstances into global statements about life as a whole? Even the great evils, suffering, pain and cruelty of this world leave us in the dark as to whether it is ultimately fair or not, for we don't have any context or understanding or criteria by which to judge such things.

Answer 4

You are correct in your statement that if the world were equally unfair to everyone, it would, in fact, be fair. But that also points out the flaw in your logic -- the world is by no stretch of the imagination equally fair, unfair, or anything else, to anyone. Is it fair that 5% of the world's population enjoys 90% of its wealth, for instance? Certainly not!

In response to your complaints about the injustice in the world, people will often answer with the worn-out cliche that "Nobody said the world had to be fair." My answer to them is, "Okay, so the world doesn't have to be fair, but why can't it be unfair in my favor for a change!"

Answer 5

Usually the response I get is that there's someone out there that's had it worse than you. Trouble comes when you've never met anyone that's admitted to it out in the open. So you know there are people who've had it worse than you but you have no proof of it in a way. It's a bit like when you say you believe that a trillion dollars exists but, more than likely, nobody's ever seen it in one place all at one time.

I think that sometimes it's fate and sometimes, crap just happens to some people.

Answer 6

The world is unfair------
Even though, biologically we(humans) are basically the same, everyone is born into different environments (physically, mentally, economically, etc.) Everyone life perspective is unique, molded from birth to the present.The world is not some Utopian universe, if it were Communism would work.

Answer 7

John Rawls was concerned with "fairness," and, after substantially revising his earlier work, concluded that some unfairness was perhaps inevitable in any real system of goverance. His concern was for social justice, egalitarian justice.

That "the world" is considered by some to be "fairly unfair to all" is a type of golden rule approach which Rawls also attempted to apply: the notion of each perspective being parsed per perceiving/understanding of all other significant perspectives "as if" they were of equal value and origin. This is a crux of Rawls' error: over time, certain individual efforts do add up, and when taken into account, simple "golden rule" egalitarianism doesn't necessarily produce justice for those who have earned, even in a presumed "equal start" system. This, along with individual preferences and goals, is a significant error at the base of a marxist notion of fairness, which Rawls' work approximated.

The notion of "no injustice in God' is a valid one, albeit less-provable to the materially-minded. With God's adjudication, all tears are wiped away.

With the presumption that God's influence is naught in the world, or simply that the focus is on conforming man's behavior to man's justness and accountability, there are therefore questions of "what is the good?" E.g., is it "fair" that water resources are allocated on the bases of e.g. farming, industry, first acquired rights, ability to pay, local residence, etc.

The answers to such framings will tend to circularly develop "what is good." If Jews or preborn humans are legally decided to be "subhuman," then certain acts against such groups are "legal," aka "good" or "fair."

Thus, per Saint Augustine's "City of God," and down through Karl Popper's "The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell," there is a simple inevitable incompleteness vis a vis developing a complete and consistent undergirding of numerical/quantitative values for e.g. "what happens when one individual spends his equally-acquired earnings on a new car, and another invests his earnings in a new business, hence perhaps compounding his wealth?"

It is an aspect of mathematical theory that a minority of individuals in any given system will tend over time to acquire more of the system's resources, whether the system is totalitarian, free-market, etc. Hence, redistribution per Rawls may be "fair" or "unfair," just as "redistribution" of two persons' behavior on a sunny day may be "fair" or "unfair"--one may choose to be happy, the other to ignore the opportunity to breathe deeply and be happy. Is it "fair" at the end of the day to require each to be equally "so-so"?

"Later Rawls" acknowledged this general tendency of humans to use same-beginning resources toward different ends, hence there is an unfairness of taking some types of labor rewards from some types of "honest laborers" in order to "achieve fairness."

In fine, the better answer for "fairness" is moral awareness of various types of suffering, lack, and need, their causes and cores, and moral awareness that "the ant and the grasshopper" are indeed types of human behavior. Sometimes charity to the grasshopper, but give the ant its due--a better type of citizen re sowing and reaping. When the grasshopper receives charity, it ought be incumbant upon the grasshopper to realize that the ant has given of its very essence and wealth, kindly, and that the grasshopper ought learn from the ant, as its behavior is in a sense unfair to the ant. Likewise, is it "fair" for the ant not to teach its type of behavior to the grasshopper, and for the grasshopper not to learn and apply it?

best regards,

j.

Answer 8

the world consists of a series of unrelated coincidences. whether something is fair or not is purely coincidental. it is not fair, because there is no logic behind it. fair implies that something is being done to create balance. balance just happens; when you flip a coin a hundred times, the results will usually be balanced. not because it is fair, but because statistically that is what will happen.

Answer 9

Fair means that things go your way, unfair means that things go against you. The world is neither fair nor unfair, it simply is.

Answer 10

It can be for some people.