Fair...

Just had a multi day discussion with someone on a friend's Facebook post about the complexities of gender. 

One of the things she kept saying was that it wasn't fair. It's not fair. That's not fair. Over and over.

Oh stop it...

When Katie was little and she would say something wasn't fair I would tell her, "The fair is where you ride rides and eat cotton candy, this is not the fair, this is life." 

Because life isn't fair. It's just not. 

And a lot of times when people cry NOT FAIR what they really want is something to have gone their way. Maybe they lost a game. That's not fair! But don't you think the person who won thinks it is? I mean, would it be fair to take that win away from them? 

I can remember once when the oldest daughter of our friends wanted to wrestle with me. But she wanted me to stand on my knees and only use one arm. Because it wouldn't be fair if I didn't. (she was like 5 or 6 at the time) I asked her, why should it be fair? She was the one who wants to wrestle with me. She knew how big I was. She kept saying it wasn't fair. And I told her that trying to make me lose wasn't fair to me. That she could decide to not want to wrestle me, after all it was her idea, but that I wasn't going to cheat to make her feel better. Because that's what it would be. Cheating in her favor. 

She did not appreciate my point of view. 

And then she was really mad at Katie because Katie wouldn't back her up. She thought that adults should let kids win. Katie was raised with the theory that if you are playing games, even with adults, you had to earn the win. 

Life is not fair. Don't make it harder on yourself by picking fights with bigger people.

Now some of you are thinking, wait, isn't this against your whole life and political philosophy? That we need to balance the scales? Feed the hungry, house the homeless? Tax the rich and pay for the social security net? I mean, you are looking for fairness right? 

Well, yes and no. I'm looking for an equal chance at thriving. I'd like basic needs for everyone to be met. I believe we live in a world that has abundant enough resources to take care of everyone. The fact that we have people living rough, people starving, people who have nothing, while at the same time we have billionaires means there is something wrong with the balance. You could call it unfair, and sometimes I do, but what it really is is immoral.

I think we should make sure that the baselines are covered. That there is food on the plate, a roof over head and medical care is available. Then from there you get to choose what more you want. And if you decide that there is never enough, that it's always just more, then I think society gets to say, okay, now we tax you at a very high rate. You don't get to hoard all of the resources while other people starve. That's immoral. 

There are always going to be people with more than other people. There are always going to be people who are motivated by that, by getting ahead. And there are people who are not. There are always going to be people who think they've done something incredible when what they did was get lucky enough to be born to parents with resources. And yeah, you can call that unfair. That unequal starting point. And I'd love to see that gap smoothed out. 

But it's never going to be complete fair if you define fair as everyone is exactly equal. Because we aren't. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have areas we excel without even trying and areas we struggle no matter how hard we try. But if you lose a game of one on one basketball to a WNBA player that's not unfair, that's just a bad choice in challenging her. 

And for the love of Pete stop screaming "it's not fair!" when what you really mean is "that didn't go the way I wanted!"

The last line in the book The Princess Bride is "...life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all." 

I'm not even sure if that's true. After all death is the only time we all end up completely equal, isn't it?

Life's not fair, but death is. Maybe that's what I'll start telling people. I bet it would bring a quicker end conversations where people are screaming about something not being fair.