Life IS fair.

I don’t think I am saying what I think you think I am. What I am saying is this:

Yes, the world is full of suffering. Yes, that sucks, and we humans can choose to try to make it less sucky for us all. I embrace that choice myself.

But I think people are mixing up fairness and goodness, and conflating what is deserved with what we desire.

All reality owes us is what it gives us. If a meteor falls out of the sky and kills me, the world wasn’t unfair in the slightest. That meteor went on a long journey to get to me, and at every turn it did nothing but obey the laws of physics.

Do I want a meteor to kill me? Absolutely not. Do I desire to live in a world where a meteor can randomly kill me? No, I would strongly prefer the world worked differently. Does the universe have an obligation to acknowledge and bend to my preferences? Not at all. Does it suck that the universe is such a pit of unhappiness? 100%. But is the world unfair?

All the world does is the same thing it has always done: follow the rules of reality. By definition. For us to call that unfair would be for us to claim the universe owes us more than it gives us, and it manifestly does not. Obviously.

This world IS fair – we just wish that it weren’t. We GOT a world that is fair. But what we REALLY wanted was one that was KIND.

Make sense?

Now, I’m of the opinion that yes, the world IS fair, but no, that’s insufficient. So we must strive to make the world better than merely fair. Fair is not enough. We need a world better than that. But it’s up to us to make that happen – if we choose to do what it will take to MAKE that happen.

So far, I see a whole lot of people giving lip service to doing what it takes, and most people doing little but complaining how unfair the universe is.

The thing is, if we EARN a better world, the universe is fair enough to give it to us – by definition. Because until we get a better world, we (again by definition) will not have done what it takes to earn it.

Quod erat demonstrandum.