If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’From an old poem by Rudyard Kipling you need to read. The idea of fairness isn't as broken as our sense of "what really matters" that has been broken by our reckless chase for "rewards" as you have clearly stated. Another guy you might appreciate in your understanding of fairness and justice would be Alain de Botton's A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success (on TED).Maybe your essay was meant to unlock someone's potential to do more in life. But without thought and compassion for others, to quote you, "for squat"?
From the school yard to the workplace, there’s no charge more damning than “You’re being unfair!” Born out of democracy and raised in open markets, fairness has become our de facto modern creed. The very symbol of American ethics—Lady Justice—wears a blindfold as she weighs the law on her impartial scale.In this election season, politicians will be falling over themselves to assert their “fairness cred.” And each side of the partisan debate will be using the word differently -conservatives will mean “meritocratic rewards” when they speak of fairness, and liberals will mean “equality.”
But of course life isn’t fair, no matter what your political lean, and we might be expecting too much from reality. In our zealous pursuit of fairness, we have banished our urges to like one person more than another, one thing over another, hiding them away as dirty secrets of our humanity.Since social life isn’t really fair, why go on pretending it is? Wouldn’t we be better off with an ethics that acknowledges the stubborn facts of inequity, bias, and partiality? I think it would be wiser if we showed our unfair tendencies a little more kindness—indeed, if we favored favoritism.Moreover, the cosmos itself doesn’t seem much interested in fairness. Nature, after all, is “red in tooth and claw” as Tennyson suggested and Darwin confirmed. Does the predator-prey rule-book seem fair? Wildebeest get to eat grass, for example, but practically everything else on the Serengeti (e.g., hyena, lion, cheetah, crocodile, leopard) get to eat them.Not only is biology a grudging miser when it comes to adaptive powers (e.g., I’m slow, can’t fly, and lack claws and fangs), but it also created a highly unfair sexual division of labor. My son was born, after his mother pushed heroically for 24 hours, while I (and most other men) went to the nearby ice machine to fetch her ice chips to chew on. By what stretch of the imagination does that look fair?So, in hopes that we become more clear-eyed about reality, here are 9 ways that life is undeniably unfair (and notice that a couple of them are actually quite positive). Thank you and Godbless!