Fairness

Fairness is such a peculiar concept. Most of us (maybe all) have strong feelings about the importance of fairness. When we're children "being fair" means that the same rules apply to all players, that there is no "privileged position". Sometimes being fair means that we should all share equally. When children argue about being fair, they always mean that someone else is getting more than they are. They NEVER protest that they are getting too much. Of course, we do much the same today. If the goods were "fairly" (i.e. "equally") distributed among all the world's population, most of the middle and upper socioeconomic classes would have a good deal less than they now do. So when we talk about wanting things to be fair, we don't really want an equitable distribution of the world's goods and services.

The other way in which we use the concept of "fairness" is in regard to the way in which "good behavior" is rewarded. In all cultures this issue has been a struggle. It is obvious that there is no relationship between moral values and rewards or punishments. Good guys have bad things happen; bad guys have good things happen; both are essentially random. We do not wish the world to operate that way. We insist that there is a logic in what happens to us.

To account for the unpredictability and irrationality of events, we invent arbitrary gods who war with one another and with men. Then we invent ceremonies to placate the gods in order to induce them to be more fair, or at least to give us more while punishing our enemies. When we give up hope for fairness, we imagine the god(s) are simply abusers of power or even worse are simply uninterested in the affairs of men, and we resign ourselves to endure unfairness.

In Buddhism (Theravada Buddhism) and some other related religions the arbitrary and unfair nature of the world is accounted for by "karma", which, by assuming that we have a cosmic account from other past lives, imposes a sort of fairness on the present. If something really bad happens to me that doesn't seem fair, then it is because I did something bad in an earlier life for which I am being punished, and the universe is fair after all.

In the Old Testament we observe a god who punishes unbelievers and rewards according to whim. In Christianity we are offered a life in another world after death in which the good are rewarded and the evil punished. Somehow the idea that there is a god who is a perfect accountant and balancer of the scales has endured across the ages and cultures. But the knowledge that this world isn't fair is unavoidable. We won't accept that, so we invent systems which are (at the least) pretty unlikely in order to make things seem more acceptable.

None of us seem to like the idea that the Universe simply grinds on according to its laws and with no regard for important us. Doesn't everything really have a meaning?