IT’S NOT FAIR!
REFLECTIONS ON FAIRNESS
BY DR. NURIT ISRAELI
“The world isn’t fair, Calvin.’
‘I know Dad, but why isn’t it ever unfair in
my favor?’”
– Bill Watterson
– What does fairness mean to you?
– Has life been fair to you? How and when
has life been fair?
– When is the last time you thought: “Life
isn’t fair”?
– If life is unfair, should we still try to be fair?
– How can we increase our chances of
being fair?
I vividly remember my children, on differ-ent
occasions throughout their childhood,
proclaiming “it’s not fair,” when encountering
situations that did not comply with their sense
of justice. I remember struggling to respond to
their protests over unfairness. Should I tell them
they are right? That life often does not comply
with our sense of right and wrong? That people
often don’t get what they deserve? That all too
often bad behavior is not punished? That good
behavior is not always rewarded? That we just
have to deal with it? That we should still try to be
as fair as we possibly can be in our interactions
with others? How can we raise our children with
a vision of fairness, while helping them integrate
the reality that life is often unfair?
A powerful memory has stayed with me since
visiting Tanzania’s Serengeti Park: lions chasing
and capturing a beautiful gazelle, ready to turn
her into their next meal. I was overwhelmed by
witnessing first-hand how, in the animal king-dom,
our fairness principles often do not apply.
The Serengeti ecosystem has a great variety of
scavenging predators: lions, leopards, hyenas
and African wild dogs known for being – by our
moral codes – cunning, stealthy, and vicious.
The interactions between predators and prey
were painful to watch (yet I found comfort in
witnessing phenomenal displays of coopera-tion
among some animal groups – for example,
cooperative behaviors among the elephants were
remarkable).
How about us, humans? Well, in all fairness,
life is often fair: people often do get a fair trial,
play fair, and receive a fair (or fair enough) share
of life’s goodness. In fact, when life treats us
fairly, we tend to take it for granted. When good
things happen, we rarely ask, “why me?” But,
admittedly, all too often life is unfair in ways
beyond our comprehension. In one form or
another, most of us have survived some man-ifestations
of unfairness. People all too often
meet fates which they do not deserve (or receive
rewards they haven’t earned). There is no good
explanation for why suffering befalls people so
capriciously and so unpredictably.
The biblical book of Job is an example of a
tale of suffering that appears – according to our
standards – unfair. Job is righteous, pious, and
exceptionally blessed. For no apparent reason,
everything is taken away from him: his posses-sions,
his family, his health, and his dignity. He
seems to be suffering unfairly. Chapter after
chapter, he laments his losses – expressing his
frustration, his despair, and his inability to com-prehend.
Perhaps there are inscrutable rules of
the world to which we are not privy, but still –
whenever I read the story of Job, I feel relieved
as I reach the ending. The ending of this story
of human suffering is good: Job’s good fortune
is restored several fold...
But this is not always the case. The current
pandemic brings to the forefront the inherent
unfairness of the human condition. The world
during the COVID-19 era is often an unjust
place. Suffering is distributed randomly: Why
do some people get sick, even though they took
all the necessary precautions, and others, less
careful, escape? Why do some have barely any
symptoms and others become gravely ill? Why
do some survive and others do not?
“And who ever said the world was fair?”
American novelist Tom Robbins wondered. His
conclusion: “We must accept the unfairness
as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the
capricious music of the universe – and go on
about our tasks.”
And Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “out of ran-dom
suffering and chaos that can mark human
life, the life artist sees or creates a symphony
of meaning and order.”
How can we best deal with the unfairness
which is, unfortunately, an inevitable part of
the human condition?
I reread Albert Camus’ masterful novel, The
Plague, looking for answers. This remarkably
relevant novel, published in 1947, tells about
a virus, transmitted from animals to humans,
which spreads uncontrollably and ends up
destroying half the population of an ordinary
French-Algerian town called Oran. “The plague
had swallowed up everything and everyone,”
Camus writes matter-of-factly. The story empha-sizes
the powerlessness of the characters to con-trol
their destinies. One of the messages is that
all humans are vulnerable to being randomly hit
by some disaster or another at any time. There
is no escape from our susceptibility. No one is
16 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ October 2020