Is Life Fair?

Posted on by Endless Weekend

Remember when we pondered if we Are We Wired for Fairness, with a surprising video showing… an unexpected story? (No point in ruining the surprise… It wouldn’t be fair :D) It came to mind when Esoterica brought up in a discussion of What Do We Have to Lose that bad things are going to happen, and that, clearly is true. But with this month’s theme of resilience it made me wonder: is life fair?

The Dread Pirate Roberts commented on the question of what is life in the movie The Princess Bride, and the wonderful clip is to your right.

And while the quote, and the entire clip, and the entire movie are splendid, I’m not sure they satisfactorily answer the question of whether or not life is fair. The other set of life lessons that immediately sprang to mind came from Baz Luhrman, who admittedly says that “the rest of my advice has no more basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.” And after years of not hearing it, it’s still fantastic, with lines like “remember compliments you receive, forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.” It’s longer, but even a partial listen will be worth your time, even if you’ve heard it in the past. And it comes with the lyrics embedded in it: “be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone”…

And three marvelous videos later, each in its own way, do you feel any closer to an answer? I’m still pondering that question, and even what fairness is. According to a survey from 2021, a third of Americans polled think life is fair. Almost half think it’s not fair. Oscar Wilde, in the quote to the right, practically felt it was mostly fair that life wasn’t fair… And I sometimes wonder, fair compared to what? Is fairness a relative term?

What do you think? Is life fair? Are we wired to desire fairness?

For more on this, on other questions, and hopefully some answers, too, visit Endless Weekend.

41 thoughts on “Is Life Fair?”

  1. Clarence Darrow, the famous criminal defence attorney, said, “There is no justice in or out of court.”

    I am inclined to think our primitive ancestors preferred to believe they had agency over what happened to them. This would have been more hopeful than to think they were at the mercy of chance or the dangers of the world. To the extent this made them more likely to survive, it would also have increased the survival rate of their children. If this is true, we are more likely to carry their genes.

    The expectation of a relatively just world would follow from their belief in their agency to make it so. In other words, their belief that the world rewarded their actions enabled their survival overall. Of course, that does not make the world just, but only enables an increased chance of producing offspring and the survival of the people whose genes we carry.

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    1. What a fantastically insightful observation, Gerald! I once saw a comparison of how ancient rites developed in places like Mesopotamia where flooding of the rivers, the lifelines, was unpredictable… and deadly. The ancient inhabitants of those places sought to gain agency, like you said, by creating ways to “divine the future”, and they developed astrology to help them with that. Places in ancient China that shared a similar unpredictability in river flooding created similar divination methods.

      But places like Egypt, that had an extremely predictable river flooding schedule, did not go down that path, and that predictability had them focus on cycles: day/night, annual flooding, life/death.

      Thank you for a mind-broadening observation, Gerald!

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  2. I like Dr. Stein’s thoughts about agency…and the whole of your post, EW, which causes me to think, think, think. Maybe the ability to contemplate “fairness” is a function of power and agency, status and resources? Is it a luxury to be in a position to consider what’s fair and just and what’s not? I hadn’t considered the subtleties of survival, awareness of nature, inherited traits.
    I think I’m gonna mull a little more. 😉 I’m not sure I know how to answer your good questions…other than recognizing the privileges (some earned, some not) that I have in this life (food, shelter, health). 💕

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    1. That’s a hugely intriguing proposition, Vicki! If the monkey was hungry, would he have rejected the cucumber reward this easily? That’s a really great question, I wonder if the researchers had any insights on that!

      Thank you for shining a light on this interesting line of inquiry!

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  3. Life is not fair. Fair is not the same thing as equal or equal opportunity. Some people are going to undeservedly get crappy breaks, while some scumbags are going to have things go their way. Fair is an overused term

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    1. You’re bringing up a terrific point, we need to be clear about terminology. I love the Socrates quote “the beginning of wisdom is in the definition of terms.” I’m not saying it’s easy, but you’re right, how do we agree if something is “fair” if we don’t know what fair is?

      The video I mentioned first, that shows how animals seem to have some sort of innate drive to “fairness” or, in that case, for the same compensation for the same work, boggled my mind. Is it possible to define fairness, you think?

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      1. I think fair is more about not cheating…playing by the rules, and not giving yourself an unfair advantage. Like, if you lie n your resume and someone else is truthful, you weren’t being fair to either the institution or the competition. But as we are all unique individuals with different skill sets, how can anything ever be fair? If I am an exceptional at hopscotch, just a natural ability and body type, whatever, no matter how hard someone tries, they may never beat me

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      2. That’s really interesting! In the case of the experiment on the monkeys do you think the folks who fed the different monkeys different foods were being unfair? How about the monkey that got fed the upgraded grapes and ignored the other monkey with the non-upgraded food, was it being fair or unfair?

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  4. Fairness is such a complex topic, and after reading your post and the comments I’m even less sure of the answer to your question. So much food for though, EW–I’ll be thinking about this all day.

    In theory, most have equal access to the tools necessary to succeed in life if they just take some initiative and put in the work. (Several people close to me work at non-profits across the US specifically aimed at providing this access boost to low-income, elderly, and disabled folks, so it exists and it widely utilized.) Yet, as Vicki mentions, that doesn’t take into account debilitating bad luck. Seeing how pervasive envy is, I believe most people desire fairness, yet I think few could actually define what fairness looks like because we all have different tools at our disposal and different desires in life. Is fairness equal income via UBI while AI does all the work? It is acceptance criteria goalposts independent of merit? Or is reward equal to one’s output?

    My inclination is to agree with Dr. Stein. I believe that personal agency is power. In my own life, I was dealt an “unfair” hand, but found a way to play it without losing out too terribly. If I’m being perfectly honest, I feel as if discussion of fairness, equality, and equity steal away an individual’s personal agency and encourages them to look toward some other entity for saving. That’s not to say that some people are not being taken advantage of or screwed over, but they do often have more power than they give themselves credit for, and thus give up without even trying to level the playing field.

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    1. It’s definite a complex topic, and I would love to hear what you conclude about it. In the meantime, I’m curious: what did you think about the situation in the first video, the one showing how 2 monkeys were compensated for the same “work” and then one got different “compensation.” Was that fair? Why would the second monkey who was satisfied with its compensation change its attitude when the first monkey got a different compensation? Do monkeys have an innate sense of … of what?

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      1. You always ask the best, most provocative questions, EW! It’s clear the monkey receiving cucumbers felt the situation to be unfair, which leads me to the thought that perhaps any perception of “fairness” hinges on social comparison. Had the separator been solid metal rather than glass, the first monkey likely would have remained content with the cucumbers. The little guy went as far as to confirm the solid ‘rockness’ of his offering, to confirm equal effort in return for unequal reward. Teddy Roosevelt famously said that “comparison is the thief of joy” and, while difficult in practice, I think the perception of fairness depends on removing others from the equation and asking, quite simply, “am I content?” I suspect many feel life to be good until the see someone who has things better.

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      2. Thank you so much, Erin! It’s interesting that the monkey that continued to receive the cucumbers felt the situation was unfair, it’s also interesting that the monkey receiving the grapes didn’t feel that way 😁

        Do you think that there are positives to comparison, too? The cucumber-only-monkey doubled checked his pebble/quality of his work, so that’s good. And I’m wondering, would Michael Phelps have broken all those records if he didn’t have them to compare himself to?

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      3. It’s interesting–I think comparison can lead to either motivation or discouragement, depending on how we frame it. I believe out gut reaction is to perceive unfairness, but that we can train ourselves to use positive or negative external stimuli to push ourselves toward our desired outcome. I suppose, like anything, comparison is a tool that can be used or good or for harm.

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  5. What a deep concept — fairness. I think it’s individual. Some people think life is fair and they try to be fair to others. Other people feel like they’ve gotten the brunt of the stick and are pessimists.

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    1. You’re absolutely right, it’s a deep and complex concept. What boggles my mind is what’s depicted in the first video I mentioned about fairness: the one that shows how animals seem to have some sort of innate drive to “fairness.” That video shows their natural inclination to seek the same compensation for the same work, and that boggled my mind. Is it possible to define fairness, do you think? Do you think that seeking whatever-fairness-is is a natural inclination creatures have?

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      2. I think Ted Lasso would have called this a “truth bomb”!

        And now you have me thinking: did the monkey that received the upgraded reward (grapes) seem to find any unfairness in the situation?

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  6. I love this post! Princess Bride is such a great movie. I think the question “is life fair?” is such a good one to tease out what our underlying assumptions and attitudes are. In what timeframe are we talking about? And as Dr. Stein suggests, what is my part in it? Compared to whom?

    For me, I assume that every effort I put forth will take me somewhere. Maybe I’ll succeed, maybe I’ll fail – but I certainly will learn something. And then life looks fair because we all have the opportunity to try and to learn…but that’s probably the only way that I think life is fair.

    Great question, EW. What’s your answer?

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    1. Thank you so much, Wynne! One of the questions is “what is fairness.” It’s immensely difficult to define “simple” terms like a “chair”, is it something we sit on? What if we stand on it? Is it a ladder then? And yet we “know” what a chair is when we see it… at least most of the time 🙃

      So when it comes to defining a complex concept like fairness, do we also know it when we see it? In the first video I mentioned, it shows how animals seem to have some sort of innate drive to “fairness.” Specifically in that video, for the same compensation for the same work. It boggled my mind. Do these animals have an innate sense of “fairness”? Is it possible to define fairness, do you think?

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      1. It does boggle my mind too about the animals – and how easily my kids understand some concept about unfairness. Usually that someone else gets to do/have/try something that they don’t and they cry it without thinking through whether it is something they really want or are developmentally ready for.

        But I’ve always loved this paragraph from Mark Nepo in the Book of Awakening, “I know now that, over the years, my own cries that life is unfair have come from the inescapable pain of living, and these cries, while understandable, have always diverted me from feeling my way through the pain of my breakage into the re-formation of my life. Somehow, crying “unfair” has always kept me stuck in what hurts.”

        I think beings are quick to have a concept of fairness, there must be something instinctive about it. But I think Mark Nepo is right – crying unfair keeps us stuck in what hurts.

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      2. That is a terrific distinction in what kids spot as being unfair! I wonder what it’s implications are!

        I’m not familiar with Nepo’s work, thank you for sharing! Do you think there’s only negative in spotting and thinking about what’s unfair/fair, or are there any possible positives, too?

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      3. Wow – you are so good at driving my thinking deeper. Maybe positives around feeling things are unfair are working for equality? No doubt it is a powerful motivator! What do you think?

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  7. Chuckling over the monkey experiment!! Clearly that cucumber guy was having a really bad day. I wonder if he ever just resigned himself to his lot in life and took himself off to the corner of the cage basically saying FU to the researchers and not playing the game anymore?

    Is that what humans do when they feel they have been treated unfairly? Kids certainly do and are great at dramatically pouting about it just as I imagine that monkey doing. Does that mean that as we grow and age and experience life we come to understand that fairness isn’t real, that someone is almost always going to have an advantage? It may be us, it may be someone else, but in our society as it works right now equity, equality and fairness doesn’t exist.

    I like the Oscar Wilde quote. If life was fair always would humans even try to better themselves? Is fairness aligned with diversity in our culture and would we all be exactly the same in our views and behaviors if life in every respect was fair? What is there to strive for and does striving make us stronger, and more importantly better as humans?

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  8. Great conversation. When I was little, I used to complain all the time that life wasn’t fair. My mother is pretty devout and she used to always challenge me. She would force me to look at timeframes. Maybe it wasn’t fair in the span of the game, but maybe it worked things worked out over the span of a season or over years. I never liked her answer, because my complaint usually had something to do with something my brothers had just done, but I see now that fairness, justice, equity can not be stand alone words. You need to know the bigger picture surrounding them. Yes, my long answer of saying, life is not fair. 🙂 🙂 🙂

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    1. It IS a juicy topic, and you are awesome for choosing to rise above the life circumstances you faced! Thank you for sharing!

      May I ask what your thoughts are after having seen the first video, that shows how the monkey reacted to “unfair” compensation for his “work”? The same behavior, those researchers shared, was exhibited but other species. Do you think it’s possible that “fairness” in an evolutionary trait in living things?

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      1. Having seen the video of the monkey and knowing what I know about my own consciousness, I’d say that yes, absolutely, fairness is an evolutionary trait. It ultimately serves to create more equity.

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      3. I believe because it’s probably genetic, it is also cultural. It becomes part of our culture. As someone who is engaged in personal healing, I’ve seen that certain concepts like fairness are part and parcel of being a human being. They become developmentally wired into us as survival mechanisms (we need each other to survive). And can be healed (the emotional charge becomes dissolved). ❤️🙏🏻

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