Recently, a new friend was telling me about his road to university as a mature student who had experienced a difficult childhood. Because I am an optimist, I draw a lot of comfort or closure from “fair” story endings. Seeking that same comfort, I asked him if he thinks the skills he has learned from “enduring his childhood” have turned his childhood into a lesson of resilience.
He adjusted his sitting position, looked at me and said calmly: “there’s just pain”.
Given how much I enjoy hearing about people’s journeys, my belief that the world exists in balance (which I owe to the privleged vantage point I carry) makes listening to powerfully honest stories disruptive to how I see the world. So since that conversation, I have spent a considerable time contemplating how phases of our lives can be cosmically unfair. Is enduring difficult things without deserving hardship or having defined, constructive lessons to take away fair? Is life fair? Do humans understand deservingness (ie. is it possible that we could be wrong when we think we deserve or don’t deserve? Does deservingness operate on an individual, community or world level?)
Rose coloured glasses, optimism and privlege
I think that the metaphor for optimism of the “rose tinted glasses” means that optimism never referred to a state of mind. Rather, it referred to a mobility that is well demonstrated by the metaphor of glasses: on the wearer’s will, the glasses (optimism) can be added or taken away to change how we see and approach the world. Having this glasses metaphor makes me all the more empowered to admit that the month of April, for me, marks my one year anniversary being married to a feeling of failure. Ranging from “slightly” to “severely”, I have underperformed in almost every sphere of my life for 12 long months. I’ve seen my lowest university grades, weighed down my competition teams, angered supervisors, submitted poor work and grown apart from friends. Though I am familiar with the feeling of letting myself down, having the dissatisfaction originate from the outside world has taken a significant toll on my sense of self. Though I used to walk around the world with my rose-tinted glasses, having the glasses on meant seeing my world from a perspective that didn’t comport with what I was seeing or experiencing.
My new glasses-less perspective of this world has been like the splash of cold water I never wanted. Like a jolt, I feel like I have become aware of what always was, and was thus delusional stuck in a version of the world that has never existed. It made me feel foolish, ashamed of my privledge and wishing that I could become more “experienced at life” so that I could become the person who deserved to continue to speak to and share space with people who carry difficult truths. As someone who wants to word with marginalized communities, the fear that I will be the privileged person continuously out of touch with reality strikes me with a deep feeling of fear and shame.
Does what is “fair” come from a place of good?
Political philosopher John Rawls described what he conceptualized as a just and fair society, which could be achieved when every person in the world sat at a decision making table wearing a “veil of ignorance” that removed their sense of virtue, identity, position in society, values and beliefs. The ideas that everyone in the world would reach a consensus on shared principles in an impartial and unbiased manner, suggesting that there exists a universal understanding of what fairness looks like.
Rawl’s conception, however, doesn’t rest exactly on humans being instrinsicaly fair but selfish. It is a product of every human wanting to create a world where we have the most liberty we could possibly have, giving ourselves the best life possible. The veil of ignorance guarantees this; if, for example, the world was debating wether women should have fewer rights than others, our selfish concern that we might be women (which, wearing the veil of ignorance, you wouldn’t know if you were) would mean we would never agree to selectively oppress or treat others unequally. Under this logic, selfishness is the only universal truth and it is through selfishness that we derive all of the positive rights and freedoms we imagine we would have in an ideal world.
Does what is “fair” require equality?
Interestingly, Rawl’s world of equality relies on inequality in income. To me, he suggests that socio-economic inequality can be equated to and thus remedied by increasing quality of life. The remedy is refers to the difference principle, which Rawl argues is the belief that an ideal world would see society arranged in way that gives the greatest advantage to the least advantaged. This means two things: 1) that cross-income bracket comparisons of relative wealth differences would be replaced by assessing wether individuals in the lowest income-bracket were making the most amount of capital possible, and 2) that the poorest would have the highest quality of life, which would only be possible if we allowed wealth inequality.
Is cosmic fairness utilitarian?
Rawl seems to suggest the answer is no. He suggests that no matter how small of a proportion of people occupy the most disadvantaged stratas of society – racial, socio-economic, environmental, social – we will always be more fearful of being disadvantaged more than we will be concerned with building the best life for the most people. Our fear will mean we will always consider a world where we ourselves might be the rare unlucky ones, and thus we rationally would reject utilitarianism.
This suggests that a lack of civic engagement comes from an assumption that we are stable and secure in whatever position of society we occupy. The oppressor wouldn’t protest for increased access to rights/freedoms for the oppressed if they didn’t have a selfish interest (or fear) that they (or someone they care for) might be harmed.
Isn’t the world, then, fundamentally bad if we are self-interested?
Is self-interest bad? On a straightforward reading, I would say no. But actually, I think I’d say yes.
Take love in all of its forms, for example. One of the purest concepts that organisms have. Isn’t it self-serving? We love people because we develop a connection, an attachment to them. When we express love, we do it with the hope that the other will see, receive, appreciate and engage with it. And is that a bad thing?
I think my analysis could fall apart when we talk about sacrifice. When we do things we do not want to do, what interest do we serve? When we are driven by care or guilt, and it ultimately self-serving (to demonstrate your care or rid yourself of guilt).
But, I also think any tension we have with the idea that we are always self-serving might need to be done away with. Our most primal instincts are rooted in self interest. Hunting for food, need for community, desire for shelter, having a family. So much beauty comes out of self-interest.
With all of this in mind, I return to my one year anniversary of failure. It is fair? Maybe not. But, the world depends on unfairness for the good things we cherish the most. Though I detest how it makes me feel in the moment, I have faith that the fact of my disappointment is self-serving too. Maybe disappointment exists not as a tool to punish, but an emotional alarm bell. Maybe the way to make sense of the world – the privlege and the inequality – is to understand that it is all self-serving, and so as long as we are self-serving we can find a way. Rawl tells us that the answer to inequality doesn’t need to be, nor is it or can it be, power. It can be quality of life. What the privleged have in capital, they lack in purpose.
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