Yes, and every County has one. My Mother said this often and even offered to show us where it would happen. Any time we would grouse about things that did not go our way, she would remind us that life is not fair. Fairness is a contrivance of humanity. Nature is inherently unfair. The animal born with a deformity, who cannot run as fast or jump as high gets eaten by predators. Please do not give me the line that humanity has evolved past this point. I don't need socialist platitudes spoiling this rant. Try being in HR and going a day without someone wanting you to wave a magic wand of self satisfying fairness for them. There is a total lack of understanding that true fairness is clinical and impersonal. In Orwell's 1984, he makes an effort to point out that we must all become our lowest common denominator to make way for the brutal consistency required to be fair. Interestingly, rugged individualism is a daily staple of American behavior, until some entitlement driven "individual" doesn't get their way. We have abandoned the notion that we each bear the responsibility to respond to our environment and be self aware. When things aren't going our way, the appropriate response would be self reflection and planned action. Philosophers and belief systems focus on these behaviors as the means to peace and happiness. This rant ends with the simple reminder that it isn't all about you or me. It's about what we do to figure it out without expecting everyone to be exactly the same. Remember fair is an event. Life is messy and ongoing.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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I was part of a PTA conversation at my daughter's school where renovations and improvements to the physical facilities were the topic du jour. It was interesting to notice how many "adults" were hollering about "that's not fair" type of stuff.
ReplyDeleteAfter a while, I was able to speak to the topic at hand and assert that "fair" was probably not the word to use, but that "parity" was a better fit. As you can imagine, this became amusing due to the arguments for "fair" and the ones who wanted to engage in semantics that "parity" meant fair/ equal.
Thankfully, when the topic at hand actually occurred, my child was no longer at that school and I didn't have to cope with 2 yr. olds in the bodies of supposed adults over age 30.
Many thanks for letting me share my thoughts.