“All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.” (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics)

“My little Pierre is now nearly five years old. He is quite a big boy. I used to wait with impatience for the time when I could take him with me and talk with him, opening his young mind, instilling into him the love of beauty and truth, and helping fashion for him so lofty a soul that the ugliness of life could not degrade it.” (Alfred Dreyfus, Five Years of My Life)

“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now.” (Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees)

“Can you speak, can you hear, can you see and read, where is your higher IQ? - Be bold to the world and say clear, YES or NO. Be free and set free; it is fairness.” (Ehsan Sehgal)

“For God shows no partiality.” (Rom. 2:11)

I fondly remember a soft-spoken monk in one of the monastic communities I have visited who has left a lasting impression on me. He was elderly and wise. He had earnt the right to be considered for the abbot’s position two previous times. On each of these occasions his nomination was dismissed in favour of younger and less experienced monastics. From the outside it was a plainly unfair decision. I asked him if this biased treatment against him wounded him in any way. He smiled and looked at me with the eyes of an owl which are noted for their depth perception. “It is their way of asking me questions,” he serenely said, “it would be unfair if I disappointed them and caused one to stumble.” Such conversations cannot be misplaced. [1] They are as precious as desert wildflowers. Later that evening during the vespers service:

“If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you.” (Ps. 129:5)

Is there fairness in the world? Or at least in our community? Something “fair” in the olden times was considered “pleasing to the sight”. Today we still say that the weather is fair. There is something attractive to this etymological transmission of the word. Nowadays, by fair we normally understand “free of bias and injustice”. Many people would claim there is more bias and injustice in the world than there is impartiality and justice. Even the shortest survey of recent history would appear to overwhelmingly support this position. “Being good is easy,” wrote Victor Hugo the author of Les Misérables, “what is difficult is being just.” Though surely there is charity and compassion in the world, consider our selfless frontline workers during the pandemic, we can add to the injustice even in our small neighbourhoods by engaging in practises of bias. Apposite to note the delicate but significant difference between the words ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’: “Justice should be defined as adherence to rules of conduct, whereas fairness should be defined as individuals’ moral evaluations of this conduct.”[2]

To treat someone unfairly, and particularly a young person, can prove terrible in many ways: blunting their dreams; lowering their self-esteem; and diminishing their promise. In what ways might we treat someone unfairly? Of course, there is discrimination bias based on how we look or what we believe in, that is, we can consciously [or sometimes even unconsciously] discriminate by placing people into perceptual stereotypes. This is to ignore the uniqueness and the many different qualities that the ‘other’ possesses in their presence and being. Then there is nepotism as well, the favouring of relatives or friends over others which can be practised in all strata of our society, but here it can be especially harmful when those discriminated against are our children. Other times, too, we can rob someone of their prospects by overlooking their claims to a promotion or an employment opportunity in favour of another who is less qualified. It is to become a deliberate obstacle in someone else’s ‘capability’. It can be thought of as an act of theft. We rob another of their potential, their ‘power’. Envy, revenge, or another of the passions, can also be a cause for our unfair treatment of another.

This is how I started on this little reflection, but as I was completing the last paragraphs I couldn’t much as I tried, get a recent image out of my mind. The pictures of those seven beautiful children killed in that drone attack gone horribly wrong in Kabul, Afghanistan. Initially described by Pentagon officials as a “righteous strike”.[3] Five of the children were five years or younger. Baby Aya was not yet two. It took me back to another unforgettable image which I also cannot erase from my memory. This was during the first Gulf War (1991). The then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was pictured celebrating his birthday, playing a guitar on the front page of a daily newspaper. Below on the same page was a picture of a young Iraqi boy. He had lost his limbs in another bombing gone ‘wrong’. What to say here on ‘fairness’? There are no adequate responses, but only as most sages have agreed and argued for in their respective works, long processes of reconciliation.

Of course, such emblematic instances as the two mentioned above, are too many, particularly from the 20th century. There would be no end to the examples, both before and after the Holocaust (the Shoah). Then there are the cancer wards where other children go. These are sufferings of another unalterable kind. The study of the writings of Primo Levi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Geoffrey Robertson, Paul Johnson, and Martha Minow are a good place to start to get a visceral image of these ever-present realities.[4] And so the remembrance of these universal and more vital things stopped me from continuing with the original purpose of this upload. It was to be some thoughts on the unfair treatment of a fine young man by a community of people he had once trusted from the times he was a little boy, and the lessons drawn from that heart-rending experience.

Yet here is the difference between the violent and indiscriminate taking away of a life, and in particular a young life which has not yet blossomed, to the ‘normal’ unfairness in the world which we ourselves might have experienced or have seen played out in the lives of others, including oftentimes our children. We are still alive, our young ones have the use of their limbs and the exercise of their imaginations, and if we live in the affluent places of the world, we have a warm bed, a roof over our heads, and in the evenings an excess of food on our tables. We can move on, looking forwards, knowing that doors will inevitably shut, but if we should only endure [sooner or later], others will open. The revered mystic and Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore has described it this way: “If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door- or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.” Greater things have very often been found on the other side of providence. Persecution of diverse kind has been overcome and restoration has come to the wronged. Ultimately, if we are to measure fairness by any rule, we will all leave the world having experienced unfairness one way or another and lived through its sharp irony and stinging pain. It hurts to feel you have not been valued. It is a basic human need. Yet, it is also a well-known fact, resentment and vengeance only build up anger and bad decision-making. Outside any religious paradigms, numerous studies have found that forgiveness which can be “practised” and “cultivated”, and does not mean to condone the wrongdoing, has a long list of positive effects.[5]

There is fairness only in death. It cares nothing for our name and accomplishments. Our reputations have nil effect. It has no interest in our religion nor in our creeds. “Death is the fairest thing in the world” writes Svetlana Aleksievich the author of Voices from Chernobyl,[6] “[n]o one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone.” The Book of Ecclesiastes and the ‘eight worldly dharmas’ considered in Buddhism, have a great deal to say on the weight, and the ultimate futility, of putting too much credence into life’s self-centred preoccupations or allowing ourselves to be defined by others. In the meantime without sugar-coating reality, we allow for the excitement of new opportunities. The anticipation of emboldening challenges when we have been “shut out”. Perspective always remains a tremendous help.

Postscript The young man who inspired this post in the first place is doing well. Away from the football field he is enjoying the piano.

[1] This little but telling exchange is from a much longer conversation which took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, one Saturday afternoon and is here paraphrased.
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.1956

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html

[4] Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, (Beacon Press: Boston, 1998).

[5] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/forgiveness/definition

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848

Journal

Fairness is Pleasing to the Sight