Theory

[dA]

"Fairness", in the way humans use the concept, is fundamentally unfair. Similarly, what humans mean by "unfairness" is the only way that fairness can be defined.

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=8203#8203

If anyone reading this thinks they can explain what the above means, start a new thread and do so. To make things interesting I promise to send a couple hundred euros to anyone who can nail it.

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=9603#9603

I don't think I can explain this for a couple hundred euros at this time, but my intention is that Icy won't mind parting with at least tenner because of this post.

But first, let's see what "fair" actually means. In Dutch we use the word "eerlijk", but it's not completely the same (it also stands for honesty and such, which isn't exactly the same from what I know). As far as I know, fair is mostly used in the sense that someone gets what he or she deserves: if you are the best in a competition, then you deserve to win.

When people scream "that's unfair!", it's mostly because they have a disadvantage that they cannot help. For example a deaf man that is caught by surprise in a fight, because he couldn't hear the other one approaching. Or in a fighting game, someone that uses one attack very effectively to defeat the other. Governments spend a lot of money on people that can't work or don't have the resources to learn, because they can't help being in that situation.

But that's not how nature/life works. It has no morals, it doesn't save somebody just because it's cute and without the necessary resources for survival. Flame burns wood, just like someone that's 1m80 that trains everyday beats someone that's 1m60 that only plays videogames. People have a certain body (and thus mind) that grants them certain possibilities. Sometimes they are in (for them) the right place, sometimes not. Life doesn't judge, it's blind, it's fair. The strongest in any given situation prevail, no exceptions of any kind. Humans use it the other way around, where people are given advantages all the time in the name of fairness.

[icycalm]

I am not going to make any comments of any kind. Each person gets one post. After a week I'll explain what I meant, and we'll see who got closer. Note that you really have to nail it for me to send you anything, lol.

[mees]

Might as well give it a shot! Sounds like fun.

Also, I apologize for any brashness of tone; it is only in an effort to not say "in my opinion" or "it seems" every sentence, since I am not at all certain in this matter.

"Fairness", in the way humans use the concept, is fundamentally unfair. Similarly, what humans mean by "unfairness" is the only way that fairness can be defined.

First of all: how do humans use the concept "fairness?" It is a quality of competitions. A competition is said to be fair if both sides COULD possibly win at the outset. If one side CANNOT win at the outset of the competition, it is "unfair."

However, this is not how reality works. Excepting instances of a draw, one side will win and the other will lose, depending on qualities that are usually too hard to determine without the competition (this is the entire point of competitions: to SHOW who is ALREADY stronger, although evolution is constant, and occurs throughout the course of the competition itself). To put it more clearly, one side is destined to win, and the apparent possibility of either side winning is an illusion created by our limited knowledge of the situation.

A competition is also said to be unfair if someone is cheating--breaking the rules. This is said because, although the judge initially had thought that the competition was fair (i.e. either side could win) there is now some additional amendment to the game, and he is uncertain whether or not the competition is still winnable by each side. Never mind that reality is contiguous, all games ultimately coalesce under the ultimate game, and therefore there is no cheating, the fact is: if a game CAN be "cheated," it is a fault of the judge for not securing the competition to his liking.

The best example of human abuse of the concept "fairness" I can think of at present is the situation in the United States. In the ostensible competition of capitalism, the first "rule" is: ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. Thus, it follows, all men ought to be able to win; they are all on equal footing--everything is fair. Obviously, this is not the case, but these tenets are always at the fore of the national consciousness. So, when the loser, trapped in his managerial position at Burger King, complains, we can say: "it is some laziness, some awful choice, some bad morals that have put you here. It is this invisible quality that we cannot see; who knows what it is? but it is your own fault, you COULD HAVE had it so much better if only you had TRIED HARDER, had followed the proper moral path, etc. etc. etc."

According to reality, it COULD NOT have been any other way! It is his cells and organs and atoms and the worlds' that put him in this position, and were positioned to put him in this position all along. It is then, according to the common definition UNFAIR.

And so, it is ACTUALLY, TRULY UNFAIR to say that the burger slave had a fair shot in the first place, since he didn't. Every competition has a victor at the start, and it's only a matter of time before he is revealed. And sometimes, in the interest of the false definition of "fairness," the would-be victor is robbed as rules are modified against his favor (see: affirmative action), but then... that's all a part of it too.

[icycalm]

PM me your Paypal details.

[icycalm]

In short, and in my second book I devote an entire section to this, "fairness" is basically a euphemism for the way a group of weak people gang up on a stronger individual, or groups of individuals, and thus gain the upper hand (and therefore deserve to gain it, since the "strong" person proves himself to not have been so strong after all -- or intelligent, which is the same thing -- since he was duped into believing all the "fairness" nonsense).

Here is a passage from the book:

OF JUSTICE

All that matters is the quantum of power you are: the rest is cowardice.
Nietzsche


What is Justice?

With one or two notable exceptions, which I will shortly mention, everything that has ever been said or written on the subject of Justice has been wrong, and all attempts to define the concept have been hilariously off the mark. Let us start over then.

So what is Justice then?

We might (though it would be a simplification of the exact processes that take place -- the end result is the same), observe that every single thing that comes into this world surveys the state of things, and -- as if by some kind of magic -- immediately falls into its appropriate place. This "appropriateness", this fall into the deserved place, represents the highest, the purest conception of justice. It is also the only logically consistent one.

But since the world is at every moment governed by a strict set of rules, and since everything that exists in it is entirely dominated by them, and unable to break them even in the slightest, it follows that -- at every single moment -- every single thing is exactly where and as it should be, and cannot do otherwise.

So, to ask the question again -- What is Justice? -- the correct answer would be, "The world."

I go on for quite a while, but this should be enough for now. And here are three fragments from Heraclitus which say the same things:


Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were not.
--Heraclitus

To a god all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.
--Heraclitus

We must realize that war is universal, and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.
--Heraclitus

[icycalm]

This is the closest Nietzsche came to explaining the concept of injustice:

Christian and anarchist. -- When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of declining strata of society, demands with righteous indignation "his rights," "justice," "equal rights," he is only acting under the influence of his want of culture, which prevents his understanding why he is really suffering -- in what respect he is impoverished, in life... A cause-creating drive is powerful within him: someone must be to blame for his feeling vile... His "righteous indignation" itself already does him good; every poor devil finds pleasure in scolding -- it gives him a little of the intoxication of power. Even complaining and wailing can give life a charm for the sake of which one endures it: there is a small dose of revenge in every complaint, one reproaches those who are different for one's feeling vile, sometimes even with one's being vile, as if they had perpetrated an injustice or possessed an impermissible privilege. "If I am canaille [a dog --icy], you ought to be so too": on the basis of this logic one makes revolutions. -- Complaining is never of any use: it comes from weakness. Whether one attributes one's feeling vile to others or to oneself -- the Socialist does the former, the Christian for example the latter -- makes no essential difference. What is common to both, and unworthy in both, is that someone has to be to blame for the fact that one suffers -- in short, that the sufferer prescribes for himself the honey of revenge as a medicine for his suffering. The objectives of this thirst for revenge as a source of pleasure vary according to circumstances: the sufferer finds occasion everywhere for cooling his petty revengefulness -- if he is a Christian, to say it again, he finds them in himself... The Christian and the anarchist -- both are décadents. -- And when the Christian condemns, calumniates and befouls the "world," he does so from the same instinct from which the Socialist worker condemns, calumniates and befouls society: even the "Last Judgement" is still the sweet consolation of revenge -- the revolution, such as the Socialist worker anticipates, only conceived of as somewhat more distant... Even the "Beyond" -- why a Beyond if not as a means of befouling the Here-and-Now?...

Twilight of the Idols

[icycalm]

Something else I meant to point out:

Life doesn't judge, it's blind, it's fair.

Life does judge -- indeed, life is the ultimate judge, and the harshest one of all. And that's why it's so extremely, unfailingly fair, to the point where it provides the only possible definition of fairness.

It's also far from blind -- indeed, it actually sees everything, which is why, unlike men, who are unfair by nature and cannot be otherwise (every human judgement is a false judgement), it can be so fair.