"Life isn't fair."

[Mythsaje]

My Dad used to say this all the time when I was younger, when I'd bitch about something not being fair. I'm sure most of us have heard it a time or two.

It took me a long time to develop a good response to that statement, but I finally came up with one.

See, nature is neither fair nor unfair. It simply is. But the reason OUR lives are unfair is that people are unfair, and they've learned to hide behind this axiom as if it had some sort of natural truth.

People cloak themselves in this bit of conventional "wisdom" when they want to blow someone off. Don't get a living wage. Well, life isn't fair. Can't get affordable healthcare? Too bad, so sad, life isn't fair. Weren't born with a silver spoon, fork, and butter knife in one's mouth? Well, you know, life isn't fair.

There's a certain viciousness to the sentiment, a certain self-satisfied smugness. "I've got mine and I don't give a rat's ass if you get anything at all."

Maybe that's where we liberals are screwed up. We don't buy into that "life isn't fair" crap. Or, rather, we've somehow decided that the fact that isn't fair by nature means WE have to struggle to be more fair ourselves.

Okay...not all of us. Some people are just assholes and too self-absorbed to care whether or not they're treating others right. It's not EXCLUSIVELY a Republican stance, after all, as much as we'd like to think it is.

So here's to believing in fairness. :toast:

Some may say I'm a dreamer...

:D

[B Calm]

1. This is why I believe in Unions..

[Gormy Cuss]

2. Life isn't fair

and I agree that the good response is to try to do our best to make it as fair as possible.

Some may say I'm a dreamer...
but you're not the only one.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

3. Hear Hear Mythsaje!!!!!

:toast:

[patdem]

4. Yeah, I hear...'Fair is where you take pigs to show'...

like the county fair...the only 'fair' around..but I agree..once we 'believe' the crap the overseers put out...the better slaves we become.

[Extend a Hand]

5. Life isn't fair

I don't think the sentiment "life isn't fair" indicates a vicious world view. I think the misguided belief that life *IS* fair perpetuates the arrogant world view that says the poor must "pull themselves up by the bootstraps." All over the world children are born that will not get enough to eat, women are treated by the law as property, institutionalize racism limits opportunity. To treat people fairly you have to realize that life isn't fair...those people born into a place where life can be more than a struggle for survival are just LUCKY== not better than those "lazy poor people"

[Rosemary2205]

6. I'm a liberal BECAUSE I believe life isn't fair.

As a liberal, it's my responsibility to convince the people who got all the good breaks in life to help the people who can't catch a break with a butterfly net.

IMHO if life was fair there would be no need for liberals.

[whistle]

7. Life is hard and then we die....

Work hard; increase production; prevent accidents, and be happy. -Voice THX 1138

Change or die -- IBM

'It's Immaterial: Life's Hard And Then You Die'. Virgin Mega-stores

Life is hard when you're in your 20s -- BBC News

Old habits die hard. -- the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Get the picture? So....

In the world you have trouble and suffering....
...but take courage--I have conquered the world.

For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared
to the glory that will be revealed to us.

...we hope for what we do not see,
we eagerly wait for it with endurance. -- Anonymous

P.S. on edit: That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.

[Sinti]

8. So here's to believing in fairness!

Life should be a lot more fair than it is :)

:toast: :beer:

[FUGW]

9. It isn't fair but we can try to make it equal.

The way it is now if you have money you don't have to do any thing for the society but spend it. If you don't have money you can't do enough to earn your place.