Thoughts on justice, fairness and equality

Some thoughts on "fairness"

"Unfairness" generally refers to the sense of people getting more or less than they deserve.  And indeed, life isn't fair, and a certain amount of unfairness is unavoidable, e.g. some events have a large element of unavoidable random chance, which will result in more favourable outcomes for some than for others.  Sometimes, "fairness" can also be a complex issue, where depending on how one perceives justice, trying to be "fair" in one way can end up being "unfair" in other ways.

But we have a common problem where many people use "Life isn't fair" as an excuse to justify being awful to each other.  Or, being awful to each other with the aim of "teaching" them to realise that life isn't fair.  Or, justifying keeping unjust rules and double standards in place- if the rules are unfair, tough, life isn't fair.  The mentality is, "Life will never be fair, so therefore it isn't worth trying to make it any better than it already is."  There is a mentality that "looking on the bright side of life" is about trivializing injustices, not letting them get to you, and being thankful for the good things that you have, but the downside of that way of thinking is that we become reluctant to support positive change, preferring to make do with less.

No, the fact that life is unfair should be a wake-up call.  There are always going to be unavoidable situations where we get less than we deserve, so why add to the problem by actively creating avoidable ones, and hiding behind "Life isn't fair" to justify keeping them in place?  We don't need to create injustices of our own to teach people that life is unfair- there are enough unavoidable injustices in life to refer to as examples of why we have to accept that life is unfair.  Positive thinking should be about striving to make life as "fair" as we can reasonably make it, creating as many positives as we can to offset the inevitable challenges that life is going to throw at us, and focusing on those positives.

The key part of my manifesto on justice is the following argument:

People should generally be rewarded according to the extent to which they contribute positively to society, the effort that they put in, and the extent of their positive intentions.

Not only does this ensure that people who make positive contributions are rewarded the most, it also provides people with a strong incentive to contribute positively, because if you do, chances are, it will pay off and you will get positive recognition and rewards for it.