2012-366 Day 261 – Fairness

Through a series of random connected thoughts, I briefly considered the cousins of Justice and Fairness. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I realized that I am more concerned with Fairness than Justice, whereas had I just been asked the question randomly I am certain that I would have sided with Justice.

What’s that you say? Blogs are made for providing boring details? Fine, but you asked for it (and if you didn’t, you probably stopped reading right about . . . now). People know me know that my favorite superhero is, of course, Batman. Now this is for a variety of reasons, but the main ones being that a) he doesn’t have any inherent superpowers, just training, intellect, and money (although I would entertain arguments that money is a superpower, just look at what rich people can get away with nowadays), b) he’s the closest of any major superhero to a ninja, and I have a strong fondness for ninjas due to that being my team in high school church competition (ooh, I really should blog about that some day, but I’ll have to check on the statute of limitations on endangering minors), and c) his singular focus is in bringing justice to perpetrators. I, myself, have always felt a strong calling to justice, as in the past I have both qualified for the LAPD (but did not attend the academy due to a difference of opinion with my background officer, you know what, I’ll tell that story in a minute) and applied to the FBI (where I passed the initial test and was qualified for the interviews but was not called in the year window. This was toward the end of college with no experience, I think I would get further now).

The more I thought about it, however, I realized that my desire for justice was largely based in my ideals for fairness. The root cause, it seems to me, of injustice is that someone is behaving unfairly or has an unfair advantage. When a store is robbed, the criminals are taking the fairly won gains of one entity and unfairly transferring them to another. In my own life, where injustices are few and far between, I instead can get riled up when I perceive of situations that are unfair. I want to be on even footing when I take you on, as that gives me the best chance to prevail.

Now, one has to be careful about their definition of unfairness. When I spar against a black belt in karate, I do not perceive it as an unfair situation (I would, perhaps, concede that it is unbalanced), because my opponent has put much time and effort into achieving their rank. Should I put in similar time and effort, I should hope to have achieved a balanced playing field (and perhaps even have tilted the match up in my favor due to other conditions such as size and mental acuity). Unfairness, instead, results from when no amount of work or ingenuity will allow one to achieve an even playing field because the other party has seized improper advantages. By reserving the best advantages ahead of time and not making them available to everyone, those are the situations, from the nation level to the street level, which anger me the most.

I’m actually running out of time here, so the LAPD story will have to wait for another time (ooh, bonus blog material). I remain on the side of Justice, but realize now that I must remain vigilant for Unfairness as well, since it is the sneakier of the two qualities and one I am just as likely to be guilty of rather than a victim. As I said before, however, if you can gain an advantage through hard work and dedication, or just simple ability, then more power to you (and/or me).

Weight: 227 Loss: 13 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 294.7 miles (+3 miles)
Fitocracy Level: 25 ID: disciplev1