I was giving some thought yesterday to what is fair. I think that pretty much everyone believes that they understand fairness, and they do, but only from their perspective. It occurred to me that there is no absolute definition of what is fair. We each have our own perspective on it.
Last year, or maybe the year before, I don’t exactly remember, there was an incident in professional baseball involving Derek Jeter. A pitch had come inside on him. He started shaking his hand as if he had been hit and umpire sent him to first base. On the slow motion replay it was clear that he had not been hit and had faked it. A lot of people called him a cheater. His comment was, “Hey, it’s part of the game.” I agree with him. Others, no doubt agree with his detractors. Which is fair? Which is right? It all depends on your perspective and your sense of fair play.
Let consider for a moment the United States Tax Code. Is it fair? I think we can universally agree that it is not fair. Now, what about it is unfair? On that question I think we’re going to find a few differences of opinion. In this case, your sense of fairness depends on so many factors that you probably can’t even isolate all of them. How much money you make comes into the equation, but it’s nowhere near the biggest factor in how you view the fairness of the tax system.
Every time a situation comes up where fairness is a question, I think that most people believe that they are being 100% reasonable. It’s hard to imagine how someone else could have such a skewed vision of things. They must be crazy to think that something that is so obviously unfair could be acceptable. We all have to remember that we are each looking at the prism from a different angle. The patterns of fairness that are reflected are unique for each of us. Try to understand the other point of view. Try to look at the situation from their perspective. You probably still won’t agree, but it may help you not be quite so aghast at how unfair they’re being.
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