<p>I don’t expect life to be fair, but I generally live my life assuming the people around me are trying to be fair.</p>
<p>One’s personality type (Jungian psychology) affects how one views the concept of “fair”. Jung used the terms “thinkers” and “feelers” to identify the contrasting methods of making decisions/judgements. </p>
<p>Thinkers value “justice” and want - even need - life to be “fair”. Thinkers trust decisions made impersonally based on logic, objectivity, ethics and the concept of equality. </p>
<p>Feelers value “consensus” and “mercy”. They prefer subjectivity and feel more comfortable considering relationships, values, loyalty, etc. </p>
<p>BTW, most professionals acknowledge that one is born with their personality type. It is not a learned behavior. Whether one is a thinker/feeler has been shown to affect one’s religious beliefs. A “thinker” is more likely to question how there can be a “God” with all the “unfairness” in the world. A feeler does not want to associate such injustice with “God” and prefers to concentrate on a “God” that will be with you through such injustice. </p>
<p>Among those who “believe” - thinkers are much more comfortable with a God who makes a final judgment on one’s life’s. Feelers choose religions that emphasize a “personal relationship” with "God where all if forgiven if one “believes”.</p>
<p>Oh - and for the record - I do “expect” life to be “fair”. Like, emeraldkity4, I noticed injustice even as a young child. It still “hurts” each time I face an instance where "life isn’t “fair” and I do what I can to fight injustice whenever I encounter such.</p>
<p>That does not make me popular!</p>
<p>We had an ugly situation at school this year where my 14 yr. old learned at too young an age how unfair life can be. (the administration “ruled” in favor of an influential local family over us. $$ may have been involved as well.) We really didn’t want him to learn a lesson like that at his age. Unfortunately, it was out of our hands. He learned that we can’t always help him and fix things. I guess 14 is as good a time as any but we were as disillusioned as he’s been.</p>
<p>So chances are most people reading this right now are in the top 5%+ economically speaking, of the world. Why would anyone think the glass is anything but at least half full?<br>
Is life fair? No. It’s not. We are all on the receiving end of this.</p>
<p>I guess I WANT life to be fair, but I KNOW it isn’t.</p>
<p>I believe that I have received a grossly unfair amount of luck, privilege, and abundance since birth.</p>
<p>The way I was raised, that means I owe the world quite a bit.</p>
<p>Im thinking particularly along the lines of recent additions to the pet food recall and the info that melamine has been routinely added to the pet food.</p>
<p>I don’t think that life is going to be fair, but I also don’t expect that harm is going to be intentional</p>
<p>Here’s a thought. Link fairness to uniformity to equality to sameness to entropy to nothing. I guess we have to have inequality to have a functioning universe.</p>
<p>I remember as a young child saying, “that’s not fair!”. My mother’s response was always, “Life’s not fair.” I can still hear it in my head and I’ve repeated it to my kids many, many times. I was watching just a part of Blood Diamond with my very socially aware 13 year old and telling him how very lucky we were to live where we do. He agreed. I think it’s imperative that we realize how unfair life is so we can do what we can to help people that live an even “unfairer” life.</p>
<p>emeraldkitty, I remember being keenly aware of the unfair way girls were treated, at a very early age. I actually have a dim memory from when I was 4 or 5 of hearing the story of Adam and Eve and thinking it was preposterous to believe that man existed before woman, because woman was the one who had the babies. And on a hot summer day, I would take my t-shirt off and run around with the boys in my neighborhood, because I didn’t think it was fair that they could do that and I couldn’t. </p>
<p>It is important, I think, to be grateful for what one has, and as unfair as life can be, those of us who were born in this era in the developed world are tremendously lucky.</p>
<p>I guess I’d like to think I live my live trying to “be fair” about things. I can’t control what others do or value. All I can do is attempt the old “walk in the other man’s shoes” when I think about the fairness of a situation.</p>