> I don't know what to think of this book. It > is touching on a real problem but some > solutions may create worse problems. For starters > we may want to define "fairness".
Ok, this one grabbed me. Why? Because I frequently hear, in response to some point I may be making when I think I have having a conversation with an intelligent other, something more or less of the form: "well, nobody ever said that life was going to be fair" and I have become increasingly aware that this infuriates me. So I began to ruminate over why that might be. Two reasons present themselves: 1. This response may really mean "I don't want to discuss this" and it is the method the person chooses to end the conversation. This makes me mad because I would have preferred not wasting any time starting a conversation with a person who is not interested in carrying a discussion to its conclusion. So I feel like I have been ripped off, misled, or at least that my judgment must have been flawed, and I don't like any of those things. This possibility is ultimately the less serious because it probably does not indicate that the person does not care about fairness, only that the person doesn't care about the conversation or about me. 2. This response may actually indicate that the person does not value fairness, does not see it as a legitimate objective, and considers as an idealistic simpleton any person who holds fairness as a primary concern. If this is the case, then my visceral response is working quite well. I value fairness highly and it is likely that anyone who does not is working to destroy all that I would like to build in the world. Once I got this far, it became clear to me that I would have to define fairness in order to consider this matter fully. It was harder that I expected. So far, it looks like this: Fairness is achieved when the consequences of an individual's actions and decisions fall upon that same individual. Environmentally speaking, the picture in my mind involves garbage. I imagine that we must all personally keep our garbage in our personal living space. Those who buy a lot of disposable things are suffocating from being crowded by the things they have purchased and discarded. Those who live more lightly upon the earth are surrounded by plants and compost. Those who do not own cars never breathe smoggy air. Those who drive a lot will suffer the most from asthma and other respiratory ailments. Airplanes are not allowed to fly within the hearing of those who do not ever use them. Synthetic chemicals are never found in the bodies of people who do not use them. It occurs to me that others might have a different understanding of fairness, and mine is not complete. I can imagine no way to administer fairness legally, but that is a separate issue. Intergenerational issues are left out, but are also important to me. Loren Muldowney [EMAIL PROTECTED]
