Life Isnʻt Fair; Find Your Sweet Spot
In this post:
- Thoughts on fairness and cooperation in a world of increasing human and animal autonomy.
- Zoom call later this month. Let's get together in real time!
Human sense of fairness evolved to favor long-term cooperation, primate study suggests
"Giving up an outcome that benefits you in order to gain long-term benefits from the relationship requires not only an ability to think about the future, but also the self-control to turn down a reward," Brosnan said. "These both require a lot of cognitive control. Therefore, we hypothesize that lots of species respond negatively to getting less than a partner, which is the first step in the evolution of fairness, but only a few species are able to make the leap to this second step, which leads to a true sense of fairness."
I’ve been curious for decades about the issue of fairness, in psychology, in economics, in relationships, in politics. It’s a curious beast as so many of us operate as if it is “built in” somehow to our lives and the systems that both support and control us. It has, to some degree, enabled our evolution especially when expressed as cooperation. Still, it is not automatic nor always successful.In families, children are treated differently by their own parents. In business, some get ahead in spite of performing poorly. In politics, it often seems the biggest egos (who can then raise the most money) are the ones who win. In relationships, one partner carries a bigger burden of keeping the family functioning.None of these are new to you; we are in fact sometimes so acclimated to these imbalances that we resign ourselves to them. We give up the fight. We settle for less. We hope, I hope, for better times ahead. We sometimes use this to explain our lack of desire to cooperate and collaborate.Evolutionary biologists and economists strongly suggest there are individual and collective benefits to cooperative forms of fairness and justice. Other animals feel it too and will reject the cucumber treat when they see a cage mate getting a tastier grape!
Envious monkeys can spot a fair deal
Monkeys invest less energy in a task if they see other monkeys receiving better rewards for the same effort, researchers report. They say that their experiment provides new evidence that non-human primates can feel envy. The findings could also help explain why humans have such a keen sense of fairness, according to experts.
So this tension between fairness and envy are built-in elements of our psychological and emotional ecosystems and present yet another opportunity for conscious mindsets along the road to feeling better.In many of the psychological tests I’ve taken over the decades, bitterness and victimization are perpetual shapes in my shadow self. I’ve chosen to stand against those vibes, first because they don’t feel good and second because they are powerless states of being rather than powerful states of being.What has helped me the most, I believe, is this:
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Being able to see a more perfect union, a more equitable world, fairness and justice on display in every town square can be its own demoralizing essence. “Always holding out hope” can lead to such deflation when unfairness wins the day, yet again. Attaching too strongly to my sense of fairness become a blind spot that doesn’t always lead to my preferred outcomes.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It seems to me we are at a juncture right now where this topic deserves attention. If we set a bar too high, we increase the chances of disappointment. If we hold out for perfection, we will often fail. This sense of quitting as a result, of “why bother” is, in my opinion so destructive though. It is destructive on a personal level all the way up to a global scale.
Now is not the time to lose hope!
The effective questions become:"How do I set my fairness meter strongly enough without having intermittent losses devastate me?”"How do I cooperate or even sacrifice and keep my eye on the greater good?""How do I compromise smartly instead of codependently?"For me, it helps to repeat over and over again, Life is not fair. This breaks the hypnosis that fills the monkey mind and all her thoughts about how life should be.We can agree it should be different, but it never will be all that we can envision. There are too many competing interests and goals. We can learn to settle for less than all, without having the feeling of selling out. But it requires some very pokey personal dialogs, the ability to challenge our inner idealists, and the skill of counting our blessings whenever they appear.I loved learning that a plane sets a course, let's say 30º to the west. But when measured, it rarely stays exactly on course. The wind especially and other factors, too, cause it to waiver on and off course on the way to its destination. Somehow, we arrive, even though the close-up view of the flight path is a tad squiggly, not perfectly straight.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
This is only going to get more difficult, as humans are acquiring more and more autonomy. We used to be more easily controlled by the values of our families or our communities. Now, we do more thinking for ourselves. But if that sense of individuality comes at too a high cost to our friends and neighbors, then we start to lose the benefits of cooperation and collaboration.I’ve never believed in practicing gratitude out of guilt but instead because it just works. It shifts the energy, the mood, the mindset, inside the person who is feeling it. It has far less to do with the other person(s).I’m starting to see how my ability to see all sides is what helps me stay deeply committed to fairness and justice while also being flexible about how it gets implemented, and, sometimes not implemented at all. So rather than be devastated at gross unfairness, we can instead accept it as temporary and move on to another effort rather than thinking the world is just plain wrong. We cannot let our defeats demoralize us to the point of quitting. Let the knowledge of life's inherent unfairness flip your expectations so you can experience every small win as a big win, given the odds! Bitterness and envy do not bring on more fairness. I mean, if they did, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.My bottom line: Seek fairness at all times while knowing that it's not always possible. It is indeed a bit of a mind game, but having a functional mindset means choosing games to suit you and your preferences. Sometimes the ref makes a bad call. Sometimes you miss a play you’ve made successfully a thousand times. Sometimes, many times, life is not fair but we can still keep aiming to be open-minded and open-hearted in search of our personal and global goals.One last very "out there" thought for you: For the really big problems in the world, I believe our collective consciousness has a vote. Over and over again, big problems that initially seem insurmountable, get solved. We are so fortunate to live amongst other humans who LOVE solving complex problems. We can support them by not nit-picking their work. We can carry on, knowing that it's up to all of us to decide we want to be here. For now, I believe most of us do and that simple intention carries a lot of force in the universe. Let's find our personal balance and let go of needing things to be perfect.
Love, Rox❤️