“Well, Life Isn’t Fair” — Why This is a Total Cop-Out

Just because other people are bastards doesn’t mean you have to be too

Image by benzoix on Freepik

I remember one of my teachers at secondary school saying this to me. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey, that’s not fair!

Her: Well, life isn’t fair!

It annoyed me then, but I didn’t fully understand why. But now I do.

It’s because it’s such a cop-out.

Just because something is true doesn’t mean it’s RIGHT. Just because life isn’t always fair doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make it as fair as we can. The unfairness of life doesn’t give you a free pass to not bother trying.

Think of other areas of life with this logic applied:

• A doctor lets a patient die. When their loved ones say, “Hey, you let them die!” the doctor replies, “Yeah, well, people do die.”
• You complain to your highway authority about all the dangerous potholes on the roads. They respond, “Yeah, well, roads do have potholes.”
• Someone steals from you. When you report it to the police, they say, “Yeah, well, some people are thieves.”
• The Ukrainians are screaming, “THE RUSSIANS ARE BOMBING OUR COUNTRY!”…