The Meaninglessness of Fair

A very dear friend of mine once gave me C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. Though not as clever as St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, I still found the book engaging and a very clear methodology for how a thinking, educated man, grounded in science could honestly call himself a Christian. Ultimately, I was unconvinced. As I say repeatedly to anyone who will listen, a well-crafted argument doesn’t necessarily prove anything. For all the aesthetic pleasure the book gave me, it was, at its core, post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. One thing that did stay with me and informs much of my thinking today is Lewis’ idea that words, because of our goodwill and natural bonhomie have stopped meaning anything empirical. As a result many words are no longer very useful when imparting unbiased information. He gives the word “gentleman” as an example. It used to mean that a particular man was landed and possessed a coat of arms. These days, it has completely lost that meaning and now refers to a person’s character. So instead of imparting concrete information about a specific individual, the word itself says more about how the person using it feels about the person in question.

This is much like the word “fair.” Outside of sports, I don’t see much use for it. Fair, in a minimalist sense, means that the competitors are acting within the same rule set equally applied. That’s it. As long as the parties involved agree to the rule set going in, the competition is fair. But this doesn’t work for anything else- business, media, whatever. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to give my competitors a fair shot. I want to crush them at every opportunity. I want every competitive advantage and once I acquire them, I will use them relentlessly and mercilessly.

There’s no such thing as fair in the media either because impartiality in the matter of human judgment is simply impossible. I remember a conversation I had with some friends in San Francisco recently. We were talking about the political center and I maintained that it was much further to the right then they realized. The easy explanation for this is the nature of San Francisco politics. It is a city where the sitting mayor, a man who would be too left wing to be elected anywhere else in America, is referred to, competuously, as conservative. But there’s more to it than that. Every person wants to believe that they are fundamentally a fair person. Because of this, they zero the fair meter on themselves. If they are the sort to make an extra effort, they will push the zero point a little over to the side they don’t agree with in an attempt to balance out their natural bias. But that has nothing to do with where the critical mass of the center actually exists. Trying to find the actual “center” is impossible because by which standard do you judge the “rightness” or “leftness” of an idea? You only have a center if you can find the ends.

I don’t know if I’m fair. I don’t think it’s for me to say. I do think I tend to be more fair about issues I don’t particularly care about. But is that the choice I have? Care or be fair? And is it either fair or unfair? Seems much more grey to me.