Play Hard, Play Fair, Nobody Hurt

As I have become aware in writing these blogs, and some intrepid souls may have discerned from reading them, these essays are ways for me to play with, and test, some of my basic convictions. The challenge is for me to, within the space of a few hundred words, apply some basic filters to the chaos we call life and project a coherent image on the wall of the cave we happen to be sharing. And this current economic crises is casting some very interesting shadows.


One of the filters that I use to see human behaviors as motivated by some a simple but universal concern for fairness. Somehow, people are constantly observing what is going on around them and keeping up a running computation of what they're getting compared to any one else.


The behavior is well observed in children down to a few months old. Monkeys are acutely aware: "Female brown capuchin monkeys tend to turn uncooperative, and sometimes even throw things, if they see a neighbor receiving a lovely grape in exchange for the same token that gets them only a cucumber." -- Science News, September 20th, 2003. Even dogs get it, as the article from the January 9 Science News reports that dogs will go "on strike" if they are not treated fairly:

Dogs got increasingly fidgety and finally stopped shaking hands when a researcher repeatedly failed to supply rewards for a trick but gave another handshaking dog bread bits, Range says. The dogs cooperated longer, though, if their neighbors didn’t get a snack either.

What's more, as reported in the same article, both dogs and primates allowed for more inequity if they knew or were related to the lucky one.


In other words, my well-being is as much about what I compare myself to the well-being of my cohorts as it is about my absolute safety or comfort. I think about the certain comedians and memoirists of the '50s and '60s (and even more recently) whose schtick was riffing on "We were poor but we didn't know it." Right now we are seeing another Great Depression-type leveling, another rebuke to the acquisitive urge and , perhaps, a lessening of envy.


Envy may be one of the seven deadly sins, but who's really causing trouble, the one who has "too much" good stuff (the envied) or the envier? After all, we can't claim that the lucky one doesn't know that he's got more than the sad sack. That seems to be the one thing humans do pay attention to, all the time, in every situation. And because everyone can point to someone else who got a better deal, there doesn't seem to be an end to it. So maybe greed is just the other side of the fairness coin: fear of inequity (I lose) leads to inequity (I get, if not win).


Human nature, no? "Humans are acquisitive, some more than others, there will be winners and there are losers. That's the natural order of things." But in the planet's history not all cultures lived like that. The fact that they were sitting ducks for the ones that did doesn't mean they were wrong. We've gone pretty far down the road to planetary annihilation in just a few centuries, where many of those cultures functioned effectively for perhaps tens of thousand years. The fact that we can all do the math on fairness is what makes the Golden Rule universally honored, so why isn't it actually practiced more often?


If it seems our culture is basically acquisitive, that may not mean that the impulse was always there for a given human being. How you see the world right now is not the same as when you were young: we've all learned to use new filters to help us survive in this culture. But there are still vestiges of what may be deeper, more universal values.


A recent study, reported on the Science News (no this is not a plug, but I've been reading SN for 20-plus years and is an excellent overview of science reports and studies), suggests that children from about age seven to early adult years, in cultures around the world, generally agree that the best way to solve disputes and make decisions is by reasoned discussion and sharing of ideas, rather than by withholding affection or rewards, or relying on the authority of the family or the culture. For example:

Even in rural China, most 12- to 19-year-olds favored democratic decisions reached by a public vote or the consensus of elected representatives. In all settings, teens said that democratic systems ensure that the people have a “voice,” let different segments of society contribute to decisions and give the public a chance to remove unpopular government officials.

Government rule by the wealthiest or most knowledgeable people was generally deemed to be unfair, especially by older adolescents.

The study pulls together a broad range of research that reinforces the understanding that children and adolescents are naturally democratic. Especially in the sense of wanting their voices to be heard.


So what happens after early adulthood? Why doesn't every new generation bring the revolution with them? How hard can it be to create a society based on our common understanding of fairness? Maybe it's because they learn that their voices are not going to be heard.


Just to make it clear (to myself as much as you), I don't write these essays because I have all the answers (assuming there are answers). I write them because I hope that somehow they might kick off a conversation in which we can all share what we've learned and what we're looking for.


In this case I don't know why the forces for institutional inequity are so strongly defended, in many cases by the very people who've got the fuzziest end of the lollipop. Of course, this could only be the period before the tipping point, that any day the barricades are going up, and the aristos will have to reconsider inequity from some other position as the plebes opt out of the confidence game that's been running for much of the industrialized era. Could happen, but ....


For myself, the only meaningful, consistent action or attitude I have found is that I should think less about whether I'm being treated fairly and more about whether I am acting fairly to others. And, when I can, I learn something from the kids, the monkeys and the doggies, anybody who can teach a lesson.


[The title is from the instructions Wavy Gravy gave to participants in the Whole Earth New Games Tournament, 1973. Not a bad philosophy generally.]