To help us cope with the minor setbacks and injustices in life, we have developed certain aphoristic tidbits. Displayed often on bumper stickers and t-shirts, they include sayings like “It is what it is,” or the French version “C’est la vie,” the tame rendering of another, “Stuff Happens” (printed on bumper stickers as “Cacca Occurreth”), and “Life isn’t fair.” They serve as good coping strategies if, for example, someone cuts us off in the lineup at the off-ramp exit or some other transgression. But a concern arises when we employ such idioms—especially “Life isn’t fair” (LIF)—in defense of certain unethical, unfair practices as though asserting an enduring truism about “life” in general.
Given my writing, I frequently and happily engage in a great deal of conversation, discussion, and debate on philosophical issues, sports ethics in particular. To my chagrin, upon reaching an apparent stalemate in a disagreement on the ethical nature of a particular action in sport, I encounter the aphoristic nuisance, LIF, with somewhat surprising frequency. It’s usually preceded by some sort of conciliatory, “Whelp,” or, “Oh well.” If I push back a bit, I find this ilk also tends to be fond of the conversational showstopper, “It is what it is.”
This one-two punch was performed most recently at a youth water polo tournament I attended. One of the players was clearly playing dirty and the father of the boy defended the behavior to disgruntled parents in the stands. At one point, in response to a parent commenting as to the unfairness and wrongness of this boy punching other players under water, the father retorted, “Whelp, life isn’t fair,” and, about 30 seconds later, the anticipated, “It is what it is.”
Regarding the recent NCAA-O’Bannon Case1, message boards and bloggers repeatedly tout the LIF mantra defending their position. The catch being, both sides use it to bolster their argument: Life isn’t fair, so the athletes shouldn’t get paid what they otherwise deserve; Life isn’t fair, so universities should relinquish some of their revenue.
“Life isn’t fair” reveals a completely vacuous understanding of ethics, be it in the sporting world or otherwise. To use a stark analogy, when people were enslaved simply because of their origin and skin color, it would have been unreasonable to say, “Whelp, life isn’t fair. It is what it is.” While true it wasn’t fair (to say the least), the thoughtful citizen instead examines further, “Hey, this circumstance of life isn’t fair. We should demonstrate why and then change the system to make it fair because we desire fairness whenever possible.”
If you’re not keen on the application and use of analogy, we can aim our lens at real-life instances within sport and apply it to any of the “15 greatest sports cheats of all time”: a boxer removing the padding from his gloves and turning his fists into plaster to pummel his opponent into near-blindness; competing in the Olympic women’s high jump as a man wearing a women’s disguise; jumping out of the crowd at a marathon to finish in first place. For those touting the LIF mantra, here’s your opportunity to test it out—“So she jumped out at the end to win a marathon she didn’t actually run: Oh well, life isn’t fair.”
It’s hard to know what “Life isn’t fair” even means, if anything. One can only imagine that it serves to remind us we don’t all have exactly the same opportunities to achieve various objectives. In that sense, it’s likely the most boringly obvious statement ever uttered—aside from “It is what it is,” which can only mean things are…um…the way they are.
Imagine what it would mean for the antithesis of LIF to be true. Following some exactly equitable event, people would proclaim, “Whelp, life is fair.” What would it mean for “life” to be fair? Is it that we’d all be born exactly the same, with an exactly identical genetic composition, born into exactly similar socio-economic situations? Only then would “life” be fair? This seems outrageous at best. Given that this can’t be the case, the “isn’t fair” version doesn’t hold much water.
So we can only assume these phrases convey something figurative, helping us to understand some nuance of the human condition which can inform us as to how to act. Maybe, then, LIF advocates some naturalistic moral imperative: because nature isn’t inherently fair, we shouldn’t try to impart fairness on the world. This, though, halts any semblance of moral progress. It’s a justification for moral laziness. The rhetorical insight here being any attempt to change the unfair state of affairs is either unnecessary or, stronger, impossible.
When discussing and defending a position, one typically offers statements to defend just that position. In a debate about flopping in soccer one might say, “Flopping wrongly punishes the defender,” the obvious implication being, “One shouldn’t wrongly punish people and so it’s unethical.” But in the case of LIF, we are forced to wonder just what the implication is. In discussing the alleged unfairness of flopping, were one to suggest, “Life isn’t fair,” the only possible implication would be, “Because life isn’t fair, then soccer doesn’t need to be either, so flopping isn’t unethical.”
If to be taken at face value and as patently true, LIF serves as a great example of a non sequitur. And if done intentionally, it functions as a red herring employed to throw the pursuer of the truth off the scent. Here’s the strategy: when involved in a discussion in which your flimsy position is under siege, assertively declare a truism as though it somehow supports your position: “Some players use steroids and have an advantage that others don’t? Whelp, life isn’t fair.” Or, “Sometimes people pay referees to favor their team? Whelp, the sky is blue.”
“Life isn’t fair” can serve as a way of life in the way “c’est la vie” does for some but not as a basis for defending unfair actions.
Regardless of all of these problems, sport provides us with a different sort of venue than “life.” The sporting arena is a contrived system of obstacles and rules, unlike the natural obstacles (if they are such) and playing fields (if you will) provided by “life.” As such, we can manipulate them. We can make them fair. Sport can truly embody what we want out of life, while still not straying from life itself.
We realize in youth sports, for example, at a certain point males develop a physical advantage over females, and so we create separate leagues, out of fairness. High school sports leagues designate divisions because they recognize, out of fairness, that a school with 10,000 students has a greater draw for their sports teams than does a school of 500 students.
The ideal competition is fair. And in sport, we can come quite close to reaching that ideal. When we conduct the 400-meter dash we go to great pains to make it fair. Everyone starts at the same time and runs exactly the same distance. At major events we even test the athletes’ blood to make sure they’re not getting an unfair advantage in that department. The runners must stay in their lanes, being sure not to touch another runner. Were we to employ the LIF approach, we’d have runners starting at different places, tripping each other, etc. But we don’t. In sport, we can actually achieve fairness.
We desire fairness, inherently. Studies show that we become visibly upset (and also at a neurological level) by unfairness and are even willing to sacrifice our own gain to prevent others from acquiring something unfairly. So when you feel the inclination to utter the LIF mantra, take a deep breath. It might be the case that you’re more interested in defending your respective position. Instead, look to see if the particular action or sporting practice really is unfair. It may even be something that can be fixed, or at least you can change your own actions given the insight garnered. And before you proclaim “It is what it is,” try uttering TSIB—The sky is blue—instead. Even if it’s cloudy, you’ll still be right for the most part, and we won’t have to let unfairness continue simply because it is what it is.
1 A District Judge ruled on August 8, 2014 that the NCAA was in violation of antitrust law and that college athletes are entitled to compensation for commercial use of their image.
