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Hey everyone, it’s Kernook here.

Since this isn’t an anime or gaming post, I didn’t want to toss this up on it a “usual” posting day. However, as I’ve said in my other “Brick” posts, this is a platform, and it should be used for good too.

It need to be used for more than just anime and gaming. So, today I want to take a moment to speak about fairness in this world, and how it applies to all of us.

For me, it matters that I share more of my thoughts and feeling than just being a gamer and anime fan. Though those things are huge parts of my personal identity, they aren’t all of me. As I said in my very first brick post, I was always so confused that my cousin for never reached out for deep aspirations, I never understood it to be honest. That being said, for me the drive to make The Demented Ferrets a success comes from my own failures and continued ambitions.

The subject of fairness comes up a lot in the recesses of my mind. I’ve been thinking about this more concretely for a few years now, but it has always been there. My cousin and I used to discuss this topic often enough back when I was a teenager.

We used to contemplate the matter at length. We spoke a lot about socioeconomic conditions, and the human element. The complicated mindsets, politics, and the driving forces that dug deep into what ails society.

When my cousin passed away, I was left to the confines of my own mind and a few select friends that I’d discuss these matters with. As a gamer, as an anime fan, within my gender identity, my sexual identity and my personal identity, I did a lot of soul searching.

I searched for the idea of fairness in the world, and when it might apply. I wondered how I might apply it to my life, how I might make myself into a better person with fairness as a tool and means for growth. Why did I wonder that?

Well, because I’m a gamer, and that’s the sort of thing that comes to mind.

You see, games have rules and regulations within them. They’re constructed with some level of fairness in mind. None of the systems are ever perfect, but that’s where the human element comes into play. Gamers are the ones to level the playing field when the games themselves cannot, particularly in MOBA’s and MMORPG’s.

So, after years of thinking about this, I’ve reached my conclusion about fairness. Here’s a hint, it always applies. Life isn’t fair, but people can be. There is no time or place where fairness doesn’t apply. The choice for fairness is always there, in the youngest of toddlers discovering the world, and in the minds of the most jaded adults.

It’s time to remember what it means to be fair.

Being fair doesn’t mean being overly kind, or impossibly giving. Being fair doesn’t even require empathy or sympathy. All that it requires is a moment of ones time, and a little bit of thought.

Basic logic. That’s it. That’s all you need.

A moment of careful consideration to the situation at hand, and what it truly means. That is all even the cruelest person needs in order to choose fairness.

Life is not fair, not in the slightest. It’s going to hand you a lemon every now and then, and sometimes you just can’t make lemonade. However, sometimes you can water it down so it isn’t as sour and difficult to swallow. That is what fairness is.

It’s not perfection, or a utopia. Fairness will not hand you luxuries on a silver platter, nor will it erase the darker realities that confine humanity. No, it can’t do that.

What it can do is offer a stable place to stand. It can offer a chance to make the world just a little bit better for everyone.

Here’s the thing. Fairness isn’t equality, because life makes equal playing-fields impossible. That’s why handicaps exist in games to begin with. To level out the playing-field and make an attempt at fairness. It is a justifiable bending of the rules for the sake of greater good. Handicaps are used to give people who are at a disadvantage a chance to succeed based on their own merits.

Sadly, not everything in life works that way. There is no “easy mode” or tutorial. There are times disenfranchised people may believe there is some way to contort the system. Some magical means to change it, but that’s just the rules of the system itself failing. Enough people working together might be able to change the system itself, but that’s a lofty goal.

Instead, in my eyes, it is better to attempt to make changes on the small levels, our own human condition. The lot you’re handed in life might not be something you can change, but fairness can make it easier to overcome.

The death of a loved one isn’t reversible, for example. In fairness, people will allow the grieving process. A house fire that burns precious mementos to ash, isn’t something you can glue back together. Fairness is holding those memories close, while forging new ones. Addiction is insidious, and fairness is the battle to overcome it with a community standing beside you.

Working together, less people slip through the cracks.

For another example, if you lack an education in a topic and there’s no one there to teach you, you have to teach yourself. If you lack the tools to do so, there’s no fairness in that. Fairness comes into play when someone teaches you how to teach yourself. When a diverse community comes together to show you the way, you can learn those skills without an echo chamber. You don’t have to flounder on your own. Fairness in turn is accepting that education, and using it to the fullest and joining the community when someone new comes along.

For the younger generations, fairness is being taught how to work an honest job and surviving the adult world. Instead of being left behind by society when you’re fresh out of high school, fairness is that next leg up. Those next all too important life lessons that often fail to be taught well in certain demographics of society simply because the tools they have to teach these things are lacking.

Fairness is a small chance that someone gives, and the person uses to the fullest.

Life is no game, and there aren’t cheat codes. This isn’t an inherently awful thing though. Instead, what we have in life is possibly better than that. What we have is an opportunity. As people, we can choose fairness.

In fairness everyone wins, or at the very least, no one ends up losing too much. In fairness, victims of atrocities can heal some of their wounds. In fairness, the small missteps are left as bygones, and new victories can be forged among all peoples in this world.

That is still a victory, and fairness is exactly that. A stepping stone to success.

Fairness is intellectually understanding when someone’s had a bad day, and choosing not to be an asshole on purpose. Seeing the foul mood for what it is, and understanding that no one is perfect. That doesn’t mean to be a doormat. You can set a firm line in the sand without being a total and complete jerk. The other person can understand their bad mood affects them, and try not to make everyone around them suffer for it.

That’s fairness.

Fairness is setting aside conjecture, and doing your best to put aside bias that impacts large groups of people. It’s about intellectually understanding that there are two or more sides to every story, and that the truth is always someplace within the middle. To take a moment to look and think before you dog-pile atop minorities and disenfranchised groups that have no one to show them the better path. To stand still and take a breath before you take a side.

To understand that the dog-piling sometimes becomes worse than the original offense. That one act in unfairness can result in unfounded cruelty to an entire group, the likes of which turn mankind into monsters.

Fairness is intellectually understanding that no two lives will have the same experience, and that no experience is somehow less valid due to it’s difference in course. That it is simply not your personal experience, or your journey.

Fairness requires all of us to work together, but it offers a hand reached out in truce, when you’d rather just slap someone. Agreeing to disagree when common ground can’t be found.

Fairness is simply logic when everything around you wishes to be illogical. It’s a conscious choice, a decision made firmly because fairness is the right thing to do. It may be easier to just tell someone where to shove it, but let’s be honest, we’ve all had our heads up our own ass at some point.

Profound stupidity is innately part of all of us. Removing said head from our asses may take a moment, and understanding that is fairness too. Life isn’t fair, but as humans with choice at our fingertips, we can choose the better path. We can decide to be fair.

That is what levels life’s playing-field in a way little else can. It circumvents the bylaws of the cruel world, and softens the blow life sometimes deals.

Fairness is when we as people take a moment not for charity, but a firm look at the socioeconomic divide. A moment of introspection at the social constructs that build each individual in the greater society. We can take that small moment to empower our decisions, and leave gut reaction at the door.

This is how we heal, how we mend, and how we change the future for the better.

We can bridge unfathomable divides if we take those few moments collectively. Society has some truly disgusting ails looming within it, but these ails are a product of ourselves, and what we have allowed to perpetuate.

Well, I think that’s gone on far enough. The excuse that life isn’t fair is strictly that. It is an excuse, and a sickening one at that. It leaves even strong people to flounder in the mud and muck left behind by the failings cause by everyone willing to make that excuse.

That’s not fair, and that’s not life making more lemons. That’s humanity choosing unfairness because sometimes that’s just the easy thing to do.

We can do better, and we should do better. A tiny bit, every single day. If we all did that, even just a little bit…

Well, then the world itself, governed by humanity as a whole, wouldn’t be so damn unfair anymore. It wouldn’t be perfect, nothing is, but fairness always applies. It’s all about how we choose to handle it.

This has been Kernook of The Demented Ferrets.

“Where stupidity is at its finest and level grinds are par for the course…”

The Demented Ferrets…

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