What is fairness? An abstract idea invented by humans and some animals? Because yes, you don’t see a lot of fairness around you in the natural world…
But as a social animal, we have this innate sense of fairness because we have this ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, and so to feel empathy. From that, a sense of fairness arises and, as fairness is an essential component of morality, it is the beginning of what we call moral and ethics. Without this sense of fairness, which we even share with some other species, there is nothing else, no moral, no justice, no human society as we know it.
Life is not fair, dying at 34 is certainly not fair, but it is our human nature to care about fairness, to bring as much fairness as possible in this deeply unfair world.
Not knowing how a person died is unfair to this person’s memory, especially when the memory of this person is a public one like Elliott Smith, living in the head of many people. It allows people to interpret the unknown the way they want, forming a conviction based on how they feel, not on the truth, and it is not fair..
I don’t care about the heard-a-million-times comment nothing-we-can-do-will-bring-him-back. It is not the point. He is dead, people who are dead do not come back, but they live in our collective memory.
I don’t care about the heard-a-million-times comment nothing-we-can-do-will-bring-him-back. It is not the point. He is dead, people who are dead do not come back, but they live in our collective memory.
Elliott Smith was a person extremely concerned by fairness, many of his friends have talked about it, and it is so ironic the circumstances surrounding his death are still unresolved. If he killed himself, it is unfair for his girlfriend who is still under a heavy cloud of suspicions, and if he was murdered, it is unfair to him because people interpret his work with the idea of suicide in their mind, and judge an action he didn’t do.
Fairness is always a moral issue, and we should all be concerned.