Fair and unfair at the same time

Is pursing justice worth our time?

Marti Purull
3 min readDec 1, 2022
two people look at the same thing but see different things, futuristic art — by DALL·E

Fairness is something that has obsessed me since I was a child. When the shows I watched and the comics I read had moments of severe injustice, I felt the pain, rage and thirst for revenge as though the narrated adventures were my own. Moreover, I would imagine scenarios and create stories in which injustice played a transcendental role, and my characters would be driven by the desire to end it.

Nevertheless, no preparation is enough for dealing with unfairness in adult life. Instead of focused bouts, injustice spreads subtly to almost every corner of our existence, multiplying at will, sometimes at our expense. Most often, unfairness is a general situation, not a specific action. We might have to decide on something that will affect many others, and it is unfair that only we can choose and that the decision will have to be unfair to some to be fair on the rest.

Most of us in the West agree that giving every individual the chance to decide for the collective is the fairest approach we have invented. If everybody has a vote on matters that affect everybody, those in the minority will simply have to accept and respect a decision they do not appreciate. Of course, the question is fraught because not everybody has the aptitude to deal with a particular issue or the interest to partake…

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Marti Purull
Marti Purull

Written by Marti Purull

I’m a musician, but I think every day. So I write every day. Thoughts. Reflections. Life.