Everybody still winds up with enough, and you don ’ t wreck planets by over-consuming. The giving of love, and a humorous acceptance of reality, is better than the imposition of an impossible fairness requirement. Of course, “ fairness ” is only applied by humans to those now born, and of the same species, and preferably the same tribe. For those who aren ’ t, too bad. Yet if you simply plunder the world in the short term and divide the spoils equally, the civilization story will soon be ended, and the last few human generations will curse you from their unnecessary privation. For the unfairness of it all, of course.
The Bottom Line: Humans naturally differ in status and ability – but for most of our history we were intensely egalitarian.
On Empathy
Image source: Evolution of Neonatal Imitation. Gross L, PLoS Biology Vol. 4/9/2006, e311 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040311
“ The simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to the men of all nations and races … our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused until they are extended to all sentient beings. ” Charles Darwin Summary: On the flip side of demanding fairness for ourselves, we are also sensitive to the emotions and feelings of others. If we smile at a baby, she will smile back. If we see our sports team hero get tackled with a wallop, we wince at his pain. We feel quite different emotions at a funeral versus a rock concert, whether or not we knew the deceased or like the
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