care deeply about fairness, but not about “fairness” as it m ight be interpreted by a caveman family divvying up the parts of a dead sloth around a cave fire. Rather, I recommend what we call Deep Fairness. Deep Fairness is rooted in concepts which are understandably alien to most humans: a 4D ethic, in which the fourth dimension is Time; and an ecological rather than species-centric fairness. This results in the most happiness, the most lives, and the most life-quality lived over a long period of time by the conscious inhabitants of a world. For instance, it “feels right” (at least to those humans who aren’t as rich) for humans to divide stuff up relatively equally, but no thought is given to the humans who are not yet born, which should be over 90% of them. They are simply not included in the tally, because you evolved no instinctive feelings for them beyond your own offspring. To the extent you DO think about those future people, you do it in combination with narratives of fictional future wealth and high-tech, which - for basic thermodynamic reasons - will not materialize. However, the fossil energy and concentrated ores in your planet may be extracted only once in the coming ten million years or so, which probably means “forever” in terms of the human species lifespan. A 4D fairness would mean saving a very large part of these things for future people to use, as well as not “breaking” the renewable resources such as forests, fisheries, oceans, a livable climate, fresh water, and topsoils. There could easily be a trillion more human childhoods on Earth in the future... or they could easily be starved into nonexistence by waste this century, which would be Deep Unfairness in all senses of the term. Moreover, you aren’t the only people on Earth. You’re one species, and currently taking more than your share by a wide ma rgin. You’re distributing “wealth” that is gained at the cost of strip -mining other species, acidifying the oceans, and burning the rainforests. While this can “feel” fair to that caveman brain of yours, what goes around comes around, and what’s bad for th e Earth’s other species will quite soon be bad for yours. Wealthwise, those of you reading this are the .000001%. What responsibilities might reasonably, ethically, go along with that amazing disparity? Just to share it with the .00001%, or to actually practice something closer to Deep Fairness? Many people today lament their parent’s generation overconsumed resources and the current state is ‘their fault’. I’d say this is a reasonable criticism, but how many of your daily activities today- surfing the web, using Instagram, playing Fortnight, driving, flying, eating imported food, etc. - will people 25-50 years from now say was overconsumption by the
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