Generousity vs Fairness....

those who want to succeed in business need be generous to a fault...growing up, I remember the generousity of vendors...it me feel good, it made me feel special, it made me want to be generous towards others...that spirit of generousity is not so common today...indeed, when you are presented with simple acts of generousity today you may be forgiven for thinking it is 'remarkable'...simple acts of generousity include gifts of time, tolerance of difference, acceptance of diversity, willingness to suspend judgement until a radical idea is prototyped, etc...it seems obvious to me that if a society is generous towards its members, as well as the outsiders, then it stands a good chance of success in a digital global C21st..

those who want to succeed in government, unions, large organisations, social programs need be wedded to the notion of 'fairness'...they need to be able to argue for it at every turn and thus, to be ready to denounce those who are not practicing 'fairness' (that is the fairness they define)...to most of us the notion of fairness is actually a negative (for me it is the cause of most of vitriol in European, US, British, Australian politics today)... the problem for me is that no matter how much 'fairness' is shoved our way we are always looking for more...is it fair that she gets more cake than me? sure I got the biggest share of the cake but that is because I am poor and needy and that is only 'fair' after all...it always strikes me as somewhat strange that those who advocate 'fairness' the strongest/loudest claim to be 'progressives'...

Posted by richard-lipscombe at 1:52 PM NZT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink