Why Our Lives Aren’t Like Classic Crime
Let’s consider two crime novels. In the first one, after a thrilling search, the detective finally identifies and arrests the killer. The murderer is taken to court and sentenced. In the second novel, after a thrilling search, the detective doesn’t find the killer. The detective closes the file and turns to his next case. Which novel is more satisfying for the audience? The first, obviously. Our desire for justice is so great that we can hardly bear the thought of injustice.
Yet this is no ordinary desire, because it’s one we assume will be fulfilled. If not now, then in the future. Most people are deeply convinced that the world is fundamentally just. That good deeds will be rewarded and bad deeds punished. That evil people will eventually be called to account and that murderers will end up behind bars.
Reality, I’m afraid, is not like that. The world isn’t actually just; it’s immensely unjust. What should we do with this disagreeable fact? It’s my belief that you’ll have a better life if you simply accept the unfairness of the world as fact and endure it with stoicism. In doing so you’ll spare yourself a lot of disappointments along the way.
One of the most powerful and complex stories in the Bible is that of Job. Job is a much-loved, successful, pious businessman who leads an upstanding life, a man of character with a stable marriage and ten wonderful children—in short, he’s the kind of enviable person for whom things always run smoothly. The Devil says to God: “No wonder Job’s so pious. Everything’s going swimmingly. If he had more problems, his faith would soon be shaken.”
God is offended. Intending to refute the Devil’s claim, he allows him to bring a little disorder into Job’s life. At a single stroke, Job loses all his money. The Devil kills all his children—seven sons and three daughters. Even his slaves die. Finally, for good measure, the Devil afflicts Job with an illness, making agonizing sores erupt all over his body. He’s mocked and cast out. Job is at the end of his rope. As he sits in the ashes of his burned-out house, his wife gives him the following piece of advice: “Curse God and die.” Yet Job continues to praise the Lord. He is eager to die, if only to deaden the pain—but God won’t permit even that. Finally a storm approaches and God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind, explaining that His actions are incomprehensible to human beings and will always be incomprehensible; He, God, cannot be understood. Because Job has remained faithful, because not even the cruelest punishments led him to doubt God, he is given everything back—his health, his riches, his whole family, brood of children included. He’s overwhelmed with joy and lives to a ripe old age.
Compared with a standard crime novel, in which the killer is caught and brought to justice, the story of Job is rather more knotty. In the end he comes full circle. He experiences profound injustice, but ultimately everything comes out all right. The message is that the world can sometimes appear unjust—but only because we don’t understand how God operates. You’ve got to put up with unfairness, says the Bible. It won’t last forever. Behind it all is a just plan, which you humans, limited as you are, simply don’t understand.
In psychological terms, this is a perfect coping strategy for dealing with the slings and arrows of fate. Getting fired, being diagnosed with cancer, experiencing the death of a child—they’re tragic, but in the grand scheme of things they will make some kind of sense, and it’s not for me to understand how it all fits together. God’s only testing me, and if I continue to believe in Him unshakeably he’ll reward me for it down the line.
So far, so comforting—but who seriously believes in a God who allows such hair-raising atrocities even though He could easily sort things out? More and more people are shaking their heads in disbelief. And yet, secretly, we’re still clinging to the notion of a just plan for the world. We’re desperate to believe in karma of some kind, that we’ll be rewarded for good deeds and punished for bad ones—if not in this life, then in the next.
The English philosopher John Gray wrote that in ancient Greece, “it was taken for granted that everyone’s life is ruled by fate and chance… Ethics was about virtues such as courage and wisdom; but even the bravest and wisest of men go down to defeat and ruin. We prefer to found our lives—in public, at least—on the pretense that ‘morality’ wins out in the end. Yet we do not really believe it. At bottom, we know that nothing can make us proof against fate and chance.”
Here’s the truth: there is no just plan for the world. There isn’t even an unjust plan. There’s no plan at all. The world is fundamentally amoral. We find this information so difficult to accept that science has come up with its own term for the phenomenon: the “just world” fallacy. This certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t mitigate unfairness—through insurance or social welfare, for example. It’s just that there are plenty of things that can’t be insured or redistributed.
One of my teachers in high school assigned grades randomly, without the slightest relationship to achievement. These haphazard grades, picked out of a hat, went directly into our reports. The students protested vehemently. When this proved useless, we ran to the headmaster—who respected our teacher’s decision and did nothing. It was completely unfair, we cried. But the teacher remained calm: “Life is unfair. The sooner you learn that, the better!” We could have wrung his neck. In retrospect, however, this was one of the most important lessons I learned in my seven years of high school.
When the German philosopher Leibniz claimed three hundred years ago that we were living in the best of all possible worlds (because, of course, God wouldn’t have deliberately built a bad one), Voltaire countered this a few years later by writing the satirical novel Candide. After the brutal Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which razed the whole city, no reasonable person could continue to believe in a just plan for the world. The utopian dream of a carefree life for all was over. Candide, the main character, leads a life beset with disaster, and ends up realizing that “we must take care of our garden.”
The upshot? There is no just plan for the world. Part of the good life is to radically accept that. Focus on your garden—on your own everyday life—and you’ll find enough weeds to keep you busy. The things that happen to you across the course of your life, especially the more serious blows of fate, have little to do with whether you’re a good or a bad person. So accept unhappiness and misfortune with stoicism and calm. Treat incredible success and strokes of luck exactly the same.