I have heard twice in the past few weeks how so and so lived an exemplary clean living life and was a wonderful person and them having cancer was just so unfaiiiiiiiiiiiiir. Really? What about the bad, or perceived to be horrible people? Fair for them?
I always remember a good quote I read on reddit.
Expecting the world to be fair to you because you’re a good person is the same as expecting a bull not to charge at you because you’re a vegetarian.
Jokes aside…humans weren’t meant to live this long naturally so I think cancer is only a necessary evil with a greater average lifespan.
We want to believe that life is fair, and that, when bad things happen to people, it’s because they somehow brought it on themselves.
And that is, in fact, sometimes partially true, in the sense that, for example, a three-packs-a-day smoker is significantly more likely to get lung cancer than someone who never smoked. But that can trick us into expecting things to be more “fair” than they actually are.
You can also add that when someone ‘loses a battle with cancer’ to that list.
does this mean they are somehow at fault for being a loser?, are they to blame? maybe winners don’t lose their battle with cancer.
…er no, they died of cancer, we all die of something, maybe we all lose our battle with immortality - but we never speak of immortality in that way, so why do it with cancer.
I am absolutely on board with not using the fight/war/survival/loser terminology with regard to disease. It does make it seem like only people who don’t try hard enough die.
OTOH, I don’t have a problem with the use of unfair to describe good people getting sick. That doesn’t mean that I believe that the world is fair, just that in this unfair world, there a lot of unfair things to rage against. The world would be a more fair place if only very, very bad people got cancer. But it isn’t, so it’s unfair when a good person suffers.
“No, it’s just cancer,” said no one with cancer, ever.
It is called the just world hypothesis. Because real life is scary, people believe that only bad things happen to bad people who make bad decisions. So as long as they only make good decisions, nothing bad will happen. It isn’t true, but the anxiety of facing the uncertainty of life is too much for a lot of people.
I feel the same way about “Fuck cancer” and the battle analogies. It’s not something attacking us, it’s our own overachieving cells which don’t die off. I do sometimes internally wail “It’s not fair” about my mom, but that’s more “I want my mommy” than truly thinking it’s not fair. My next thought is usually, why not her? why not me? It’s a natural process and can happen to anyone.
“All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
The other night at my cancer support group, quite a few of the women (it was just women this week) expressed that they kept worrying about why they had cancer - if they could have prevented it if they ate better, or exercised more, or this or that or…and I wanted to say to them, maybe, but probably not, it’s not a punishment on you for being a bad person or even being imperfect, it’s just a thing that happens sometimes to some people, and we just were unlucky. It’s not a punishment, it’s the way things are.
QFT.
I don’t think it can be repeated enough: The strictest diet and the most rigorous exercise do NOT prevent cancer. Those things only lower the chances for it.
Why would anyone who gets cancer want to believe they did something wrong to get it? What comfort is in that?
I have diabetes. If someone dared to suggest to me that maybe I did something or didn’t do something to deserve this disease, I would spend the next few months fantasizing about punching them in the face over and over.
Control over your fate. For a lot of people, it is unbearable to think that no matter what you do, horrible things can happen to you. Even knowing that there was something that you could have done to prevent it gives you a sense of agency in your own life. Otherwise, nothing matters. No matter what you do, how good you are, how careful about your diet, etc., you can still get cancer and die. Even if that’s truly the way the world works, it’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. It’s a lot safer to think that the world works by cause and effect, even if the outcome was bad for you personally.
A big part of being a good person is recognizing that the value of living according to your beliefs is found not in the destination but the journey. IOW, the value of being a good person isn’t about any particular outcome of leading such a life but rather is inherent in the decisions themselves.
You don’t not hurt people because you’re afraid of the consequences that may befall you if you do. You don’t do it because you know what it feels like when you’ve been hurt and you don’t want someone else to feel that way.
As my mom used to tell me, starting when I was pretty little, “Life isn’t fair.”
But really, why should it be? Why should person X’s cells behave nicely while person Y’s cells mutate? It’s just the way things happen. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
I used to consider life as being objectively fair, and it was people who were unfair.
I don’t really think that anymore. Life can be a bastard.
I heartily agree with the “fuck cancer” sentiment, even more so since my spouse has come down with the disease. It’s turned our lives upside down, threatened his existence, and rendered me into an overworked, chronically exhausted caretaker. It sucks. Then again, so does things like severe heart disease or quadriplegia or a lot of other suck things that can happen to a person.
I don’t like the war/fight metaphors, or the phrase “lost his battle with cancer” because it’s not a fucking war. It’s a disease. People with terminal cancer aren’t “losers”. My father wasn’t “giving up” because he chose not to go into all-out battle against his lung cancer when he was 85, his liver and kidneys weren’t healthy enough to endure chemo, and even if he had magically waved a wand and gotten rid of the cancer a heart attack or stroke would have likely taken him out in the next few years anyway. He was old, his body was starting to break down, and you can’t postpone death forever - so how is it “losing” to choose to spend your remaining time (about 8 months in his case) enjoying what you can and making your exit as orderly as possible? He didn’t give up, he made a choice about how to spend his final days.
And for Og’s sake, people, it’s not a contest as to what form of death is the worst! “Oh, cancer is so much worse than X!” Well, maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of horrible ways to die because the universe is a bastard that way.
But if the other person is horrible, you don’t mind if they feel the way you do when you’re hurt. That’s when some other motivation might stop you.
As the Joker said, the thing about chaos is that it’s fair.
That said, how do you define “fair”? The word “fair” means many things, some of which are completely irrelevant here - for instance, fair as in “physically attractive” or as in “reasonably acceptable” or as in “in baseball, the playing area between and inclusive of the foul lines.”
“Fair” can, for instance, mean “just.” In that case cancer is certainly not fair. Cancer strikes those who deserve it and those who don’t, those who’ve lived long lives and children alike. It’s quite unjust in that regard. You could say that’s unfair.
As others have hit on, I think people just want the universe to be predictable and make sense in a cause-and-effect way because then we feel more secure about our own place in it. I know I do.
It’s kind of a corollary (?) of how people do not like it when someone gets by with doing something that’s selfish and hateful and benefits from it. I know I don’t.
And the universe is not completely random. One can lower or heighten their risks of a lot of things by their own actions. So I’d say it is definitely more surprising when someone who is not elderly and lives a moderately healthy lifestyle gets seriously ill.
Also, when people hear news like that, they probably just feel like they are supposed to say* something*. The pat, meaningless phrases are the least risky and first that come to mind. Maybe like saying “How are you?” to people when you’d be surprised if they actually answered you in a meaningful way rather than just saying “Fine. And you?”