The YouTube algorithm is a mysterious thing. It’s supposed to recommend videos you might like, based on videos you’ve watched and rated before, but as far as I can tell, the recommendations are randomly generated by a half-asleep chimpanzee. Yet, just like broken clocks still run twice a day, random suggestions can highlight items worth checking out. Some time ago, the YouTube algorithm put, among other things, a clip of Sesame Street in my recommended videos. This episode featured an appearance by Brett Goldstein, best known for his role in Ted Lasso as the angry and extremely rude professional athlete Roy Kent. Curiosity got the better of me, so I checked it out.
(As an aside, the writers of this episode seemed to include a metaphorical nod to all the adults in the audience who are familiar with Roy Kent’s character – when Goldstein learns that the letter of the day is F, he responds by saying how much he loves using the letter F.)
In the clip, Goldstein and a Sesame Street character named Tamir have just finished baking cookies and announce that they will reveal the word of the day. Tamir tells us that the word of the day is “fairness”. Goldstein responds by telling the audience that “fairness is when each of us gets what we need.” This immediately brings up Cookie Monster and states that he needs one of the cookies that Goldstein and Tamir just created. Goldstein agrees that Cookie Monster should get one of the cookies, because that would be fair. Soon after, they decide to go play soccer, but first have to clean up the mess they made from baking cookies. At this point, they tell Cookie Monster that fairness demands that he help them clean up the mess they made.
It should be noted that Cookie Monster receiving a cookie and helping clean up the mess is not presented as an example of a fair exchange. It’s not that Cookie Monster is offering to help them clean up the mess in exchange for one of the cookies, and both parties agree that would be fair. Each act is treated as independent and unrelated to the other. If Cookie Monster had appeared after the mess had been cleaned up, fairness would still have required that he receive a cookie that he had no part in creating, and if Cookie Monster had arrived after the cookies had disappeared, fairness would still have demanded that he receive a cookie that he had no part in creating. him for using his job to clean up a mess in which he had no part.
What it immediately reminded me of was a story from my own childhood that also aspired to teach a lesson about fairness, albeit with a very different conception of what that means. I’m referring to Aesop’s fable The grasshopper and the ant. If you have never heard this fable, it can be briefly summarized as follows:
During the summer months, an ant and a grasshopper lived together in a field. The ant spent its days working hard, collecting food and storing it underground in its nest. The grasshopper spent his days relaxing, playing music and living in the moment without worrying about the future. When winter came, the grasshopper remained cold and hungry, unable to find food, while the ant remained safe in its nest and fed on the food it had stored from its work.
However, according to the definition of “equity” given by Sesame Street, we should conclude that this is a story about the injustice suffered by the grasshopper. After all, “fairness” is when each of us gets what we need, and during the winter months the grasshopper needed food and shelter, but got none . Ergo, the grasshopper being hungry while the ant remained fed was, by definition, unfair. But this was not the moral of the story. Instead, it was taken as obvious that the locust’s fate was entirely fair, because fairness did not mean “each of us gets what we need”, but rather “each of us gets what we need”. ‘he wins “. Even if you needed something, you couldn’t just take it away from someone under the guise of “fairness.” Fairness does not give you the right to insist that the situation of others deteriorate to your advantage, without you owing them anything in return.
Of course, none of this is meant to oppose helping those who need it. Offering to help someone clean the kitchen or offering to share cookies you just made is a really nice thing to do, and I would do it myself. But that goes a little too far for request that others give you their cookies or help you clean up your mess, because otherwise it’s not fair. This turns virtue into vice and kindness into self-centered entitlement.
