dispensable

Last month the dishwasher in one of my rental units broke. I thought about my options: pay someone to come out to look at it and potentially fix it OR just buy a new one. Dishwashers only cost about $250 so it made more sense to just buy a new one rather than have the old one fixed.

We have become a throw away society. Rather than try to fix something old that is broken we just go out and get one that is new and "better."

I would even go so far as to say that this throw away mentality has had a trickle down effect, to the point where we now see people as dispensable.

I thought about some of the ramifications of that statement: People have become increasingly unwilling to work on relationships and less tolerant of others. Many of the sick and elderly have been deemed unworthy and cast aside.

There is a philosopher by the name of John Rawls. He introduced a concept called the "veil of ignorance."

Parties behind the veil of ignorance are constrained so that their decisions will be fair ones: everyone's interests are represented and the decision cannot be biased in anyone's favor.

The veil of ignorance prevents people from knowing anything about their own situation in society. They are unaware of the talents and abilities, ethnicity and gender, religion or belief system of the citizens they represent. The idea is that this will end up designing a society that will be fair to everyone because they don't want to risk ending up in an intolerable position.

Maybe ignorance isn't such a bad thing after all.