A Matter of Principle: Fair Play or Fool's Gold?

By Qarol Price

“All’s fair in love and war,” or so the saying goes. Both conditions are in their own ways extreme, so the usual rules might not apply. But they do apply everywhere else.

You must practice fair play. In the boxing ring, for instance, it has to be a fair fight. That is why fighters are divided into various weight classes: Featherweight, Bantamweight, Lightweight, Middleweight, Heavyweight. If you put Mike Tyson in the ring against Skinny Pete, nobody but a sadist is going to enjoy the match.

What makes a “fair fight?”

Of course, the combatants must be evenly matched physically. The fight will then prove which of the gloved warriors possesses superior skills.

But suppose one cheats and loads his glove with a horseshoe or a pair of brass knuckles. Down goes his opponent. Does the “victor” have anything to be proud of?

I should say not!

It is what we call a hollow victory because it wasn’t fair. What has the winner learned about himself? Certainly not that he is worthy of the acclaim the crowd will give him — until they find out what he did, and the Boxing Commission strips the cheater of his title.

In that moment he will be forced to see what he should have seen all along: that he has only proven his unworthiness. He may have gained the world (championship) but only by losing his soul, i.e., his selfrespect.

And the same holds true for the student who cheats on a test, or who buys someone else’s old term paper. The cheater thinks she has gotten away with something, accomplished something with her devious cleverness.

But the poor fool eventually discovers that her short-cut only got her lost. She has short-circuited the necessary process of growing in skill and in learning. She has simply proven, hopefully to herself, her own unworthiness.

She has, in the final analysis, demonstrated that there can be no real victory, no genuine achievement, without fair play. Without fairness you can never know your own worth.

Remember when, a few years ago, a woman running in the New York City Marathon ducked out and took a shortcut to the finish-line? “Winning” that way is really losing. You know you couldn’t have won it fairly, so your fancy trophy will be nothing but a booby prize. If you have any conscience left at all, the sight of that trophy will always remind you what a loser you really are!

But someone might object, what if you play it fair and lose? Where’s the glory in that? But there is glory in it! You will have the satisfaction of knowing you did your best, and that you played fairly.

That’s the real prize, even if they don’t give you a shiny trophy for it. If you cheat your way to the “A” grade or the laurel wreath, you will have won no gold medal but rather one made of fool’s gold, the only reward for a fool.

Qarol Price is a writer and educator. She has taught philosophy to children in Johnston County Public Schools and in Harlem. She is a resident of Selma.