What do you do when one kind of fairness masks another kind of injustice?

This year's Oscar for best live-action short film went to a little-known Hungarian film, "The Secret of the School Choir." The 25-minute film tells a simple story: Sophie, a girl, transfers to a new school and joins a choir there. That choir is preparing to enter the competition, and if it wins, it will go to Sweden to participate in the European Choir Competition. But after the rehearsal, the choir conductor Erica teacher asked Sophie to sing silently. Later, she found that some students who were poor in singing also sang silently in this way to avoid affecting the effect of the chorus. She felt that it was unfair to cheat like this, so she discussed a way with her good friend Lisa and the children to sing silently during the chorus competition, which made Teacher Erica annoyed. When she stepped down in a rage, the children sang beautifully.
Seeing this, I thought of Harvard professor Michael Sandel's famous public class "Justice". In class, he asked the students, what is justice? Is it just to save the many by sacrificing the individual, the few? Is it just to develop the tobacco industry to promote economic development at the expense of public health? Is it fair that the rich use money to hire the poor for military service and surrogacy? Is an absolutely liberalized market economy just? Watching his open class videos and reading his post-event monograph was inspiring. We understand that there is no absolute justice in this world. There are many "truths" that seem to be universally applicable. As long as we go deeper, we will immediately become at a loss: Who is right?
When it comes to this "Secret of the School Choir", we are also puzzled, what exactly is fair? In the film, it was obvious that a simplification was made, and the choir conductor, Mr. Erica, was demonized into a false negative character, and was eventually kicked off the stage. But as long as you think about it, doesn't she make sense? What she said to Lisa is something to ponder: "Life isn't always fair. Everyone here is working hard to keep us first, even the ones who don't sing. Not everyone is like You are so talented. Would it be fair if only the talented would be allowed in? But if we let everyone sing, we will never be the best. It's true that some of my classmates can't sing well. I never want to name or say It's not their fault. They sing well and we can win the game and your beautiful singing will be more prominent and then we can go to Sweden. Everyone here can say they are the best in the country One of the best choirs. If any of you are impulsive and decide to let us lose these great things, is it fair?”
A choir I was in participated in a chorus competition the year before last, and due to time constraints, the level of the members varied. Qi, the conductor is just like Mr. Erika, in some difficult arias, the members of the group with average singing skills sing silently. It turned out great and we won a gold medal in the chorus competition. Wouldn't it be great to let people with average singing talent also participate in singing, so that everyone can feel the joy of music and enjoy the honor of winning awards? Wouldn't it be fair to deprive them of these rights?
In this day and age, fairness is the most commonly used word on everyone's lips. In fact, to put it bluntly, it is impossible to talk about fairness that has nothing to do with utility. The fairness in the eyes of most people is the fairness related to themselves. But in fact, the fairness that is good for you may not be good for me. Behind one kind of fairness, another kind of unfairness may often be concealed. Therefore, don't believe that there is absolute fairness that is applicable everywhere. Only what is beneficial to the interests of the majority is the real fairness. As Professor Michael Sandel pointed out, both utilitarianism in pursuit of welfare maximization and libertarianism in respect of individual rights run counter to the basic principles of justice. Only when the state and society guide the whole people towards common good is justice in the true sense. We must not be fooled by the concept of fairness that seems to be a "universal value", and truly pursue and create fairness that benefits the majority of the people, making the world a better and more perfect place.

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