Fair play is when we decide that neither of us is subjectively in charge of the rules of the game. Instead, we set up rules both of us have to play by and submit to and agree to, an independent arbiter that can be appealed to, regardless of who the actor in question is.
In this way, both of us will sometimes not get what we want, but if we can agree to the rules, some of the time both of of will get what we want. And we will have a way to settle disputes that doesn’t involve having to remove the other person or ourselves from the game.
I want to be fair with my girls, but it’s enormously difficult because I can’t trust either of them. They’re both so hardcore for defending themselves and their position and resisting the other person and their position, and these people are sisters! I can’t trust what they say about themselves or about one another. It makes it so hard to be fair. I know from experience that I can’t trust them when it come to their stories about either themselves or each other.
I’m like a detective in a novel. No one is ever telling the whole truth, they’re always trying to shape it to their benefit. And I always thought, these mysteries would be so easy if people just told the truth. And I thought it was an unrealistic artifice. Nothing could be farther from the truth! In fact, in any real mystery, even benign daily ones such as who kicked who first, that’s the primary obstacle, the threads that must be disentangled. The truth of what everyone says happened and how it affected them and what it meant and why that person is to blame and what they’re guilty of and what I should do about it and why they did what they did and why it was justified and what happened next and in what order. Every day I get to play Hercule Poiroit!
Making Nobody Happy 