“Deserves” is a childish word

“Deserves” is a childish word and the people concerned with what they “deserve” are often childish, if not outright narcissistic. The topic arises cause a guy I know is with a woman whose aspiration in life is to get married, it seems. Not BE married, GET married (the difference matters). She doesn’t want kids. Weird, right? Why bother with the marriage except for social status and kids? She doesn’t want the “kids” part of marriage, the part that really matters, so it’s pure social status for her, I guess. If that weren’t enough, my buddy (we’ll call him Steve) has read and been ensorcelled by the sex club book, so he wants to try non-monogamy. Steve has good communication skills, so he’s been negotiating out what the life with him and the woman should look like, since they want different things. He’s talked to her and not come to a final conclusion, in part probably because the girl fucks really well and is hot, two things known in combination to beguile men. There are FDA warnings about such women.

They were talking and the girl said she “deserves to get married” and “deserves to be excited about getting married.” I say “said” instead of “argued” because “I deserve to get married” isn’t an argument. Adults know that people don’t get what they deserve all the time. People also often don’t get what they do deserve, to the extent any of those things are computable at all.

I’m not opposed to people “getting what they deserve…” justice and fairness are based partially on those lofty goals. But “deserve” has so many dimensions that trying to compute them, let alone talk about them, seems futile. “Deserves” may not even be a linear system, so something like linear algebra may only be useful for approximations, not the real thing. The real world has very large, maybe infinitely large, matrices that include many variables for “deserve.” Does someone who works hard and makes a lot of money but is an asshole “deserve” the money? Does someone who is a good person who gives away too much value “deserve” to get that value leeched? I don’t know, and a person could generate an infinite number of such questions, with no final answer. Life is not solvable.