Served, but not Deserved

Does anyone objectively deserve anything?

If we assume “deserve” means that someone should receive a positive or negative return, then the positive or negative would depend on whether the individual’s actions were positive or negative. Whether or not someone “should” do or recieve something, tends to be subjective, or based on the context of the intended accomplishment.

Perhaps if the context is with an agreed-upon intended accomplishment, then there can be an objective action that “should” be taken. Therein, someone “should” do a certain action, rather than another, based on the contextual intended accomplishment. For eg. the agreed upon intended accomplishment could be to allow the most people within a town, to experience the maximum enjoyment of their lives. Within that context, someone “should” refrain from hitting random people with a baseball bat. It would (without a reasonable doubt) reduce the enjoyment of the people who get hit by the bat, and counteract the intended accomplishment.  

So within some contexts, someone “should” receive something, and would therefore “deserve” something positive or negative, usually relative to their actions contribution toward the agreed-upon intended accomplishment. If someone does something which is a positive contribution, they hypothetically deserve something positive in return. But how much?

If all individuals contributing a positive quantity toward a goal, received an equal quantity of positive return right away, then there would be no accomplishment. The goal would not be accomplished, since any progress added by individuals, would then be returned to those same individuals, causing no overall increase toward the goal. For eg, if a city wanted to raise money to build a bridge, and when anyone donated, the city then gave back the same amount of money to the donator, because they “deserved” to receive something positive in return, then the city would never reach its goal of raising enough money for the bridge.

So for it to be an advantageous concept, an individual should “deserve” less positive in return for their contribution. There could potentially be an equivalent or even bigger positive return, while still making progress, but only if the return is delayed to after a point where the goal has been reached. This would work, if the overall goal allows an increase of positive attributes. If more money was returned to the contributors, than they donated, after the bridge is built, there could still be overall gain, if the bridge allows the city to make more money by trading with a neighboring city. But considering gain after the goal, would be extending the context to include future gain. If the context includes that future sum gain, then the individual is still receiving less in return, than the overall gain.

Perhaps the general concept of “deserving” can be described as; a positive return should be given, for positive contribution. How does this apply to the context of general life and existence?  

Something rather than nothing is positive because, nothing would be zero, and something is a numerical positive quantity. So within the context of life, if existence and consciousness is considered to be a positive, which each individual has received, then is a positive return “deserved” to be given back by each individual? If the concept of “deserving” is believed to be applicable within specific contexts throughout life, then it seems logical that it should be applicable to the context of overall life and existence. Therefore, it seems that everyone should give a positive return, relative to the amount of positive which they received from existence and consciousness (if they believe in the concept of deserving).

Perhaps the evaluation of amount of positive, received from existence, is up to the estimate of the individual. If the amount of positive is considered to be substantial (as I would consider), then perhaps the amount that the individual deserves to return, for the receival of consciousness, easily outweighs any amount of contextual positive they might consider they “deserve” throughout life. Without each person's receival of existence, they would never have been able to make any positive contributions, or “deserve” any return, within those specific contexts that occur in life. In a way, it seems any contributions made by an individual, could be credited to the contribution of their initial receival of existence, so any positive return could also be credited to a return for receiving existence in the first place.  

Within context, it seems positive return can be deserved for contribution. But from my perspective, in the context of life, the return can never be enough, which is deserved for receiving the positivity of existence in itself. Any positive received within circumstances in life, can ultimately be credited to the receival of existence by that individual, rather than credited to the individual themselves. For, without existence, there would be no positive whatsoever. In the context of overall existence, for any individual; positives are served, but not deserved.