How To Be Fair and Why We Humans Care About It So Much

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have. - Abraham Lincoln

The grandkids are yelling out those dreaded words. “That’s not fair!” Seems like they are constantly watching for infringements on fairness. And they have their own ways of determining what is fair.

Often I feel I must jump into the fray. But I'm mad. A part of me just wants to shut them up - wants to stifle the protests and synchronized shrieks of those little imps who are breaking the peace.

This constant vigilance, stress, and emotion over what’s fair strikes me as hugely annoying …AND here's the other part...deeply important to address if we want to live the good life.

This struggle to work out what’s fair seems to have started loooooong ago.

Researchers like Dr. Donald Pfaff, author of The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (usually) Follow The Golden Rule, say our concern about fairness is hard-wired into our brains. Anthropologists like Edward Wilson theorizes that groups who were composed of people who were smarter and fairer tended to prevail over those who were less so.

The Greeks and Romans so prized fairness that they clothed her in a stola, gave her scales, and made her a goddess.

But really what is fairness, how do we think about it? Some psychologists have said that fairness is a moral judgment, it is the process by which we determine what is morally right and what is morally wrong. They mention the concern for others, treating others with kindness, making sure that others get their share of resources.

That sounds very deep and philosophical. Yet young kids have a strong sense of fairness and an attraction to people who are deemed fair early on, even as babies, experiments show. Children who are viewed as fair are the most popular with their schoolmates. They are most often chosen as leaders.

Some think fairness is about equality or equal access to resources. Others think fairness is more about proportionality, that is, you get the harvest of your labors OR not.

In the second letter to the Thessalonians, a book in the Christian Bible, attributed to the apostle Paul, a passage has been translated: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” It was this very passage evidently that led John Smith, colonial leader of Jamestown, to utter the “no work, no food” aphorism.

However, for some, including other primates, it may be all about equality. In one of the funniest as well as provocative research videos I have ever seen, primatologist, Frans de Waal, shows capuchin monkeys’ take on fairness.

Capuchin monkey like cucumbers, but they LOVE grapes. In these studies on fairness, monkeys are given cucumbers after they “do their work”...which is to give a rock to the researcher. All goes well until one monkey is given a grape and the other is given a cucumber for the same work. The one who had happily received a cucumber earlier; now howls and shrieks, stomps around and slaps his cage, and tosses the cucumber back at the researcher.

To wrap that all up, fairness may be something we are innately concerned about (even animals) especially if we are the ones not getting the grapes. However, what’s fair can be seen in different ways remember. That is where is gets sticky and complex. Despite the challenges, working cooperatively toward fairness is worth it. Researchers tell us that when people feel their family, their workplace, their society is fair; they are happier, they relate better to each other. There is less violence and aggression.

So what steps can we take to become fairer? Here are some suggestions:

1. Be an includer of people and of different perspectives. We all have easy ways of including others in discussion and activities. We can look for those who are left out and invite them in by asking them their opinions.

2. Notice who is getting the cucumbers and who is getting the grapes. Appeal to people’s sense of fairness. One of the most moving video clips I have ever seen was taken during the sixties. It is of a young girl of color sweetly asking the mayor of Nashville, Tennessee a question. Looking up into his eyes with an innocent sounding voice she asks something like, “Mayor do you think it’s fair that ‘negroes’ are not allowed to sit at the lunch counters?” The Southern mayor takes a breath, looks down at her and replies, “No, I don’t.” Within the month negotiations and meetings had taken place and African Americans were being served. (We are learning that simply asking another person if what they are doing seems fair versus telling them that what they are doing isn't fair works far better to change their behavior and keep their defensive postures quiet).

3. Become more educated on different ways of viewing fairness. You are on the right track if you read this article. Stay alert for other articles and books like The Neuroscience of Fair Play. Be open to discussions and hearing how others view fairness.

4. And most of all, honor the innate drive for fairness exhausting as it can be. We can practice shifting how we view complaints about unfairness. We can take a breath, listen to grievances. We can seek to understand how others view the world, search for underlying issues, and re-balance the fairness scales if need be. Resist continually brushing off our kids and grandkids protests with that commonly used phrase, "Well, life's not fair" though it has its uses on occasion.

How might we Journey to The Good Life by honoring our innate sense of justice and fairness...especially on these days that we honor our veterans who often hope that what they are doing is upholding fairness for all?

Sidebar:

Today is Veteran's Day. I am pondering our American ideals...especially those espoused in our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence. My most beloved sentence is that first one in the second paragraph: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Ken Burns, the American documentarian, is the one that got me thinking about this more recently. In an interview he writes that this was not true at all...that part about being self-evident. And the second thing he talked about was how Thomas Jefferson and the founders thought about happiness.

According to Burns the idea that all men are created equal was radical. They were aspirational and revolutionary because for most of human history societies were structured around rigid hierarchies: kings over commoners, nobles over peasants, men over women, free people over slaves, certain religions over others.

Inequality was seen as natural, divinely ordained, and necessary for social order.

In Europe alone monarchs ruled by "divine right." Aristocracies believed bloodlines determined worth and rights. The church and state reinforced the idea that people were NOT equal in capacity and status. To say that ordinary people were equal, endowed with natural rights from birth - not granted by a king challenged the entire philosophical foundation of world governance.

Truthfully even though the Founders themselves were inconsistent—many owned slaves and did not grant equality to women, Indigenous people, or the poor—the idea of equality planted a seed that future generations could use to demand change.

Frederick Douglass later said that the Declaration’s ideals were “saving principles” that reformers could hold the nation accountable to.

Martin Luther King Jr. called it a “promissory note” the nation must cash for all people.

So why did Jefferson write that sentence. He knew that equality was not the lived reality. According to Burns, by writing “self-evident,” he was doing something strategic: he was asserting a philosophical truth as a moral axiom that the new nation would be built on. It was a bold rhetorical move, not a factual description of society. The radical leap here was the claim that legitimacy flows from the equal rights of people, not from the power of the ruler.

The second thing that Ken Burns talks about is how the founders, Thomas Jefferson in particular, thought about the "pursuit of happiness." It had a very different meaning he says. Burns says the founders were drawing on classical philosophy especially Aristotle, Cicero, and Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke.

When they spoke of happiness they meant "eudaimonia". I have mentioned that before. It's a life of learning that embodies pursuing meaning and virtue and moral excellence. Nothing like we might think of today in terms of pure pleasure and wealth. Instead it meant becoming a person of good character who contributed to the common good. For example, John Adams wrote, "Public virtue cannot exist without private virtue."

Benjamin Franklin founded libraries, debating societies, and civic institutions (according to Burns) because he believed that the pursuit of happiness required education, reflection, and moral development.

Jefferson, who created the University of Virginia, saw education as essential to a functioning democracy because an ignorant population could not protect liberty or pursue true happiness.

In my words, it was happiness through wisdom, not mindless consumption. Happiness was EARNED through cultivation of virtue. It was deep and it was shared. A person became happy by becoming wise, and a nation became strong by having wise citizens.

To sum up my ranting, in 1776 claiming that equality was an accepted truth was a revolutionary moral claim. It became a universal standard because the Declaration said it was a self-evident truth. It ignited movements for abolition, women's suffrage, civil rights, and human rights worldwide.

And again the founders concept of happiness mean living a virtuous, educated, purposeful life which reflected ancient philosophy that the highest human aim is to become good and wise.

Something to think about on this day of celebrating those who serve our country by protecting our ideas. At least that was what John and I thought we were doing when we served in the military.

(A young friend of mine, 10-year-old, Bishop, asked me this question..."Juju," (that's what the kids call me), "do you know why I like you? You're fair." I told him I could not think of a better compliment...I'm hoping to live into that because fairness includes trying your best to be good and wise in my book.

John when he entered the U.S. Army as a dentist in 1970.

Me after just enlisting with my brother. I hope I can continue to build on that Tennessee girl's ideals despite growing up at a time and place where people clearly were not treated as equals.

I'm going to take this time of focusing on ideals for our country. The American Psychological Association recently offered data showing that 63% of adults 18 to 34 have considered relocating abroad this year because of the state of the nation. Among parents more than half (53%) have had the same thought. (My yearly scheduled check by my young dermatologist has been moved to 6 months later - and by an assistant of some sort. Why? She's moved her young family to New Zealand.)

I have on my reading list Bruce Epperly's book, Homegrown Mystics: Restoring our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America's Visionaries. The book blurb says: If the United States is to survive and flourish, the nation must reclaim a common spirit and calm the voices of hate and incivility. This is a spiritual task, taking us beyond the parochialism of creed, political party, and belief systems to affirm our essential oneness as humans and Americans.

Not sure what I will find it its pages and not sure who recommended it. The book highlights 13 people - not ones I might expect - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, John Woolman, Ann Lee and the Shakers, Black Elk, John Muir, Howard Thurman, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Madeline L'Engle, Mary Oliver, Maya Angelou (Looks like an abundance of poets, doesn't it? I know John's mother would be delighted. She held on to the beauty and transcendence of the poets. the Romantic poets in particular, right up until her last breaths as she neared her 100th birthday when a lot of the world didn't make much sense to her anymore).