Justice ought to do...

The Irish man of letters John Burke once wrote: ‘It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do.’ (On Conciliation with America, 1775, p.31). I thought of van Zyl Slabbert, who recently was installed as Chancellor of the University of Stellenbosch, when I read this quote.

There are few people in this world who have, as van Zyl does, an instinct for reason and justice. You and I know of some individuals who have this quality, embedded in their very nature, a visceral inclination towards doing the right thing. Nelson Mandela has it. Archbishop Tutu has it. Helen Suzman has it. Beyers Naude had it.

There are of many intellectual democrats around, individuals who are convinced by reason alone that it is the best societal arrangment for humanity, but do not feel it in their bones. The best combination is a van Zyl, someone who marries a sophisticated command of reason with a biology for doing the right thing.

This is what I mean: doing the right thing is an emotional drive. There are people in this world who are deeply distraught by and literally can feel ill at the sight of injustice. Being ‘distraught’ or ‘feeling ill’ are biochemical reactions that can be mapped in detail.

Biochemical reactions are under genetic control in the sense that the cells that secrete the chemicals that make one feel good or bad or somewhere in-between are made by genetic instructions. These are distributed unequally. Some people have a powerful sense of justice; and others lack it entirely. Most fall in-between.

Lets become a little more specific though. ‘Justice’ is too vague. One of its components is love. Better still, love for other human beings as human beings. Love is an emotion. It has a known biochemistry. We know which brain cells pump what chemicals to provide for that feeling of elevation we call love.

The function of love is pair-bonding, to sustain sexual attraction beyond initial lust. Love is why we survived on this planet, for it is the fundamental cement of sociality. Sexual attraction brings people together but, without love, it may wither on the vine. We are not the only ones capable of love.

Unselfishness is an emotion. We know all about selfishness, the drive to satisfy individual needs. Survival as individuals require a degree of selfishness. Survival as a group requires a degree of selflessness. Social and cultural rules tend to restrain selfishness in favour of selflessness, of altruism.

Our greatest moments on this planet is when we cooperate and act selflessly, when we put the social good ahead of individual needs. The discipline of sociology – van Zyl Slabbert’s and my discipline – is in part about studying the rules and norms that strike the balance between individualism and the public good.

A sense of fairness is an emotion. There is an experiment going down around the world where individuals are being asked to do the following things. They are given 100 units of a currency and told that they must give some of it away to others and to keep the remainder. This is what tends to happen.

Most people gave half of the currency away. A minority tried to give as little of it away but even they are prompted by guilt to give an amount that is not too embarrassing. Then there is the other minority who want to give a lot away, but met resistance by the receivers who are suspicious of the generosity and think it is a bribe or favour that has to be returned and they want no part of it.

Love, unselfishness or altruism and a sense of fairness are the building blocks of the justice instinct and that is one part of what makes van Zyl Slabbert an extraordinary individual. The other part is the sophistication and open integrity of his intellect which, together with his nonsense detector, creates a vibrancy of company we all enjoy.

I served on the electoral reform commission that Van Zyl chaired. President Thabo Mbeki’s cabinet’s failure to act on the commission’s recommendation is one of its more shameful and tragic mistakes, for it left intact a system that render MPs unaccountable to the electorate and turn them into sad supplicants to party bosses.