Our fundamental democratic tendencies are mysterious. Could it be that democracy and fairness are instinctual, precious DNA strands woven through us like golden threads in a quilt, the warp and woof of our ethical fabric.

“Headline! Read all about it! Democracy gene isolated by scientists! Vaccine sought that will bring out the best in all of us.”

Well, probably not. It’s probably not so simple.

On the other hand, if you’ve ever spent time with tribal societies, and if you kept an open mind during your stay, as much as possible unburdened by the certainty that modern ways are the only ways, then you probably found, as I did when I lived upcountry in Liberia, West Africa, that small groups without formal schooling, without a written language to codify laws and regulations, nonetheless work relentlessly to maintain a sense of social balance and fairness. While Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s philosophy of the noble savage may seem naïvely ideal, it resonates with many of us. When we drive on a weekend to a house in the woods or a campsite, desiring to get away from our daily civilized lives, we sometimes dream, as we stand on a ridge looking towards mountains and trees, of walking into the forest to be one with our viscerally familiar, primitive past where unfairness and dishonesty have no place.

So as foolish as it sounds, it’s just possible that we are genetically programmed to be fair.

Birds, for instance, know instinctually that they were born to fly. It’s not as though they decide to receive flight training. And bears hibernate, whether they want to or not, my intuition telling me that no amount of coffee will keep a bear from sleep in the winter. And snow geese mate for life without any concept whatsoever, at least none that they have written down, of family values.

So why isn’t it possible that we were born to be fair?

Obviously we’re very different from bees, for if we were more like them, as Darwin noted, “there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.” If such were the case—if bees were us—Euripides' “Medea” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” would be comedies rather than the tragedies they are.

Pretty convincing, you’ll have to admit, with scientific evidence tidily tucked away, that we were probably—most definitely—born to be fair.

On the scale of human lives and generations, however, there can be inconsistencies, times during which fairness is in hiding, during which we strive mightily to be as bad as we can be. During these dark periods in human history, we are nasty to one another; we fight one another; we abuse one another; we murder and maim one another, saved in the end only by our instinctual fairness that has led us inexorably to the creation of law: The law supports our instinctual fairness as a bird’s wings support its instinctual flight.

We may joke about lawyers and deride judges, but we can usually rely on the law to get it right, to stay the course until fairness is served.

But not always and especially not when the law itself is wrong. Remember the law that allowed slavery? Remember the laws that disenfranchised blacks and women? Like us, our laws are not perfect. Sometimes they’re wrong or interpreted so wrong-heatedly as to frustrate the fairness they serve.

Take our presidential election, for example. One court says count; another says don’t count. The reasons given are obscure and technical, and the supporters of both presidential candidates cheer wildly when their side appears to win. If you’re ahead in the count, you oppose the recount. If you’re behind in the count, you’re in favor of the recount.

It all seems so wasteful of human energy, so partisan, so senseless, until you realize that there’s an underlying question of fairness the truth of which will out no matter which side wins the election. Unless the ballots are destroyed or sequestered, which would be an even greater violation of fairness, the truth of the count will be revealed inevitably, relentlessly, because our instinctual fairness will demand that we know.

And the uncounted ballots, like a telltale heart, will continue to beat in the background until the truth is known. And when that time comes, let us hope that the oath was administered to the right man.