Thomas Hobbes can go to hell. We’ve been doing very well without the belief in the divine right of kings. He wrote that without a strong leader : “….there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
He believed we needed the iron hand of a father, general, controller to permit people to live without fear of each other and have the structure to create a livable society. News flash, brother, since your time our liberal democracies have been doing quite well in creating safe spaces for people to live happy, sane lives. It doesn’t require an overlord, or a whole circus uniting behind an orange clown. We can also, as one option among many, choose to agree on certain laws and precepts by consensus. That takes a lot of doing (people need to be educated, or have the opportunity, sources and leisure to educate themselves) but we can do it. We have done it. It’s not so bad.
In a natural state, I don’t believe humans are fear driven rivals. I just don’t see that as prevalent in nature. In other species, there’s sometimes competition for breeding (the male lion with his pride, the male horse with his herd) but so many other mammals live in cooperation. Who’s to say that we have more in common with lions than meercats?
Everything we see that is man-made around us, every house, road and bridge, was made because humans were able to cooperate, to communicate. What makes places work effectively is setting up a system (and respecting and maintaining that system) where people can exchange, listen to each other, come up with solutions to problems.
Steven Miller said, and I think truly believes, that “We live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” That’s not how you build a bridge. That’s how you stay in your little circle around the fire, while some brute with nails in his baseball bat struts around as your “protector” tries to convince you that every animal in the forest wants your place by the fire, and he’s the only one who can defend you, when in fact they just want to be left alone. And to carry the story a bit further, if you help them have their own fire, they usually don’t want to come over to yours.
There’s fire in the trees at the moment. We’re having a glorious autumn with the yellows and golds hanging around for much longer then we usually have the right to. I’m so happy to be living in a sane part of the world.
I’m just grooving on tap water this week. Man, I can get up in the middle of the night, turn a tap and have fresh, clean water. It’s glorious, much like the beautiful autumn.
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