….life in
the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
Thomas Hobbes noted
the above in his Leviathan. For
according to Hobbes;
“NATURE hath made men so equal in the
faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes
manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is
reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as
that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may
not pretend as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has
strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by
confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.”
According to Hobbes, we are equal in our
ability to attain our ends which more often than not compete with other’s ends.
This brings forth a dangerous competition, keen on elimination for self preservation.
This is life in a state of nature. Where there is no central authority or any
form of governance. Everything is in chaos.
According to Hobbes the panacea to this is a
government with a strong central authority. Everyone is supposed to cede his
rights to the central authority. This has the effect of bringing sanity to the
populace. This they must do for protection. Any abuses by the authority should
not be questioned by the populace for it is their own creation.
That’s Hobbes. Despite some of his debatable
dispositions in his political philosophy, he touched a very irksome subject of
the human nature; how humans can afford things necessary for a commodious
living. He probably identified the problem but failed to give a perfect remedy.
Why are men and women turning against each
other today even when we have very structured systems of governance? Could it be
that majority of citizens feel that they don’t take part in creating the
government and therefore feel obligated to topple it ala the Arab Spring?
My thinking is that, we kill each other
because we don’t think. We are rational animals. We possess the power of
reasoning. Every day, our leaders advertise their war tenders. We then place
bids for the same. We all qualify and get awarded. Then, we start doing
business with them. We kill. We maim. We loot. Not for us but for them. Then we
resume back to our normal lives. The politicos become richer and powerful as we
became poorer, powerless and maneuverable. The cycle continues unrelentingly.
We don’t rationalize. Politicians use the
power of emotions to make us sympathize with them. Powerful reasoning
definitely alienates emotional tendencies. Where there is logical reasoning,
the fallacy of appealing to the populace’s emotion is entirely eclipsed. They
know this. They debilitate our inherent reasoning capability in us by
predisposing us to environments allergic to logical reasoning. They choose what
goes to the media. They also dictate what is dispensed in our learning institutions.
They control the flow of knowledge.
We are therefore made to believe that we know. Against that foundation, there
is nothing we can do. We are helpless and hapless. We become civil servants, of
course lower cadre, join the military and the police force and swear to blindly
perform the entire sovereign’s work, dirty or clean. We call this duty to the
state. Even when killing innocent people in South Sudan and Syria, it is duty
to the state. Killing for one’s
religion. Killing for one’s political ideology. Is this ok?
Probably, I did not come out clearly. On this,
it is not possible. As humans, we can do better. We can change the world to a
better one. We can embrace one another despite our religions, political
ideologies, race or class we can fair better. To achieve this, we need to stage a putsch against our etiolated system of reasoning, one ingrained into us by the establishment. We need to wear different lens. We need to retrace our true knowledge. We need to reason logically. It is a huge undertaking but trust yourself on this!
