Reply #3: Why is Rumsfeld still in office? Impeach this Hobbesian prick now! [View All]

[whistle]

<Hobbesians follow the writings and ideas of the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes>

<snip>
Shall we wander a bit among Hobbesian thought? Hobbes, who lived in the mid 1600s, mostly in England, challenged the divine right of kings while favoring monarchy as a proper and efficient exercise of powers derived from the people. Sam Adams, early American President,* is known to have been influenced by Hobbes. W (Bush II) is, in turn, an admirer of the monarchical tendencies of Sam Adams.

To Hobbes, absolute autocrats created or mirrored the circumstances for nasty, brutish and short lives of dehumanized peoples in a state of nature (pessimistic is the word generally applied to Hobbes). Autocrats are accepted by most peoples partially or mainly out of ignorance, take your choice. Therefore, it pays autocrats to keep their people ignorant, deluded about actualities.

Viewing humankind in a nasty, brutish and short life, Hobbes also wrote that people tended to be individualistic mechanically-behaving animals constantly at odds with others, whether humans or non-humans. In that sense, given Maslow's Hierarchy, in a state lacking stability or personal security, humankind exists in a context of warring for advantage, however ephemeral. Given fear as normal, fear of death as constant, people are willing to accept or to create a higher authority or state to which, in exchange for a degree of security and stability, they surrender their natural rights and submit.

Quite a mix of possibilities emerges through scanning Hobbes in the light of present events. Hobbes may be responsible for an itch which afflicted successor theorists such as Locke, Spinoza and Rousseau, not to mention the great moral philosopher, Adam Smith. Together and with others, these folks are seen as advocates for a Civil Society, which may be also named a liberal society.

In connection with Gleam and Glow, we may be confronted with a moral conundrum worthy of these great worthies. The state of nature for the released-from-aquarium golden fish was quite marvelous, I assume, in their terms. This quite marvelous situation for them, while bringing a degree of joy, material benefit and, perhaps, hope to Malkocs and other returning people of Jezero meant suffering for the fish which, in many ways paralleled the circumstances which drove the people from their homes and community into five years of misery.

From Hobbesian perspectives, then, the golden fish, given the choice, might prefer the humans to stay someplace else. That is, to leave them alone.

In earlier pieces for Swans, I have suggested that most of the people in the world would dearly love to be left alone to be what they are where they are. As a society, one can observe that the one alternative which we seem never to choose is to leave any one or any thing alone to be whatever they or it may be.

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