Another Question
Posted on 11 December 2009
Let us assume, as Thomas Hobbs, that the human species is – at its core – chaotic, infantile, brutish, even murderous. He (and many like him) have therefore proposed that the solution is civilization, ie: education: a process of refinement; of enlightenment; of discipline; a process that (by due diligence) delivers us human beings to a place where we are able to guide those less clear out of the jungle.
But how can that work (from a logical point of view) if what we have started with is brutal and chaotic? How is it that out of this mess of nasty clay we are able to create beings that are enlightened? If we are to apply the “scientific method” to this premise of Hobbs et al don’t we run into a basic logical problem?
Further more, if we are to look at the application of human civilization to the species over the past twenty-five hundred years (since the Greeks) has it worked? (Especially now, let’s look at it.)
Most of our species lives in abject poverty. Hundreds of millions are starving to death, particularly children. Wars abound, carried out be ever more sophisticated machines of killing as developed by these superior minds. Only a small portion of the earth’s population (almost invariably those that have attained this enlightenment and discipline) are living well. A very few (the ones with the highest aptitude for working the tools of this civilization or have relatives good at it) are living really, really well (at least materially).
Are these people at the top examples of goodness (that would include all of us reading – and writing – this blog, I guess)? Have we been delivered from the jungle of chaos and violence by the civilization that has educated us, given us jobs, given us enlightening material to read, to watch, to ponder?
Has civilization worked for us? Has it worked for those who preside “over” us? Has it worked for those “under” us?
3 responses to Another Question
One has to submit that it has worked, at least a little. We haven’t prospered on the level of the dinosaurs (around 230 million years), but so far so good. There are two reasons for optimism. First, Hobbes overstated his case. One has to ask: chaotic, infantile, brutish, even murderous in comparison to what? Certainly not nature. Hobbes compares us to an abstract ideal. We are at fault for not being who we “could be.” No other species or for that matter physical system has to rise to that challenge. “Really Nala? Gazelle? Again?” “Come on dark matter; pull your weight!”
Second and more to the point, we thrive because of the miracle/curse that is symbolic language. Symbolic language at once allows us to interact with others of our kind fluidly and creatively. At the same time, communicating in symbols–things that point to rather than “carry” meaning–means that we can never really actually share our authentic experiences with one another, or for that matter remember them ourselves. Language represents reality; it does not reproduce it. Our recall in words (which is everything) essentially destroys the experience it recalls.
Because we are creatures of symbolic language, which means we are essentially cut off in the most primal sense from our natural world, we are more emotionally and spiritually motivated to cooperate than to compete. We cling to each other, because we are all we have. Education is not just our storehouse of knowledge. It is also and more importantly our storehouse of method–the rules of engagement, the way we settle on “truth” when the actual truth of being prisoners of our genetic signal behavior patterns is denied to us by self-consciousness and self-awareness. We are all doomed to die alone, unless we create and sustain the broad fragile social consensus that we are not. And that is why, despite our brutish nature, we rise above ourselves.
I was going to apologize for being long-winded, but then I remembered . . . Hobbes? This post is practically Haiku!
Rosseau, good natured, or the elegant Voltaire?
The End of the West is close, it’s near
As the East is driving in the faster lane
And all environment promises will be in vain
If not we realize the futility of fame
All our thinking efforts will be lame.
Go grow in your back garden turnips, swedes
At least to nourishment for some it leads
(Excuse the doggerel, but it’s time for writing rhymes on the Christmas gift packages:-/ )
Herman
Addition about vegetables in your back garden:
“At Carnuntum people begged Diocletian to return to the throne, to resolve the conflicts that had arisen through Constantine’s rise to power and Maxentius’ usurpation.[195] Diocletian’s reply: “If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”[196]
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian
Herman