SOLITARY, POOR, NASTY, BRUTISH AND SHORT

book mark.

I will provide for those still reading, the entire quote from Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, and it is taken from Chapter XIII, which chapter is entitled: of the natural condition of mankind as concerning their felicity and their misery:

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; 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 elsewhere describes the relations of mankind in a primitive state as a war of all against all. Earlier in Chapter XIII, having posited that men have an equality of ability, stating that: 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, he goes no to state that:

From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. And from hence it comes to pass that where an invader hath no more to fear than another man's single power, if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united to dispossess and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life or liberty. And the invader again is in the like danger of another.

This is certainly a bleak view. It is useful to remember two things about the times in which Hobbes wrote. The first is the upheaval, lasting for more than a generation of the defiance of the King by Parliament, eventually leading to the English Civil Wars of the 17th Century--these events and their effect at the subject of Hobbes' Behemoth.

The other was a seminal idea of Montaign's. This was the notion of the "noble savage." For the philosophes of the late 17th and the 18th centuries, the Amerindians of the "new world" were a type for "life in a state of nature." Montaign saw them (at a remove of several thousand miles) as living in a primitive state of purity. Rousseau was to elaborate this idea even more in his essay Sur l'origine de l'inegalite. I feel that those here who suggest that primitive people enjoy benefits of community, and a simple, untroubled existence, are in fact motivated by a relict of Montaign's idea of the noble savage. Although one may well dispute the degree of the application of "the law of the jungle," which might be a phrase used to characterize Hobbes' description of life in a state of nature, my personal opinion is that he is not very far off the mark in his assessment.

In another thread, the Mountie has advanced what he describes as his Hobbesian view of human relations. His post has lead me to state here what it was in Hobbes' Leviathan which lead me to start this thread. I have stated before, and state again, that a primitive notion of tribalism still motivates a large proportion of the world's population. This tribalism is often expressed in terms of what Hobbes' describes, in writing that: others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united to dispossess and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life or liberty. As i've said, this is my opinion. I haven't the arrogance to say that those who have expressed a different view are categorically wrong--but as ought to be obvious, i prefer my own opinion in the matter.

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; 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."

Something about this quote seems strangely familiar...could it be Bush and the continuing goal to create a culture of fear? Very relevant, and grim. As for the "noble savage" theory, I never bought it. It belongs in the realm of Tarzan and chick flicks.

I was a little bit jealous of one of the Amazon rainforest tribes on National Geographic the other day. Not because of food, or shelter - they had to work harder for those things than I do.

But they spend a lot of time together - with their community. They also have a lot of leisure time in which they play with each other.

I don't really have much of a community. I am not religious, and my school is the largest one in the country. It is a little bit like NY in that you never see the same people, and you ignore strangers.

I am close to my few friends and family, but it is not the everyday, playing around and eating together and depending on each other relationship that this tribe seemed to have. And I longed for that.

America is great in that it has basic needs covered and historically great medical care. But in their social lives, many Americans have little sense of community. I haven't known my neighbors since I was under the age of 12. Maybe it is because we are so busy all of the time, or because we think other people are dangerous?

Not to digress too much here, Portal, but if the US has such great health care, why do they want to follow the Canadian model?

footstep

I said historically great. As in, we have some of the greatest health care in history.

I think competition is needed for development, so the Canadian model which does not have incentive for competition would not be best. Politicians look into the Canadian government-sponsored model because it sounds good to the voting populus to get "free" health care.

People don't have to be brutes to make life miserable for each other, Terry. Different people have different wants, different needs, different interests and and they usually conflict with each other. Not because we want them to, but because they do anyway. A human being has the capacity to make himself happy. He does not have the capacity to make everyone else happy and we shouldn't expect him to.

Yes, Rufio.

My post, which Set refers to above, made the argument that we're simply biological critters, and that any of us here could exchange one of our babies with, say, one from a Sapiens hunter-gatherer band from 60,000 years ago, and neither family would notice any difference. In other words, there's no genetic difference, so whatever progress we have made away from brutishness and towards 'civilization' is a consequence of our evolved cultural institutions (I was making an argument in favor of 'government'...I'm a leftie sort). I pointed to examples where institutions had been eviscerated (eg Serajevo, Rwanda) and the consequent reassertion of quite ugly Hobbesian behavior.

Of course, none of this entails that all institutions are grand, nor that simple agrarian or hunter-gather societies are predictably brutish. The variety of social arrangements we've come up with is approximately equal to the number of societies that have existed.

But I think Set is making the argument that we humans have an inherent propensity to organize ourselves at the tribal level, and that this has consequences which can be deeply destructive. He might, if I have him right here, argue with cavfancier that the present US administration's "us versus them" rhetoric has, as its purpose and consequence, a regression towards tribal identity and away from an identity associated with wider community membership (also reflected, obviously, in their rhetoric regarding the UN, or their refusal to support the ICC, etc). If I have Set and Cav right here, then I'm certainly in agreement.

The instigation to war, or to any inhumane behavior, is ALWAYS marked by differentiation and demonization and dehumanizing. They are evil and we are good. The citizen or the leader who voices such a view really ought to be recognized as the dangerous ass he really is.

Just bumped into this piece...not too long, so I'll paste the shebang

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=502353

Can't argue with an analysis which casts the appeal of the right in Amer-ee-kay as tribal.

These institutions don't necessarily have to come from government in the strict sense. As in, the official government is not and should not be the overseer for the entire cultural development of its people.

Culture evolves as civilization evolves and things that are "civilized" don't need governments to form. People didn't start farming because a government told them to - they started farming because it was the best option for them.

People don't need governments to sustain and regulate all of their enterprises. When governments get too invasive they are limiting and don't allow for change. A government that is too invasive takes the money of the people and tells them how to conduct their lives (beyond the basic government function of preventing people from directly harming other people.) This is why I am for the government staying out of the vast majority of human relations. Business regulation, religion, culture (arts), privacy of the home, family structure, etc. should all be things the government should not interefere with. Private organizations that have to compete (organizations are sort of a form of smaller governments with their own structures) specialize in regulating things and can succeed at doing so in ways a massive, bulky federal government can't.

So when you talk about government leading to cultural progress, I think a better way to view it would be that opportunity, cultural trends, and institutions lead to "progress".

[progress is in quotes because I think that Amazonian natives do just fine and live full happy lives without a bulky culture-structure like, say, New York. I don't see progress so much as I see proper adaptation to situation.]

truth
Setanta does us a great service by reintroducing this topic and providing the essential literature to anchor the discussion. Hobbes thesis, which is no less romantic than that of Montaign and Rousseau, tries to "logically" advance an ideal type senario for the emergence of government. Originally, he hypothesizes, man in the absence of government was totally free, unrestrained by any superior force. The trouble with this freedom was that he had to protect himself, and he had to do without the benefits that can only be provided by cooperative operations, operations that are regulated and, in many cases, coerced by some kind of supra-individual effort. His life could be described as chaotic: a war of each against all. In other words, absolute freedom entailed absolute insecurity. Eventually man decided to give up a portion of his sovereignty to form a "sovereign." By this means (this "social contract") mankind purchased a degree of security. He could appeal to authorities when injured rather than resort to the justice of lex talionis (the law of retaliation). I suppose that Hobbes was ambivalent about government. He saw it as necessary but, perhaps, a solution carried too far (consider the names he gave to government: Leviathan and Behemoth); I don't know. But I do know that Thoreau and Rousseau (and Montaign?) considered it an evil. "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains [because of government]."
It must be kept in mind that Hobbes was self-consciously speculating, as did all the social anthropologists of that time. His model was an "ideal type" model, not a reconstruction of actual history.
If such a situation ever occured, it was before the emergence of the various social structures observed by anthropologists. The most primitive is the "band" consisting of a few intermarrying families who lived in a very egalitarian cooperative setting, sans formal leader. Following this, there emerged the type of social organization known as "tribalism." These tribes may be seen as collections of bands, still without a former leader, and essentially egalitarian except for a nod to the experiences of elders. It is in this type of society that an emphasis is given to "us" versus "them," wherein segments of the tribe (which may contain tens of thousands of people) may engage in blood feuds (the Neur of East Africa provide the best evidence for this kind of pattern) that may last for generations. Eventually some tribes form into socially stratified "chiefdoms" in which we see a single leader, a ruler. Tribes have leaders but no rulers. And Chiefdoms sometimes "evolved" into primitive "states", or "kingdoms." These kingdoms formed the highest form of inegalitarian, stratified social organizations with bureaucratic governments. This is the typology of "cultural evolution" that one finds in anthroplogy text books and in 102 lectures. To the extent that it is historically accurate (and there are good reasons to suspect that it is not: for example, the concept of the "tribe" has been widely disputed to be a mere fill-in between the egalitarian band society and the inegalitarian chiefdom, and the range of variation in the structures of "tribal" societies is so great that the lumping category of tribe is seen by some to be empirically unrealistic).
Nevertheless, in my experience with another category of people, i.e., the peasant societies of rural Mexico, I have found qualities of both pre-Hobbsian and post-Hobbsian models. But I have not observed much of the Roussean romanticism advanced by Robert Redfield in his classic portrait of Tepotzlan. I found the peasants I lived with to combine a system of ideals for cooperation with practices of back-biting and social competition best described by Oscar Lewis in his critique of Redfield--and not too unlike aspects of Hobbs' fantasy.

I'm never as lengthy or as reference-ready as either Blatham or Setanta, but Blatham pretty much got my views correct there regarding current US policy and action.

Oooh, jl, interested in your take on Oscar Lewis.

I am only peripherally acquainted with any of this, have read Montaigne, but only his Travels, which vortexed around his gout, and was personally affected by O. Lewis' Children of Sanchez, long ago.

I gather observation of a culture of poverty has ringing detractors. But I see it in myself...

Excuse me, all, if this is inappropriately tangential.

truth
Tangential or not, it's interesting. Lewis' Culture of Poverty has been criticized for a number of reasons (Chas. Valentine is the major critic). It has been argued that his CULTURE of poverty blames poverty on the poor, arguing that they bring it on the themselves. But this is misleading. Lewis' major point, as I recall (it's been decades since I have considered it) was that when people are subjected to conditions of powerlessness and poverty for a long time they come to adapt, to develop patterns of thought and actions that adjust them to their condition. The culture of poverty actually shows us how clever the poor can be in responding to long-term conditions of deprivation and deprecation. He also argued that when the government gives the poor money to improve their condition, their "culture" of adaptation will very likely militate against the changes the money grants were supposed to bring about. He argues that just as it took time for the poor to adapt to their poverty and powerlessness, it'll also take time for them to change. He argued, in effect, for patience in stimulating change. We are going to discover how difficult it is to bring about change in the thinking of people in Iraq, as we expect them to take on democracy as WE see it.

I didn't take it myself that Lewis blamed the poor. I bought another of his books, La Vida?, but never did read it. I do see that moving out of the pattern he describes can take a while. Thus the attractions of various schemes...

Thus my new shoes also.

Some thoughts about what JLN and the Mountie have posted: In choosing Hobbes, i was primarily interested in the political sense of the word tribe. Hobbes, of course, is not necessarily referring to tribes, although such a political unit may be considered implicit in his references to combinations of individuals who band together to either defeat the threat or take the desired "good things" in the possession of others.

The tribe as a concept is originally a political concept (the organization of the Roman polity in the post-Tarquin era), and Hobbes himself is writing what we would call political science, although he would have simply considered it philosophy. This is less about anthropology than about political system. Hobbes was a scholar, known in his own time as a translator of ancient texts (his translation of Thucydides, with some adjustment for modern English verb forms, is still a standard today). The civil wars in England had profoundly disturbed his world--in a phrase much in use in that time, his world had been turned upside-down. If one considers the course of the civil wars, much motivated by, and prolonged by, the interest of what were then known as factions, and if one considers the burden of the text of Thucydides (his translation was his major life's work), with its emphasis on the upheavals caused two thousands years before Hobbes by what he would have called faction, it becomes clearer why the venality of individuals, and the venal ends of associations comes so much to darken his views.

I think JLN does Hobbes a disservice in referring to his "fantasy." I believe that it was certainly a text of speculative rumination, as was Behemoth. Both were also literary experiments. We are accustomed to philosophical speculation as a literary form--but in Hobbes' time, such texts were not found in native English letters. Even in Montaign's time, political philosophy was a relatively new area of intellectual exploration. In writing Behemoth, Hobbes uses a rather awkward device of a dialogue between two hypothetical individuals. In Leviathan, however, he addresses the reader directly. In that he wrote from a perspective of the breakdown of ordinary society as it was then known, and in that he saw this as a product of self-interested individuals and small groups (King and cronies, Parliamentary faction, the Major Generals, the Presbyterians, etc.), i beleive he was lead to a gloomy conclusion about what lay just beneath the surface of any placid, seemingly stable society. Once again, all of this from a political perspective.

And so i was inspired to use Hobbes' text, as i was motivated by a consideration of what happens to us when society fails. So many societies have failed in our times (and i offer no speculation on whether it is in extraordinary measure, although i do have an opinion on that subject), with all the attendant misery for the individual: Rawanda, Somolia, Liberia, Haiti (seemingly eternally) and of course, Iraq. So my original thought was to what extent such conditions make the lives of ordinary women and men solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

I have to wonder about what exactly is the difference between "tribe" and "clique". Different worlds, for sure, and not a global model, but in some ways, "high school is hell" seems the teen version of "life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Funny thing, it was in high school that I first discovered Hobbes.

Next question: Does a society 'fail', or do we fail it?