"Nasty, Brutish, and Short": Gotham City and the State of Nature

In my first blog post, I mentioned a concept called the State of Nature, by way of explaining Hobbes' Leviathan.  I'm going to circle back to that concept now, because it's this post's main topic.  The State of Nature refers to what people were like before sociopolitical structures like cities and governments existed.  These days, it's a question for anthropologists and paleontologists to research, but a few hundred years ago it was primarily a philosophical question.  Several philosophers and political theorists have offered up explanations of what the State of Nature was like, but I'm going to focus on two prominent ones: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

You might remember from the first blog post that Hobbes didn't have a very positive view of humanity, so it's not a big surprise that his description of the State of Nature was grim and brutal.  He saw human life in the State of Nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", because people were in a constant battle for survival.  And I do mean battle.  Since Hobbes considered survival to be the ultimate goal, whatever got someone closer to that goal was justified.  In other words, anything goes and fair play is out the window.  Might makes right and everyone is at war with everyone else.

Now that you have an idea of what the State of Nature according to Hobbes looks like, you might be thinking it makes a good setting for an action/adventure story.  Well, as it turns out, a lot of people in Hollywood have had that same thought.  Hollywood loves a good fictional anarchic setting, and they've churned out a lot of stories straight out of a Hobbesian State of Nature: everything in The Dark Knight Rises after Bane takes control of Gotham; Lord of the Flies; Mad Max; and the hunger games (the contest within the books, not the books themselves).  Now, more than a few people have wondered why don't people just stop fighting, if the State of Nature sucks so much.  That's an excellent question, and I'm going to answer it by linking to a quick video (the same video used to provide an answer to me when I was a poli-sci student).  For those who didn't follow the link, it's the Mexican standoff scene from Reservoir Dogs.  It's a great illustration of why nobody stops fighting - they don't want to put down their weapons and leave themselves vulnerable.

On the somewhat opposite end of the spectrum we have John Locke, who laid out a more optimistic, less violent vision of what the State of Nature looked like.  Locke's concept imagined more cooperation and less combat, and mutually agreed-upon social structures that fulfilled societal needs in the absence of a government.  Locke didn't go so far as to believe people would behave ethically 100% of the time - he understood that some people would not feel like "playing nice", so some proportional punishments would sometimes be necessary to maintain society and deter these individuals.  Locke's idea of the State of Nature is less exciting, but it still shows up in this scenario: a diverse group of individuals with strong opinions have to put aside their differences for a greater goal.  The Avengers is a decent example.  The members of the team are (mostly) noble and heroic, don't fully like or trust each other, but have to work together despite their differences and manage to cooperate pretty well.  The Dirty Dozen, Top Gun, and most disaster movies adapt a Lockean concept of society as well. 

So how do these concepts relate to real life? Well, there are plenty of examples of both the Hobbesian and the Lockean versions of the State of Nature throughout history and the modern world.  Under the "Hobbes" column, you have Afghanistan, Russia (to a certain degree), and parts of Mexico and Albania under control of drug cartels.  Anywhere a lawless and violent enclave or region exists, basically.  On the "Locke" side of the ledger, you have New York after Hurricane Sandy and post-civil war Lebanon (this one might be a stretch). 

So there's a quick look at the State of Nature concept.  We'll revisit it in a future post, and will take a look at the Social Contract next time.

Loki and the Leviathan

"Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power.  For identity.  You were made to be ruled.  In the end, you will always kneel." - Loki, The Avengers

Who should rule over a population? Why do people create societies? How do people behave when there's nobody in charge? Loki alludes to these three questions while he gives the usual "I'm a megalomaniacal villain" speech; he doesn't answer the last two, and his answer to the first one is (of course) "me." His little spiel is a throwaway scene that firmly establishes him as an over-the-top bad guy, in case the audience missed everything he did up to that point.  But let's look closer at what he said in this scene, along with those three questions at the top of this paragraph.

Loki's basically saying, "People are a pack of uncivilized animals who can't be trusted to rule themselves.  Leave them to their own devices, and they'll spend their time fighting each other for a higher rung on the social ladder.  They need someone to control them, and deep down they all know it." He's saying all this because he's the bad guy and wants to be in charge, but he's copying his ideas from a 17th century philosopher named Thomas Hobbes.

One of Hobbes' biggest contributions was Leviathan, the work that most people know him for.  In Leviathan, Hobbes argued that:

1. People were basically warlike and self-interested
2. Because of #1, people were constantly fighting each other (for food, land, resources, etc)
3. People eventually formed societies because they got tired of the constant fighting
4. A sovereign with near-absolute authority was appointed to run society, to keep citizens safe from external threats and to prevent them from reverting to their warlike natures

Sounds a lot like Loki's speech, right? Almost like something Hobbes could have written himself.  This concept comes up a lot in pop culture, especially sci-fi: some entity with extraordinary abilities takes control of society, or tries to, on the premise that people aren't able to rule themselves.  Here are a few other examples: I, Robot, Demolition Man, Equilibrium, and The Hunger Games.  It's also a common plot gimmick in cartoons and comic books: the heroes develop authoritarian attitudes for one reason or another, and make themselves absolute rulers.  Marvel and DC have both made stories about it, and it's even shown up in a Simpsons episode.  

So why does this all matter? Well, honestly, this is something I wrote for fun - to make a classic philosophical idea relatable by linking it to something most people are familiar with, and to get people thinking about deep political questions.  Those three questions mentioned earlier have been at the center of a lot of political writing over the centuries.  Thinking about them is supposed to change how you think about society, government, and the world in general.  Hobbes gave just one perspective; there were political theorists before and after him who had different takes on those questions.  We'll get to them in time.  For now, I want to restate the three questions I raised earlier, to you think about them as you finish this blog post.  I'll be revisiting them in the future.

Who should rule over a population? Why do people create societies? How do people behave when there's nobody in charge?