Episode #026 - Transcript

Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday, and I hope you love the show.

I want to begin the episode today with a little thought experiment. I want you to imagine that something happens to society as we currently know it—you know, there’s a downfall of the standing government of whatever country you’re currently living in—and all of a sudden you find out that the new system of government that’s going to be erected is a monarchy. Now, as modern citizens of democratic societies, we’re supposed to be appalled by the idea of this ever happening. I mean, we saw what happened in World War II; we saw what happened categorically throughout human history. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This monarchy is never going to work. Why even talk about it? It doesn’t matter who the monarch is, it’s destined to fail.

Well, hold on, let’s just say that we had to for a second. What sort of qualities would you want that monarch ruler to have? If you had to be ruled by one, what sort of personality traits would you want him to have? In fact, let’s take it one step further and go a little bit ridiculous here. What would that monarch ruler’s spirit animal be? What animal from the animal kingdom possesses the sorts of qualities that you would want in a monarch ruler if you had to live under one? Now, Machiavelli gave us a couple. Would you want him to be cunning and sneaky like a fox, to be able to always be one step ahead of other rulers? Or would you want him to be more like a lion—strong, brave, king of the jungle, keeping us safe from everything that might potentially harm us? Maybe you’d want him to be like one of those weird anglerfish that live at the bottom of the ocean, you know, with the lantern on their head, guiding us through the dark, uncharted waters ahead.

Well, in the 1600s, a man named Thomas Hobbes asked himself that very same question. And the animal that he chose when he asked it was a leviathan. Now, for anybody unfamiliar, the leviathan is an animal from mythology. It doesn’t actually exist. It’s known as being monstrous and terrifying, kind of like the alpha predator of the ocean. But look, you don’t got to take my word for it. You can read exactly what Thomas Hobbes read in the Bible in Job 41:18. “His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn.” It says later in the Bible, “Smoke went up from his nostrils and devouring fire from his mouth, glowing coals flamed forth from him.” It says in Revelation later, “And I saw a beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.”

Now, to me personally, I think this sounds terrifying. I mean, seriously, what world has this creature lived in where natural selection has allowed for it to have ten horns? Like, in what world do you benefit from fighting ten things simultaneously? But really, it’s not important what I think of this thing; it’s what Thomas Hobbes thought of this thing. These are the descriptions he was reading when he was wracking his brain for the thing that he wants his leader to be most like. I mean, of all the creatures you could choose, you choose a leviathan? That doesn’t sound very fun. Well, he was speaking metaphorically. He needed to go to mythology to even find a creature to compare his vision to.

Now, the title of his most famous work was Leviathan. And he actually helped design the front cover of the first printing of his book. And what he chose for the cover was a giant human-shaped figure, its body made out of hundreds of small human bodies representing the citizens of a potential state. And the head of this giant human figure was one man, what he referred to as the sovereign. But before we dive into Leviathan, it’s going to be useful for us to understand where Thomas Hobbes is coming from with all of this. Let’s get a little background on him.

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 and was very quickly after his birth made an orphan. Now, shortly after that, his uncle who happened to be quite well-off, quite rich, agreed to take care of him. And that’s significant to us because without his uncle as his guardian, Thomas Hobbes may not have ever had the resources to acquire the education that allowed him to then go on and affect generation after generation of future philosophers, which you’ll soon learn about. But the other important part of Hobbes’ life is that he lived smack-dab in the middle of the English Civil War that took place in the 1640s. So, he was uniquely aware of just how easily the bricks that hold society together can come crumbling down. Now, this fact also offers us some insight into the world Hobbes was immersed in and how that world may have shaded his views on human beings in general or the inevitabilities of any political system that he saw.

But moving on, maybe some of us have heard the term “social contract” before. Well, what is a social contract? Well, we can get some insight into that by thinking about what a contract is at all. The dictionary defines contract as “a written or spoken agreement, usually by two or more parties.” Well, the social contract that we’re going to talk about today is one of several social contracts that will eventually be laid out by philosophers, and what it concerns itself with at its core are two fundamental questions. One, why do humans need government in the first place, or how did people come to realize that government was a good idea at all? And two, what is the role of government in the lives of the individual citizens, or how much authority should that government have?

Now, the social contract is something you’re very familiar with. Because whether you realize it or not, you have signed it and live in accordance with it every single day ever since that fateful day at the hospital when your mother gave birth to you. But to be fair to you, it really wasn’t an explicit choice that you made at first. The choice was made for you by thousands of years of human civilization. But to be fair to them, in the eyes of Thomas Hobbes, it was without a doubt the correct choice, and you should really be thanking them for it. Let’s talk about why.

Thomas Hobbes says that in the beginning, man lived in what he called a state of nature. Now, in modern times, nature typically comes with a pretty positive connotation. You know, let’s go on a nature walk. You want to come? That sounds pretty peaceful. You wouldn’t want to come on the Thomas Hobbes nature walk. The state of nature to Thomas Hobbes is a ruthless, dog-eat-dog, perpetual state of warfare where anything goes and any act of violence is justifiable no matter how seemingly unnecessary it is. This sort of world is the default state of man when no laws and government are in place to maintain order.

Maybe the best way to picture the state of nature that Thomas Hobbes described is to think about what it might look like in modern times if it was instantly implemented. I mean, what would happen if, all of a sudden, laws and government ceased to exist? What would the world look like? Well, luckily for us, it’s laid out perfectly in the movie The Purge that came out a couple years ago. In fact, I think there’s a sequel coming out this year. If anybody hasn’t seen it, the premise of the movie is that, well, for various reasons that supposedly benefit society in the movie, the tagline of the movie trailer is that all crime, including murder, is legal for 12 hours. And then once that 12 hours is up, it’s over. You can be punished again. I still have no idea why they needed to make the distinction that all crime, including murder—I’m pretty sure that’s included in all crime.

But anyway, this 12-hour period in this movie is a great depiction of what the state of nature would look like to Thomas Hobbes. There are no private property laws. People are taking whatever they want. They’re trespassing wherever they want, killing whoever they want if it benefits them in some way. There are no police to come to your home if someone attacks you. There are no firetrucks to come if your house is set on fire. There’s no FBI to track down your kids if they’re kidnapped.

Thomas Hobbes paints a very similar picture when describing the state of nature. He says that because there is no private property, nothing belongs to anyone. Now, the thing about that is that it’s not like when that happens—when there’s no private property—we don’t instantly enter a society where everything’s of communal property. No, the inverse is true as well, that everything belongs to everybody. And this sort of dynamic makes everything constantly up for grabs. This sort of dynamic also makes you perpetually at war with the rest of the potential grabbers, which is everything that exists on planet earth.

Hobbes describes the state of nature here: “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, or 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.” Not only are you constantly at war with things like starvation or the elements or, not to mention, any renegade asteroids that might want to come down and just instantly end your existence, but you are at war with every single other human on planet earth. You’re living a subsistent lifestyle. You have nobody to trade with. There is no specialization. Your life becomes very similar to an animal’s life: looking for food and other necessities of survival, constantly paranoid of predators watching you, living a solitary, brutish life, as Hobbes would say. Things are not very fun.

And the reason you’d have to be paranoid and just expect people to undermine your survival in the name of theirs is that morality as we know it does not exist in the state of nature that Hobbes lays out. He explains it here in the Leviathan, extrapolating from the inevitable state of war that we find ourselves in when we’re in that state of nature: “To this war of every man, against every man, this is also consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses, and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude.”

What he’s saying here is, if you were living this terrifying, subsistent lifestyle in the state of nature, when somebody sneaks up behind you and they beat you in the head with a rock—they steal your wife from you, they kill all your children and take all of your stuff, all of that before you even regain consciousness—you might feel kind of irritated at that guy, right? I mean, in today’s world, that’s a pretty messed-up thing to do, totally unfair, right? Wrong! Thomas Hobbes says that there is no injustice when no laws are put in place in the first place. Whether something is good or bad or right or wrong really is only present when there’s a goal that’s trying to be achieved.

People living in the state of nature don’t have a system of laws that they can look to and feel a sense of injustice about. In the state of nature, there is no good or bad behavior as we would typically see it. In fact, the only thing that can really be considered a “good” in the state of nature, the single goal that is in place for humans when in this state of nature, is self-preservation. Self-preservation is the goal. Therefore, in every action that we take while in this state of nature, we should strive for it.

Let’s say you come across somebody else’s camp. He’s gone somewhere, so you take all of his food, all of his supplies, all of his materials. That’s perfectly justifiable because you’re acting in the interest of the only good, which is self-preservation. And to Thomas Hobbes, this is both obvious and understandable. This is perfectly compatible with his view of what human nature is, to be selfish. We are self-interested, survival-oriented machines, to Thomas Hobbes. We have deep impulses deep inside of us to slight each other in the name of self-preservation.

By far this is the biggest point of disagreement with Thomas Hobbes by future philosophers. Are all humans at their roots fundamentally selfish? It’s a tough question. And it’s not weird if you feel attacked when he says that. It’s not weird if you disagree with it. I mean, after all, how does Hobbes explain someone who volunteers their time? How does Hobbes explain somebody that performs good deeds like helping an old lady across the street? Certainly, these people who are altruistic aren’t selfishly driven at their core, are they? Well, there are good arguments on either side. Hobbes would probably respond to that, that people who are altruistic do so because of their selfish drive to assert themselves as superior to other people: morally superior to those who could have helped the old lady across the street but chose not to, and physically superior to the old woman he’s helping across the street.

Now, when you start to get into the intentions as to why people do what they do, things can get a little hazy. The important part is that Hobbes views human nature as fundamentally selfish, and he’s perfectly fine with that. In fact, if you’re one of those people that think that deep down people are good at their core and not selfish, Hobbes would say, why do you lock your door at night, then? I mean, if that’s truly what you believe, that humans are good and not selfish, then leave your door unlocked. You shouldn’t be scared of that. One of the things that makes Hobbes really unique about this time period is that he’s not really interested in thinking about utopias or how he would like for the world to be; he’s interested in what the world actually is right now. And humans, to Thomas Hobbes, are selfish creatures.

Humans time and time again declare war with other humans and other creatures for their own self-preservation. And when Hobbes breaks it down, he sees three main causes for why a human would enact this state of war. “So that in the nature of man, we find three principle causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first, maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other people’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, some other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.”

See, to Thomas Hobbes, there are three main reasons why we would go to war with each other when in this state of nature. And he just laid them out in that quote: personal gain of some type, personal safety, and personal reputation. Now, the common thread among all three of them is that they are a personal interest that they are pursuing. See, Thomas Hobbes isn’t a believer in the idea that certain people are born, and they’re naturally superior to other people. Sure, some people may be stronger or faster. They might be able to complete an obstacle course faster than someone else. They might be able to lift more weight or beat somebody else senseless in a direct engagement. But that other person that they’re beating senseless, they have gifts too, gifts that in the eyes of Thomas Hobbes makes the two of them equal.

So, if we had this strong, athletic guy, and he’s out in the wild, and he comes across a fruit tree that he wants some fruit off of. But then he sees some less athletic guy than him put a stake in the ground right next to that tree, and he’s obviously claiming it as his own. Well, to Thomas Hobbes, the athletic guy wouldn’t be the odds-on favorite against the other guy because the less athletic guy has other gifts that make them both equal. Maybe he’s a better tactician than the other guy. Maybe he has the ability to manipulate the athletic guy with words or to try to trick him into falling into a spike pit that he dug earlier. The possibilities are endless. And it doesn’t take much thought to see where Hobbes is naturally going with this.

“From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in 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…endeavor to destroy, or subdue another….if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat, then others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united, to dispossess, and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labor, but also of his life, or liberty.…And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he sees no other power great enough to endanger him...”

What Hobbes is saying is that all three of these reasons why humans quarrel with each other in the first place—competition, diffidence, and glory—really all three of these can be distilled down to one thing, self-preservation. What humans naturally recognize when they’re out in this state of nature long enough is that this constant state of war is incredibly taxing both mentally and physically. Like I said before, when humans are in the state of nature, they’re constantly behind enemy lines fighting to defend everything from everything. There must be a better way.

Now, Hobbes says that what humans eventually realize when they’re in this state of nature is that they could achieve a higher level of self-preservation—that is, a life without all of this constant looking over your shoulder and uncertainty—they could achieve that life if they could eliminate this threat of other humans. Hobbes says that what humans eventually realize is that they have to seek peace. Now, there are two main ways you could do this. You could try to use your natural gifts to overpower people and make them your slaves. But as Hobbes says before, that’s not going to work for very long if it even works at all. Those people that you’re enslaving have natural gifts themselves just as you have natural gifts. And eventually they’re going to escape or kill you and take all of your stuff. And if the reason we did it in the first place is to eliminate the anxiety of having to constantly looking over your shoulder, well, that doesn’t really accomplish that, now does it?

The second way you can do this is by signing a contract with your neighbor. Let’s take our example from earlier. The really athletic guy comes across a fruit tree with another less athletic guy trying to lay claim to it. They both realize that the tree produces much more fruit than they could ever eat by themselves. So they make an accord. You know, since we’re neighbors right next to each other, doesn’t it benefit us both to make an agreement not to attack each other? I mean, since we’re both acting in the interest of self-preservation, and since there isn’t a scarcity of anything that would cause us to have to hurt each other to get what we need, wouldn’t the best thing to do, if we were truly acting for our own preservation, be to agree that you won’t attack me, I won’t attack you; we’ll share the fruit from this tree equally down the middle? And look, if anybody comes to take it, we can defend it together, both of our strengths combined. This really is a win-win for both of us. We get what we need, and we don’t need to constantly watch our backs, at least on one side of our houses. We can focus all of our attention elsewhere. Let’s make a contract.

Now, Thomas Hobbes would have liked that contract. But what he says is that this agreement, this handshake agreement, is not enough. Hobbes says that it would be—sure, it would be wonderful if we could just put our hands on a Bible and take a solemn oath that we’re never going to attack this person that we made an agreement with and be fine with it. But that’s never going to be enough. Never underestimate just how selfish humans can be. And never underestimate the evil things they can do in the name of self-preservation.

So, Hobbes says that taking an oath isn’t good enough. How can we ensure that that athletic guy is going to follow the contract that he signed with the little guy? Well, how would we enforce a contract in today’s world if no government or legal system was in place to enforce it? Let’s say you’re buying a fish tank from someone off of Craigslist, and they looked a little sketchy. Let’s say you don’t really trust this guy at all, and it’s impossible to just instantly make a transfer between the fish tank and the money. Someone needs to give their end of the bargain first. You have to give him the money, and then he runs off with your fish tank.

We see this sort of situation all the time in the movies. You know, the protagonist and antagonist meet somewhere. The antagonist usually has the leading female and love interest of the protagonist in a headlock with a gun to her head saying, “Give me that briefcase full of money, or the girl gets it!” Well, the hero of the movie doesn’t trust this guy. Why should he? He says, “No, you give the girl over, then you get your briefcase full of money.” Now, all of a sudden, there’s a stalemate. Who gives their stuff over first? Both parties can’t trust each other. In fact, whenever somebody does hand over their half first and the other side reciprocates, my first thought is always, wow, why’d do you do that? You could have had both of them. You’re an idiot.

What Hobbes is saying in Leviathan is that when humans get into this weird bargaining stalemate where they’re bargaining for a safer, less anxiety-filled life, when one person is saying, “Give me the briefcase,” and the other person’s saying, “No, first you give me the girl; then you get your briefcase,” we need the guy with the AK-47 pointed at both of them saying, “Both of you better hand over your half right now, or you both die. How about that, guys?” This person holding the AK-47 in our example is the leviathan, the sovereign, the leader with absolute authority to do whatever he wants whenever he wants in the interest of maintaining the contract.

Now, when we’re in the state of nature, we have complete control over our lives. We can go wherever we want. We can take whatever we want. We can kill whoever we want. But when we sign the social contract, which is without question a more self-preserving lifestyle, we forfeit much of that control over what we can do to the sovereign. His job is to keep us out of that terrible, perpetual state of war that we would otherwise find ourselves in. Now, because there was no previous moral code when you were in the state of nature, because everything went then, the laws that the sovereign puts in place in the interest of keeping us out of a perpetual state of war, those become the moral order that you’re beholden to. Because the sovereign is the moral authority, it doesn’t matter how tyrannical or seemingly terrible he is to you because, no matter how bad it is, he’s still keeping you out of the state of nature, which is without question much worse for you.

Hobbes says that the state of nature is the state of war, and the end that all of us should really be striving for is the opposite of that, a state of peace. The enforcer of the social contract, the sovereign, maintains that peace at all costs. Your job as a citizen is to follow his laws even if you don’t understand exactly why they’re laws at all. This is a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow, putting that kind of trust in the authoritative body. In fact, there’s a lot of examples of this.

Let’s say you’re driving down the highway, and you come across a sign that says, “Speed reduced to 15 miles an hour.” And you instantly go, “Come on! I’m not slowing down. Forget that. This city is ridiculous. You know what, they’re overly bureaucratic, completely overbearing. All they’re trying to do is nickel and dime the seconds of my life away from me so that they can…” [Crash sound] And then you hit a little kid that was playing in the middle of the road, and you couldn’t stop in time. Now, just imagine how angry those parents would be at you. Hobbes says that you may not understand why the laws are put in place, but because you benefit from the fruits of society, you should follow the laws of the sovereign because they are meant to keep the peace. They are meant to prevent us from declaring war on each other. Those parents of that child may have declared war on you, figuratively speaking.

See, government is a necessary evil to Hobbes. The sovereign and his power is the way that we can ensure that humans are safe enough to pursue things that further benefit and preserve human life. Once we’re in this social contract, once we have established that self-preservation is the only thing that we can really draw a moral compass from, Hobbes says that because we are reasoning creatures, that if we use our ability to reason and think about what behavior would yield the greatest quality of self-preservation, we naturally arrive at certain principles. This is why the collection of them is aptly named natural law. There are many earlier and later interpretations of natural law, but Hobbes is unique in that they are so closely tied to his social contract that he lays out.

The idea is simple. If the main goal is self-preservation, then any act that is destructive to yourself in any way in the long term is bad. If an act is truly helpful to you, it’s good. Now, these good and bad actions are not always immediately evident to us. But Hobbes says that these things are known innately by all, and if we just use our ability to reason well, natural law is ultimately what follows as a set of fundamentals to live by. The first one is familiar to us. “That every man ought to endeavor peace, as far as he can hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is to seek peace and follow it.” By using reason, we arrive at the idea that to truly act in the interest of self-preservation, we must seek peace.

Now, Hobbes lays out 19 different laws that make up his natural law. Most of them are pretty obvious and straightforward, and I highly recommend you read through them before next episode. I’m going to have them on the page for this episode on the website. The reason why is because to understand the true significance of this natural law, we need to dive deeper into Hobbes and his view of what humans are. We can understand why this natural law is so important to Thomas Hobbes by looking at what he saw a human being as at all.

Now, maybe a good way to think of this social contract is by comparing it to a football game. The monarch appointed to uphold peace is kind of like the quarterback. We as citizens are like the players on the field. And Hobbes’ natural law is kind of like the playbook that keeps us running our route and not colliding with other players on the field and messing up the game.