The Black Garden

The Black Garden

The politico-philosophical debate has been waxing and refining itself for so long that it comes as a slight surprise to find such corrupt and fallacious societies presently in place. The discourse has been moving in a liberal direction for hundreds of years now: human rights, social support systems, and the competitive capitalist market all vouching for a society in which each voice has a say and each say deserves to be heard. Perhaps though, we are moving in the wrong direction? Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau each have unique conceptions of the utopian society, and herein I would like to propose a conception which will take into account all three primary ideas: authority of the sovereign, ownership through toil, and sacrifice for the general will. I will take a moment to reiterate each of these philosophers’ points before coming back around to tie them all together in this ‘new utopia’. It is my opinion that the state of nature, rather than some abstract and archaic past-state, is actually something we still experience today --and likely we will never progress away from-- The state of nature, rather, is the nature of the human construct as it is expressed and manifested within and throughout the construction of the social. For this reason I do not find the theorists’ solutions to the state of nature to be fitting, as they are too weak and passive. I will propose a stronger and more active solution to the augmented issue which I suggest: the ever present state of nature. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that the state of nature is something which is not properly addressed by the liberalist agenda, and if we are to arrest the degeneration of society --per viam the state of nature-- then we must allow for a much stronger conception of the political.

Hobbes’ Leviathan

Hobbes’ argument is that man struggles within the state of nature due to the appetites and desires of himself and all other men. The aims of the ‘free’ man are “a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death” (Hobbes, 1651, p. 161) which must be arrested by the Leviathan in order to manifest any sort of long term, functional society.

Thus, as a means of harnessing the countless array of individual desires for power, the Many must submit themselves to the One (Hobbes, 1651, p. 227) - that their conflicting aspirations for control, direction, and authority be filtered, and driven in a single direction; and to be channeled with the force of unity - for division yields a result which increasingly approaches nill, and yet multiplication does the opposite, so we must band these aspirations together and multiply them; and we do so through submission to the sovereign who will harness the power of our wills and direct the cumulation forth into the world of possibility.

Locke’s Ownership

Locke disagrees with many of Hobbes’ fundamental assumptions, such as the need for a Leviathan, and also the conception of the state of nature. Locke’s state of nature is much more harmonious in that he believes we are all equal before God and therefore no One man has the right to rule for the Many. But it is his beliefs regarding ownership and possession, of which we are currently concerned, for Locke claims that God has placed within man the property of labour, and that man may wield his labour as a means of taking ownership of that which is natural (Locke, 1690, p. 19) - “[h]is labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself” (Locke, 1690, p. 20). But this process is not without its limitations, for “[n]othing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy” (Locke, 1690, p. 20) and thus no man may possess any more than he is capable of utilizing.

This is an intriguing conception due to the nature of social resources, which any political contract is concerned with moreso than even the physical resources of the time and place. It is intriguing because social resources do not spoil, and furthermore they may be effectively wielded, or made-use-of, in dizzying calibers. For a leader may speak unto a people and move the whole body to a certain work or another. The whole body then, regardless of size, is capable of being made-use-of by this leader - and, thereby his labour, he has --in a sense-- taken ownership of this body of people; for it is through his leadership that he possesses them, and it by his leadership that they are possessed.

The Will of Rousseau

Rousseau, in turn, disagrees with his predecessors mentioned above. He claims that they have started in the proper place, yet in such a way as is improper. The state of nature, Rousseau corrects, is not a state of existence in which one may accurately portray the presence of injustice, or the right to property, or even the authority of the strong - for justice, rights, and authority are all conceptions of the socialized man, and thus the world of the savage may not be attributed such characteristics (Rousseau, 1913, p. 50). The only truth we have access to from the state of nature is the inequality of nature itself (Rousseau, 1913, p. 49) and perhaps that is even going a step too far, as nature is perfectly imperfect and thus to ascribe a notion of equality to it is, again, an extension too far.

The natural society, claims Rousseau, is the family unit (Rousseau, 1913, p. 181) - and it is from this model upon which he builds his theory. Children are born into the family as free and equal individuals, and yet they give away this liberty and equality in exchange for protection and guidance from the leader, their father (Rousseau, 1913, p. 182). This model then scales itself as men come forth from the state of nature, for they encounter resistance against their efforts to subsist and propagate as a species, and it is at this time that men must alienate their equality and freedoms to overcome the resistance to their self-preservation and thus prosper. This ‘authority’ to which they submit, and which in turn harnesses and directs their cumulative powers as one, is known as the General Will, and the goodness and satisfaction of this General Will takes precedence over each individual’s Particular Will (Rousseau, 1913, pp. 190 - 195).

A Revised Conception

Throughout my experience with this world, and in the context of my musings and meditations on the nature of statelessness, I have come to believe that the state of nature is not some abstract philosophical construction of a time before time, but rather that it relates literally to the sociological environment, which is unique for each individual, and which is ever present as an often latent, although more often not, potentiality for motion or stillness, for drive or lethargy, for action or inaction --and we encounter support for such a claim in Hobbes (1651, p. 87)-- Therefore we are, in the same breath, at risk and at liberty to pursue our individual desires. Should one desire to lay motionless in a puddle of one’s own filth, then one is at liberty to do so; and yet should one choose to do so then that one puts all the rest at risk of coming to be motionless as well - for just as a large rock in a river will pile up other rocks behind its stagnant counter-force, so too shall people-at-rest bring people-in-motion to rest beside them!

I believe that all three, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, were each onto some very fundamental concepts with the work they were doing. I believe they each saw the same issues, and perhaps even each the same solution, and yet while arriving at three distinct conclusions they each missed the mark. They missed the mark because their views were tainted by humanism; they each afforded the individual such rights and liberties as the individual had not yet earned!

Looking at our society today, in which everyone gets a say and if anyone says something that disagrees with what someone else thinks about the world then the former must apologize to the latter and hug and make up and swear to not say such things again. We, as a society, are sinking a tremendous amount of resources into making sure everyone is happy and unoffended and feels like a whole person. To be clear, I am not against people being whole and happy, but what I am against is the social engine grinding to a halt for people who do not even respect the social engine in return. I believe that people must take ownership of their lives and the lives of all around them through toil! They must work, and learn, and experience, and fail, and keep getting back up! They must demonstrate that they are not a parasite of social concern, before society should be willing to bend to their whims.

The true power of humanity is not in the individual, but in the collective. We must find a way to harness the billions of conflicting desires and channel that power in a single direction! If we could manage to do this, then nothing would be out of reach - 100% green energy production and consumption, colonization of the solar system, interstellar travel, genetically-activated immortality - these things would all be rising on the horizon. The thing that holds us back from these aims is the natural inclination of humankind to conserve energy and focus entirely on the self. This is an understandable inclination when looking back on evolutionary needs, although in the modern world it has ceased to serve us. Now it only leads to people too lazy to properly feed themselves, growing too obese to hold up their own weight (Mitchell et al., 2011); people too driven by ego to properly steward their money, drowning amidst worlds of self-imposed debt, and too selfish to care (Cohen, 2009, pp. 413 - 415). These people are living in society and taking up societal resources at the expense of the few who do live virtuously, with compassion, selflessness, and a strong work ethic. People do not need more freedom, they need less - less freedom to lead deadly lifestyles, less freedom to overspend their unborn children into debt, less freedom to take all while giving nothing in return.

In truth, people are born equal, for they each have the opportunity to overcome all odds and restrictions imposed on them and burst forth in a bright ray of light to make a difference in the world, and to help others do the same. The issue is that, when given a choice between taking action and not taking action, the vast majority of people will choose not to act (and not to overcome). The most well-known example to such a claim is the wealth gap - 10% of the world’s inhabitants control 85% of its wealth (Davies et al., 2010, p. 227). That’s not because anyone is hoarding money, or keeping others from making it; it is because the 90% do not have the drive to do what it takes to become successful and significant --as is espoused by the skyrocketing epidemics of obesity and indebtedness-- and this makes the wealth gap a self-justifying inequality.

The Black Garden

The inequalities of the world are not right or wrong, they just are. It is improper to suggest that the present inequalities are an ethical concern. What does become an ethical concern is how we move forward - because that is the only thing that we really have a semblance of control over, and the potential for action is a necessitation of ethicism.

It is not the fault of the weak and meager that they are in such a way, and yet it is to the credit of the strong and significant that they are in such a way. For the weak may become strong, and the meager may become significant, but to do so they must be led - we need for the mighty to take responsibility for the meek! We need for those whom have taken ownership of their lives through the service of toil, to now take ownership of all other lives. And of the leaders, one must lead another in much the same way, for some leaders will be stronger and know more than other leaders, and in this way the leaders shall assimilate into a linear hierarchy with a single Supreme Leader at the top. It is necessary that the hierarchy be linear, and it is also necessary that there be but a single Supreme Leader, because it is in this way that one shall be accountable to the other, and that other to another, and that there be a precise and distinguishable Ultimate Causer - for it is in this way that we shall avoid the bureaucratic loopholes and passings-of-responsibilities that make democracy so truly detestable. It will be the responsibility of the Supreme Leader to take the council of the hierarchy of leaders, while avoiding the council of the meager, and come to a single decision regarding the most effective way to wield this massive hive-of-force what is the human collective. Whether that be reconstructing the industries of the Earth, or even pushing out into the final frontier to colonize nearby star systems. It is imperative that this sovereign, who will have come to be through the toil of his/her labours, interpret the received council and move forward in such a way as is in accordance with the principle of the General Will.

To Critique and Condemn

It will only be natural that my theory come under harsh criticisms from the Liberal Imperative and be accused of such things as ‘drastic’, ‘meritocratic’, ‘autocratic’, and to these terms I say Aye! It is foolish to think that each human can continue to lead itself in its own direction and we will all wind up in some happy, clappy, better-off utopia. History is not assembled from the leftover pieces of Particular Will - it is forged in the hellfires of conquest and direction! The truth will set you free, but even in our current societies we indoctrinate people to have no interest in the truth, and thus they will never be free regardless of their political system. It is more important to them that they be able to conquer imagined worlds from the safety of their computer desks, and that they be able to order-in pizzas and prostitutes without vacating their droll lives of seclusion and disharmony, wrapped amidst their fluffy blankets and sprawled across their couch.

Autocracy is only a pejorative because it has been wielded so irresponsibly by rulers of the past, who have been so blinded by their power that they sunk back into meagerness from their precipice of importance. I suggest neither some flimsy hierarchy of leaders, nor some corruptible Ultimate Causer - what I speak of is a strong, firm, established, and benevolent chain of men and women who possess the foresight to take humanity to heights it has never before dreamed possible, true leaders with brilliant morals and determination. For leadership is doing what is right for the masses, and not what the masses think is right (P. Brodeur, Personal Communication, March 6, 2018).

Bibliography

Cohen, M. J. (2005). Sustainable consumption American style: Nutrition education, active living and financial literacy. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 12(4), 407-418. doi:10.1080/13504500509469650

Davies, J. B., Sandström, S., Shorrocks, A., & Wolff, E. N. (2010). The Level and Distribution of Global Household Wealth*. The Economic Journal, 121(551), 223-254. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2010.02391.x

Hobbes, Thomas. (1651). Leviathan. Strand, LN: Penguin Books.

Locke, John. (1690). Second Treatise of Government. C.B. Macpherson (Ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.

Mitchell, N. S., Catenacci, V. A., Wyatt, H. R., & Hill, J. O. (2011). Obesity: Overview of an Epidemic. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 34(4), 717-732. doi:10.1016/j.psc.2011.08.005

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. (1913). The Social Contract and Discourses. North Clarendon, VT: Orion Publishing Group.