“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.” This quote from the pessimistic philosopher Thomas Hobbes describes the life of the early man, before the advent of civilization came about from the idea of property. He thinks the early humans were essentially savages, focused only on survival, even at the cost of others. Along with these ideas, Hobbes attributes this behavior not only to the environment, but rather to the man, stating that we have an innate desire to seek control and power over our fellow men. Based on this statement, even as the idea of property led to land possession and civilization, these innate desires would remain. It’s a Hobbesian idea that even in today’s time, albeit human’s agreement to the social contract in which we relinquish our personal freedoms for safety, we still harbor urges to overcome others. Society and personal power are not mutually exclusive. You may think this is an obvious statement. Of course, nowadays, people want fame and riches and strive to climb to the higher echelons of status. However, I’m regarding a different type of the power – the socially repressed power that one may exert totally upon another with no regard for the victim’s rights or liberties. I believe this behavior is still present deep down within our subconsciousness, and emits random, intrusive thoughts that most would never act upon. Nevertheless, I believe we should all analyze why we have those thoughts in the first place.
Behind those content, nonchalant, blank expressions on the subway, do you ever wonder what’s holding the passengers’ attention fast? The middle-aged gentleman donned in his investment banking suit looks at the woman sitting across from him. Their eyes meet, and he shares a gentle smile with her. Meanwhile, he is day-dreaming about taking her against her will in an alleyway. The socialist elite at the end of the train car sits posed with her legs crossed, clutching her bag. No one can tell from her posh air that as she goes back home, she will attend a live streaming on the dark web, where she will bid for the chance to determine how the human trafficked individual on cam will meet his or her fate. Leaning against the glass next to the woman, the school janitor replays the images in his head from his 3 Terabyte child pornography collection on his computer. Hobbes is right. Brutish deeds plague all of our minds. Some don’t act on them. Some do.
Although we can’t escape these evils in society, society is by far the best situation we have, for in an anarchist state, these evils would undoubtedly prosper. Looking at the interplay of internal desires and civilization, it seems that being civil does not automatically infer moral character. Our character derives from whether our actions match our darkest thoughts. And even so, the line isn’t black and white. Take a look at The Society of Snow, based on the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes. On top of braving the avalanches and burning cold, they had to resort to eating their dead friends and family, lest they starve to death. It doesn’t even take the overconsumption of weed (“getting super baked”) to really put yourself in their shoes and imagine the icy hell they resided in, wholly physically, mentally, and emotionally. Their resolution to cannibalism, in circumstances devoid of laws and hope, had no bearings of civility or incivility. It was a matter of self-survival. And had we found ourselves in their situation, we would also partake in the feasting of friends to preserve ourselves. Even the vegans would find themselves asking for a prime cut of icy wagyu ass. They committed an act that, had it occurred elsewhere, would have deemed them monsters and psychopaths. But their hands had been forced.
We are all capable of performing terrible acts, whether or not we would like to believe it. Outside the boundaries of society, lines are blurred. But at least, within the confines of civilization, I can say whether or not we actually execute these actions determines what side of the line we fall on: a socially acceptable individual or a literal “menace to society.” Civility seems to correlate to how much self-control we have over our impulses–how well we repress the temporary urges we contain. Hobbes may be correct that these tendencies exist. But he may be wrong in saying that these urges are desires. For the most part, I doubt people who get the sudden idea to push a passerby in front of an approaching train really desire to. They simply just acknowledge that they could have done so, but that it’s wrong to do so. The real people we need to worry about are the ones who simply don’t do it because that would fall as a transgression to the overall social contract. There’s ways to catch this early on. They say that you can ask children on a playground why it’s wrong to hit someone. For the child who says that it’s wrong because little Jimmy will be hurt, give him a gold star. For the child who says it’s wrong because he’ll get detention, drop him off a cliff like Macaulay Culkin in “The Good Son”. That’s someone you don’t want to be home alone with. He’s the prequel to American Psycho; he’s a monster in the making.
Media References:
The Society of Snow
The Good Son
American Psycho
Leviathan