Spilled Milk

“The life of man, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.”

It’s interesting to think about what a man like Thomas Hobbes would say when asked about a world without privacy. Hobbes often likes to imagine a “state of nature” when analyzing humans, and what he is referring to is essentially a lawless and government-less land where humans are in constant states of fear and survival.

Hobbes believed that deep down, humans are evil. In turn he actually advocates for big government – saying that humans cannot be left to their own devices. His preference is an absolute monarch with unlimited power. The only task of the monarch is to ensure that humans don’t find themselves in a “state of nature”.

In my head it doesn’t make sense for a human to control the rest of the humans because humans at their basic level are evil and brutish. I think in order to really understand him I’ll need to read Leviathan, but at face value this concept seems a bit hypocritical.

History has told us that absolute monarchs will pick and choose which types of citizens will find themselves in a “state of nature”, but even the state they find themselves in is a one-sided version. Humans are plunged into a state of fear and survival, but expected to obey the government and its law.

The good old fashioned: Eat, and risk being jailed. Or starve, and preserve my “freedom”.

To be frank, I’m not exactly sure where Hobbes’ ideals fit into this puzzle, or what he would even think of this world. Here are some quotes that I think he might say:

• Ah, yes. Now their true nature will show!
• Someone better take complete and full control over this!

While it’s fun to think of Hobbes as an old curmudgeon upset with the world, maybe he would appreciate this. Maybe, this alone, this lack of privacy forever, would be what keeps humans away from their natural state. Maybe he wouldn’t need an absolute sovereign to keep order amongst chaos.