Gov/Econ Reflection

Ilejay, Argent
May 10, 2008

Forward to the Past

As a person who rarely learns from his pasts, I never really thought that learning history was super important. I thought it was interesting and full of interesting facts but I just never really thought about the use of history until this year. This year I thought about what the role of history was and that role is to learn from our mistakes as humans, learn why people are the way they are and why certain countries have certain political and religious perspectives. History gives us the answer as blatant as the sun shining down on the earth. This new perception of history has caused me to think about America’s goals and my role as an American citizen living in America.
Thinking of my impact towards history is quite meager at the moment. I do not see myself as altering the course of history at all during my life time. I feel as if I am just a worker bee working his 9 to 5 daily existence until he perishes like the other workers. His contributions help the hive cluster function yet is not thanked for it as his job is taken fore granted . I guess this is similar to the truckers out there who deliver the goods and supplies to markets for us to buy. No one gives thanks to the truckers who truck on through hundreds of miles from all over the country to deliver. I mean when was the last time someone you know said, “Thank you Mr. Trucker! Thank you for all your hard work to give us the food we buy to have something to eat on our dinner plates.” The people today have always grown up with the idea that when you walk into a store food is ready. And I guess this links to their mind with the connection of food and stores. If that person is hungry then they would think of going to a store. But this is just speculation. I think this way because it is how I have grown up. Before I knew that those giant cars that my dad would overtake carried anything I just connected that food was magically made in stores. Then I learned that I was wrong and shipments from all over the places require the assistance of land (trucks), sea (tankers, cargo ships) and air (shipment plannes).
Our past is what helps shape our present and the present in turn affects our future. Learning about our past is important because it affects today’s world, which in turn causes this chain reaction that affects the future. Should people not learn about history than many would not know the why in our present. Take the Cuban embargo that is currently happening. People would know that there is an embargo. But that leaves the question of why. With history we can show people the what, when, where, why and how about the embargo. The rationale of the Domino Theory (theory that if one country adopted Communism, then surrounding countries would absorb Communism as well) and the failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro and how this affected our relations with Russia. History has the answers to the question of why things are the way they are today.
The Civil War and the Communism scare in America has changed my view on the American persona. I used to believe that America was a mother with open arms accepting children from all over the world to stay at her house, which America does. But after learning about how Lincoln freed the slaves only because slavery was the dividing issue between the Union and the Confederates, left me to believe that America is out for protecting itself. Further into the future during the rise of Communism further revealed the truth about America. The truth that America is out for herself and tries to bully people into doing what she wants. The Vietnamese War, The Korean War, The Cold War, The 638 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro and many others are all American duels due to America’s prejudice on Communism. America had no business in another country’s politics and just wanted to bully other countries into a democracy. Whether this is wrong or right, it is clear that America has been bullying other countries and after learning about the Domino Theory, it is clear as to why America has a deep seated hatred for Communist Countries and Fidel Castro.
Learning about the slippery slope of known as The Domino Theory has shown me how much I really know about my own country, which is not much. I never would have guessed that this theory is what drove America to sniff its nose into other countries business. I just knew that countries were fighting due to Communism and that America did not like Communism. Thus automatically making Communism bad in my mind. Not knowing this left me to ponder about what I still do not know about America. Although I did not research, I feel out of the loop. I feel like those privates in the military who go out and die because they are told to by their superiors and could not disobey orders. I assume I feel this way because our society is set up this way. Laws tell us we can not do this or that, schools in a way teach obedience and doing what I have been told is really all I know in this society.
Figuring out that our society is based upon obedience and punishment I began to wonder why are laws based upon punishment instead of reward. The philosopher Hobbes once stated, “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.” and I assume that Hobbes said this because humanity is cut throat. We live our lives by dog eat dog. Should there be no laws to keep humans in check, we would assault and harm each other daily. Regulations are what keep our society functioning. And as an adult of this society my job is to keep it functioning by working my 9 to 5.
My existence as a normal citizen will be similar to my parents and the many others out there who lived normal lives. I will probably cause no change in the fabric of history and disintegrate to push up daisies. But I know that although I singularly have no power to cause change, being part of a majority of people can cause change. And it is by obtaining knowledge of certain propositions and voting for candidates whom I deem the most worthy to run city, state or country will I change the course of history. And it is in this sense of living a normal existence in a democracy that I have the power to cause change. Having this power comes with great responsibility. This power in tandem with others, can cause change that can be beneficial or harmful to society. But my vote is all the power I have and whether the person I voted for wins or loses, harms or strengthens the community, it is out of my hands.
As an average American, life is not so bad. Gas prices are an annoyance but at least I live somewhere where I can have a car and drive someplace relatively safe. I have the power to have a say, despite how meaningless my say is by itself. Life is not so hard in America compared to the countless of other countries who have it worse off. Despite America’s dark dealings, I have come to accept it as we can not change the past. But it is through the past can we change the future. Knowing that America creates concerns and uses these concerns to invade other countries such as Korea, Vietnam and even today in Iraq, I realize that I can help change the future through voting. Voting is my say. The average American way to bring about change be it for benefit or disaster, the average American has power in this sense. Yet, this power is rooted in history itself. Why does one group vote a certain way in certain states? The answer can be brought about in history. And it is through realizing this power to dig up the bones that I have been more inclined to research more about the American way of invasion and why grudges are present in our society today. The effect of history on the present is incalculable. Life as we know it is directly attune to the past. The prejudices we have today are prime examples of our past history and it is understanding our history are we able to learn from it and prevent those mistakes and understand why people are the way they are. History is our link to understanding the troubles of today and how they will affect our tomorrow.

To Chain the Beast

Ilejay, Argent

To Chain the Beast

Laws and social structures have always been a concept of human society and have been in existence for centuries. One of the first functional civilizations recorded was Mesopotamia, containing about 282 laws known as “the Code of Laws.” Some of the laws are very similar to that of today’s society, albeit containing significantly harsher ¬punishments, such as death in many cases. An example of this would be the 8th code of law, stating “If any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a goat, if it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirty fold; if they belonged to a freed man of the king he shall pay tenfold; if the thief has nothing with which to pay he shall be put to death” (http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM, October 20, 2007). This law is quite identical to our society’s laws on stealing, by punishing those who steal with a hefty fine. Considering that laws like these have been around for centuries, were these laws instated to promote proper conduct? Is the purpose of law to encourage good conduct between people and to promote equality? To answer this question I imparted unto myself the wisdom of philosophers such as Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke and have come to the conclusion of what the goal of law is. The ultimate goal of law is to keep peoples’ primitive instincts under control, otherwise if laws did not exist we would be in a state of chaos and constant turmoil where people will kill and steal from each other because of the simple fact that they can commit crimes without worry of repercussions. But with law in a society, people will be more cautious and careful not to break laws and be kept in check. Thus creating a safer society than one with no laws.
The natural selfishness of humanity is a basic instinct that is based around an individual person’s preservation. As such, living outside the rules and regulations of law and governments leads to unsuppressed basic instincts that focus on that persons’ survival, and not the well being of others. In a sense, “The right of nature… is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life” (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/chapter14.html, October 20, 2007). This means that if humans did not have an unifying force to keep people in check and suppress natural instincts, human interactions would consist of continually pillaging from one another until nothing of value was left to better themselves.
The only thing that keeps people from harming each other for personal gain in a society is law. If there were no laws humans being naturally evil will go and hurt each other for personal gain. Thomas Hobbes an English philosopher of the 1700s and author of the Leviathan, once stated that, “Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man… so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace” (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/chapter13.html, October 20, 2007). Hobbes is saying that humans are naturally evil and having a unifying power remedies it. This quote can be taken into account as two preschool children fighting over a toy, both claiming that the toy is theirs and theirs alone, until the teacher comes and remedies the problem by setting rules by either; taking the toy away, giving the kids a set amount of time to play with the toy, or forcing them to share the toy together. “To this war of every man against every man, this also is 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” (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/chapter13.html, October 20, 2007). People are naturally selfish and look out for themselves.
The idea of humans basing instincts on singular development is not a new concept. Freud’s psychoanalytical theory is based upon the id, ego, and super ego. In a nutshell the id is an animalistic side of every person, only focusing upon the individual’s wants and needs. Like the devil on a persons shoulder, egging the person on with “you know you want it.” The ego is the individual who is being torn asunder by its id and superego. The ego is the mediator and tries to satisfy both the id and superego. The superego is usually portrayed as an angel on an individuals shoulder pleading with the individual to think about the society, not its own selfish desires. The superego is basically an individual’s idea of “good” and “bad” behavior, which is usually derived from the individual’s society or culture. With this comparison, government is the superego instating laws into a society of selfish id driven individuals, and causing order to form out of the chaos of this “unceasing war” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_mechanism).
It is historically proven that people disobey the law to pursue their id driven selves. A great example of this is the American Civil War, wherein the South tried to secede from America to follow its’ selfish and id driven ideals of slavery, causing disruption in American society. The ideals of the South are evil because it denied the slaves freedom, and focused only on their wants and needs, not the slaves’ or the Unions’ needs. Lincoln once said, “We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed” (http://home.att.net/~howingtons/abe.html, October 21, 2007). Lincoln is enforcing the law of the U.S. Government, which in turn is looking out for the betterment of the United States and the slaves. It is not a selfish animalistic force driving him, but his superego of the belief that all men should be free. Should the war have ended with the South being victorious, chaos would have ensued for the South’s slaves, forcing them into an eternal abyss of slavery, the Union would be out of raw materials possibly slowing the economy and forever altering the nation’s history. The South’s evil ideals of forever shackling a man due to his color are disruptive to the nation as a whole, but are not disruptive to the South itself. Which is why laws are important, should the South have followed the law, people would not have gotten hurt, killed and the Southern society would not have suffered as much.
John Locke an English philosopher of the 1700’s believes that humans are naturally kind and contain a “reason” that allows us to choose our destiny and are able to make up the way we go about following our destiny. Locke believes that, “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_locke.html, October 21, 2007). This implies that laws are not supposed to chain and restrain people from doing harm but to “preserve and enlarge freedom.” Laws should not act as a fence to freedom but more like a path to it since human beings have natural sense to reason and solve disputes peacefully. This simultaneously means that if law does not exist, then freedom would not exist since laws help to forge freedom. Implying that humans are naturally evil since they need laws to have freedom. A scenario of this in society would be the Crusades. The Crusades were a series conflicts for around 200 years between the religious factions of Christian Europe and the Muslims of the Middle East over the “Holy Land” known as Jerusalem. “The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character waged by much of Christian Europe during 1095–1291, most of which were sanctioned by the Pope in the name of Christendom. The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the sacred “Holy Land” from Muslim rule…” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades, November 3, 2007). This war amongst these rival factions have totaled for approximately 1.5 million deaths (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm, November 4, 2007). If people were truly born good and had the ability to reason they should not have been fighting over land for their religions for so long causing so many deaths. Instead they should have established rules to govern themselves on how they could share the land amongst each other.
Some believe that people were inherently good, but society and laws corrupted humans. Jean-Jacques Rousseau a Swiss-born French philosopher of the 1800’s believes that natural man was a “noble savage” and that society corrupted man. In Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality” he states that, “Savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all nature, and the friend of all his fellow-creatures. If a dispute arises about a meal, he rarely comes to blows, without having first compared the difficulty of conquering his antagonist…” What Rousseau is trying to say here is that the savage man is happy and content when he has finished eating and is nice and friendly to everybody. But if someone tries to take his meal, he would compare himself with the thief to see who is stronger and from this comparison the seemingly stronger wins. If a fight does break out it is extremely rare. Rousseau’s thinking is flawed due to the initial distrust displayed upon contact between the two men. The initial comparison between himself and is contender is reason enough to cause a dispute. Also, this scenario only happens when one is satiated and is at peace. He has no cause to fight, but if they were both hungry and starving for a meal would they share? From the comparison between each other, no they would not share and one would leave satisfied the other enshrouded in death. “The case is quite different with man in the state of society… after a long course of prosperity, after having swallowed up treasures and ruined multitudes, the hero ends up by cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole master of the world (http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq_05.htm, October 21, 2007).” Rousseau’s ideals on human nature are basically that people were naturally good and venerable due to our simple wants and needs and under normal circumstances would not act according to evil since people did not have too many wants and needs all the way back then. He believes that it is society’s foundation that caused us to go awry and make us evil, greedy and undignified. This goes against Hobbes ideals of society preventing evil since Rousseau states that society causes people to become evil. But if people were in the natural state that Rousseau described that would mean that people would be fighting each other for food, like in the quote “If a dispute arises about a meal, he rarely comes to blows, without having first compared the difficulty of conquering his antagonist… (http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq_05.htm, October 21, 2007)” If these humans were truly in a state of peace then they should not be fighting over food that one of them rightfully owns. There is nothing noble about stealing another person’s hard earned meal. So it would be wise to instate laws to stop people from stealing. If people were excluded from society and were left unchecked the natural greed of people would cause humans to be power hungry. That is why laws need to be instated to keep men from acting like Rousseau’s “societal man” that acts more like a savage. For instance after World War 1, the German Empire was broken up and Germany ended up being blamed for causing the war. “On the 28th of June, 1919, Germany was summoned to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Seeing as Germany accepted the blame for starting the war, they had to pay £6.6 billion in reparations. Germany had also had to reduce its army to 100 000 men, without tanks and was not allowed an air force. Germany lost land to France, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Poland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_I, November 5, 2007).” With Germany in such a state it was pretty much left alone and isolated from the rest of the world. Since Germany was not checked upon, the man known as Hitler rose to power and through his selfish desires began to break the Treaty of Versailles. “In March 1935, Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by reintroducing conscription, building a massive military machine, including a new Navy (Kriegsmarine) and an Air Force (Luftwaffe) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler, November 5, 2007).” Despite Hitler living in a country that was isolated, he was power hungry and violated the treaty and was left unpunished. Since Hitler was not punished he once again violated the treaty. “In March 1936, Hitler again violated the treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland. When Britain and France did nothing, he grew bolder. In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when the military, led by General Francisco Franco, rebelled against the elected Popular Front government. After receiving an appeal for help from General Franco in July 1936, Hitler sent troops to support Franco, and Spain served as a testing ground for Germany’s new forces and their methods, including the bombing of undefended towns such as Guernica in April 1937 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler, November 5, 2007).” Should the treaty have been enforced with laws, Hitler would have been stopped and World War II would have ceased to exist all because laws were enforced and not neglected. People need law and society to shape them into being dignified and civilized people. If society and laws did not exist to guide and govern us, Rousseau misinterpreted societal man, which is a lawless being that cannot distinguish between right and wrong. If laws and society did not exist, power hungry people like Hitler would run rampant across the globe unchecked and ushering in a world of chaos. As it happens society and law has not corrupted us, it has served to improve by allowing us to communicate and to live together in a safe and civilized society.
Suppressing the evilness of humanity with laws is a must in order for human society to exist. Should laws not be present humans would revert back to a chaotic state in which, “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.” (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/chapter13.html, October 21, 2007). People, who believe that society is the one to corrupt the “goodness” of mankind, are logically incorrect. If humans are inherently good there should not spawn corruptness amongst their society. The “savage man” is nothing but a primitive beast looking out for itself. It would not share its hard earned food, but would rather keep it to itself and nourish itself with it. Rousseau himself once stated, “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”(http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Jean_Jacques_Rousseau/, October 21, 2007). The fact is that people need those “chains” to prevent them from throwing society into upheaval and plunging the civilization that they have strived so hard for into a world of chaos, due to the inherent evilness of humans. Locke himself stated, “Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man,” (http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/john+locke, October 20, 2007). Locke believes that humans will do the right thing and not hurt each other because people are inherently good. This idea is unrealistically optimistic; having no laws causes a form of anarchy to reign. Take the Reign of Terror during The French Revolution for instance. French revolutionaries killed the French ruling class. Revolutionaries killed people and other revolutionaries because they thought that those people were being too kind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy). This instance shows that Hobbes’s ideal of man needing laws is a more realistic approach, as man has always needed laws. In the absence of law a form of chaos reigns. People without laws live in a state of chaos, pillaging and killing one another since there are no laws to govern themselves with, just survival. Moreover, with laws humans would not be forced to live in a society that is in chaos with people like Hitler calling the shots. Instead laws provide people to be able to live together mostly in harmony knowing that there is a barrier that will help keep them from losing their possessions and lives. In truth laws help keep people from reverting back to a more primitive stage where chaos ran raging across the world and violence was the common answer to disputes. Nevertheless with laws man can go about his daily life in close proximity together, building communities to help each other and ensure each others survival, in relative peace and harmony as long as the rules are followed. Lest we forget, laws are the keystone of society, keeping everything in place and allowing us to live our lives efficiently without fear of peoples’ primal instincts taking over and plunging our world into a dark age.