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.
