On Hobbes and Kropotkin

Maybe the political world is divided into a Hobbes-Kropotkin split when judging human nature.

Hobbes thought there would always be shortage of resources so a war of all against all would make life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Kropotkin said mutual aid between members of a species, including people, would give to life "the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution."

If you see people as Hobbes does, a lot of laws and force are needed to reign in the anarchy.

If you see people as Kropotkin does, society needs to leave people alone and things will be all right.

I loved reading the Leviathan. That old-time English warms me. And it has been a while, but what I remember is a curious journey from Adam to monarchy and why God led in that way.

Mutual Aid, though, seems to better describe the world I see.

And the Bible seems to be more of a warning against monarchy to me than an endorsement.

"When Adam wove and Eve span, where was then the Gentleman?" This would be a starting point for me and then the warnings of Samuel, "If you take a king, he'll take your sons and make them drive war chariots, take your daughters and make them make perfume, take your land, take your money." And then, of course, Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount. The pun on "legion" for the swine being driven off the cliff.

I know people often do awful, nasty things to each other. But I think society engineers much of that evil. Racism, for instance. Slavery had to be enforced by laws and force. After slavery was gone, it took Jim Crow Laws and Anti-miscegenation laws to keep races apart.

Little kids play with each other without noticing race. And without laws, romance comes along without much concern for racial differences.

Distribution of wealth would be much more nearly equal if laws did not support the protection of accumulation of wealth with corporations, inheritance laws, and the like.

Most crime that I see comes from poverty or at least inequality of wealth that causes envy.

Inmates who are completely incapable of functioning in society seem to have no trouble organizing and running in an orderly manner 12-step meetings, Big Book and all.

I have probably gotten to know people in jail about as well as I know people out of jail: there really isn't much difference.