What I think is so significant about this song is that it makes it clear that we're really no different now then when mankind first "signed" the social contract. This being the case, why in the world have we allowed ourselves to drift so far away from it?
My thanks to Purely Politics for making me aware of this video.
4 comments:
This is funny, because I think as a species we've only gotten where we are by cooperating and sharing our resources. "It's Mine" doesn't really work in small hunter gatherer societies. cc
I think Thomas Hobbes and most other philosphers would disagree with you. You mayt have a form of communism in extended families or even small clans, but once you go beyond blood relatives, I suspect life was truly "nasty, brutish, and short."
But small clans are the beginning of civilization. That's what civility is, being nice and sharing and helping others. It's when you get to that 'it's mine' idea, and greed sets in that you lose civility and end up with war, famine and all that other stuff. True communism can only happen in a small group as far as I'm concerned, but that ideal, that everyone one works and everyone shares what they have is what civilization and community is all about. What we know of as communism isn't anything like what the ideal of it is. And it never will be. Too big a population.
All of us going our own separate ways isn't going to make us more civilized. That's almost chaos. Or perhaps anarchy.
cc
My point is, if, six thousand years ago, Benjamin and I are out hunting to feed our respective families, when we make a kill, we'll split it and share it amongst all of our kids and others in our family.
However, if track the herd into what will one day become Weymouth and we encounter the Minites for the very first time, I'm not going to be inclined to share with you nor you with us. In fact, if we find there aren't enough animals to feed us all, with winter coming, chances are the Minites and the Cabbagites may fight each other for the available resources.
It's nearing this step in the process of civilization that Thomas Hobbes says people determined they needed a "social contract". That contract is based on self-preservation.
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