Political Memes

@the_q@lemmy.zip @LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone
@politicalmemes@lemmy.world

I can't help but recall of two quotes: one from Rousseau who said "Humans are born good but society corrupts them", and another from Hobbes who said "Humans are a wolf to humans". While it seems like both thinkers couldn't agree with each other because both statements look different, the logical implications from Rousseau inevitably leads to that of Hobbes. I'll try to explain my point below.

When Rousseau says "society corrupts good humans", he implies the existence of not-good humans because, as we know, society is made out of people (not just Soylent Green). Rousseau implies that the not-good humans were once good until they got corrupted by earlier not-good humans, which were corrupted by even earlier not-good humans... somewhere, non-goodness was born. Causality requires that a non-goodness stemmed from some kind of "patient zero of evilness".

Now, religions would be tempted to think of this "patient zero" as something supernatural: Shaitan, Iblis, Angra Mainyu... It's not exactly wrong (as archetypal representation), but it's not accurate either: it's not something too otherworldly, it's right in front of us or, should I say, inside us.

Take Derren Brown's "The Push" (a documentary about social compliance and conformity): before the auction gala where (spoiler)the person was cluelessly played by a hidden script to push someone from a rooftop, commiting murder to (in their mind) save themself(/spoiler), Derren conducted a "selection process" where the candidates would answer a test: unbeknownst to them, the test was beyond a questionnaire, it was evaluating who would keep standing up and sitting whenever a bell rang. They weren't told to do so: they were, instead, socially pressured to do it, because all the other candidates were doing it. It's the "monkey see, monkey do".

Those who didn't watch The Push (watch it, it's illuminating) might ask: if the candidates weren't told to do it (switch between sitting and standing whenever a bell rings), how did the behavior emerge? The behavior was initially seeded by actors, people who initially acted on it. Then things got funnier: one by one, actors were removed and fresh, clueless candidates were added, until no actors were in the room, yet the behavior continued. It was carried among "generations" (batches of candidates).

There was no devil behind this behavior. One could argue "Derren Brown was the devil behind the scenes, conducting a social experiment", but something motivated those actors (e.g. money), just like something motivated the hypothetical "first evil human" to be evil, except... something also motivated clueless candidates to imitate it, just like something motivated the "Rousseau's good humans" to spread societal corruption.

It's not a devil: it's humans, it's us. We're born with this wolf inside, and it just takes a "push" for it to howl. It's inherent to us because it's inherent to Nature.