Robert Howard, 20th-century pulp fiction author and creator of Conan the Barbarian, believed that “barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance.”
Thomas Hobbes, 17th-century English philosopher best known for his social contract theory, attempted to justify that the authority of the state superseded the rights of man, believing that the natural state of man was war, that life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” thus necessitating some higher authority to calm and tame the natural instincts of man.
Michael Huemer, professor of philosophy at UC Boulder, argues that “The current state of American society is a historical fluke, marked by extraordinarily low levels of exploitation, oppression, and injustice… The key sources of this happy state include such institutions as democracy, free markets, and modern science.”
I would add free speech coupled with property rights to the mix. Modern science is a double-edged sword that in the end, I would argue, is more a societal neutral force rather than a force against our true nature.
Huemer further maintains that before we tear down these stabilizing institutions, we should heed the advice of the Hippocratic Oath and first do no harm, stating, “If we undermine our current norms and institutions, the most likely result is not that we will be swept into a paradise… [but] the most likely result is that we will revert to something closer to the natural state of human beings.”
Huemer concludes with the observation that the 20th-century experiment called communism swept away all existing culture, norms, and institutions, resulting in 100 million deaths.
Source: Oxford Reference. Progressive Myths by M. Huemer, 2024. Graphic: Conan, Kindle Book Cover, Amazon.
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