In his book, Leviathan, published in 1651, Thomas Hobbes argued for a powerful central government, and claimed that without civilization’s top-down systems of order and control, every man would be an enemy of every other man, and life would be: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes’ disparaging view of life outside—and by extension, before—civilization has become deeply entrenched orthodoxy. The problem with this orthodoxy is that it is, and always has been, demonstrably false.
Consider each of Hobbes’ five descriptors, starting with solitary. On the surface, a civilized life appears the antithesis of solitary. High population density is a defining feature of civilization. At present, the global human population is on the order of seven and a quarter billion people, and the majority of those people live in densely packed cities. Add social media to the mix, and the word solitary seems not to describe anything at all about modern life.
But solitary doesn’t refer to just the lack of physical exposure to other people. It refers to isolation and the potential for loneliness that attend a psychological separation from other people. As the cliché goes, you’re never more alone than when you are in a crowd of strangers. Detachment, isolation, and alienation are side effects of civilization. And as counterintuitive as it may seem, the potential for isolation actually increases with population density. Empirical psychology is informative here. The rural-urban distinction is a favorite variable for social psychologists, and several interesting differences have been found between city dwellers and their rural counterparts. Most notably, people who live in smaller towns are more willing to offer assistance to strangers in need than are those who live in crowded cities. Animal studies clearly show the health and behavioral costs of living in close proximity with too many conspecifics. Research suggests that we suffer in similar ways as do lab rats when forced to live in crowded environments. Along with a wide range of physical health risks, living in cities increases the risk of psychiatric disorders.
Contrast the stranger-populated environments of civilization with the kind of social circumstances that correspond to uncivilized lifestyles. Hunter-gatherers live in small and extremely tight-knit bands; traditional indigenous societies tend toward extended community sizes of perhaps a few dozen. And there are biological reasons for this. The size and structural complexity of the human neocortex places the upper limit on the size of the personal social network that an individual can functionally negotiate at slightly less than 150 people, a fact known as Dunbar’s number or the rule of 150.
A paradox that has been noted by Western anthropologists is the extent to which individuals in traditional human societies prefer to be in close physical proximity to each other. Huts are sited right next to each other even when there is a surfeit of space available to spread out; and when sitting beside each other, neighbors are frequently found with their bodies pressed against each other and their arms interlocked. Civilized humans have long ago abandoned this perpetual physical closeness. Civilization creates separation, and Western civilization, especially, emphasizes the individual. Consumer marketing drives this tendency to the extreme: everyone needs to have their own (house, car, television, latest sparkly gadget). We are repulsed by the thought of sharing our intimate spaces with others, and then assume that solitude is part of primordial human nature rather than a defining feature of civilization.
We haven’t been strictly limited by the size and complexity of our cortex since the advent of written language. And now, with our internet-based personal networking gadgets, we can manage the names, faces, and continuously updated trivial life details of hundreds, even thousands, of “friends.” It’s an obvious quantity-for-quality trade-off reflective of our mass-consumption approach. We once lived in close contact with people who directly supported our physical existence and provided the raw material out of which we constructed life’s meanings. We now live in giant tribes of two-dimensional beings, engaged in a shared superficial monologue, searching for constant distraction, desperately trying to convince ourselves—through sheer quantity of experience—that our isolated consumption-driven lives are meaningful.
What about poor? As with solitude, poverty is a side effect of civilization. Even stronger: poverty is an explicit and purposeful creation of civilization. Consumer society is a way of generating endless personal deprivation, and guarantees a sense of poverty even among the very rich and powerful. There is a subjective, contextual component to poverty. Impoverishment is relative to your comparison group within society, and incoherent once you step outside of the unnatural power hierarchies of civilization. Poverty cannot exist when people have direct access to essential resources. Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins referred to hunter-gatherers as “the original affluent society.” Just in terms of available free time, a typical member of a hunter-gather band is living better than the super-rich of Western society. All indications are that most “primitive” societies were overwhelmingly egalitarian situations where access to resources was open to all and few if any restrictions or mediators existed. It is true that individuals had few material possessions. But a nomadic foraging society has no role for material possessions. Material property beyond what can be carried on one’s person for long distances poses a serious practical disadvantage. In contrast, a minimum store of material possessions is necessary in civilization, as an entry condition for participation. “Poor” applies only to the civilized.
It is interesting to note that when people quote Hobbes’ list of qualities of uncivilized life, the first two are often omitted. Life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” The “solitary” and “poor” descriptors are the ones that are most easily forgotten. I suspect this is because there are too many examples of people within civilization who are living undeniably solitary and poor lives—the poor are especially salient among the throngs of homeless in the inner cities. Perhaps it is just too obvious that civilized life is no prophylactic against isolation or poverty.
Nasty? I’m not really sure what Hobbes means by this term. Maybe it’s just a general reference to the lack of civilized refinements. Since hot showers and flush toilets didn’t exist in Hobbes’ time, I am inclined to think he is perhaps referring to life in close proximity to the natural world, with all of its beasties, bugs, and filth. Or maybe he is referring to the “war of all against all” social circumstances he imagined. War is a very nasty business, with its blood, dismemberment, and painful gangrenous death. In either case, the term cannot be made to apply to life in a traditional human society. For hundreds of thousands of years, human society was in most respects the antithesis of a war of all against all. War itself is largely a civilized invention. And it wasn’t until the advent of domestication just a few thousand years ago that true filth was introduced into human society. Nomadic people typically don’t stick around in any one place long enough for the diseases associated with human waste to become an issue. Cholera was likely rare to the point of nonexistent. Parasites are a chronic problem for all animals in the wild, but the vast majority of parasitic problems historically affecting humans (from viruses and deadly bacteria to cockroaches and rats) are direct effects of sedentary life-ways that include long-term storage of food and life in close proximity to domestic animals.
Brutish? Brute is from the Latin for dull or stupid. It is a derogatory term applied to uncivilized creatures, human or otherwise. For Hobbes to call life outside of civilization brutish is pure arrogance, based on his question-begging assumption that the uncivilized are inferior. This sentiment reflects the “great chain of being” view that humans are superior to the other beasts, and that civilization is the better part of what makes us so. Humans are above the brutes and beasts in the natural order of things. What is the evidence of human superiority? Civilization itself is the proof. What is the evidence that the uncivilized are inferior? They are uncivilized, it’s right there in the definition. No evidence needed.
Short? Although it is true, perhaps, that a person raised to depend on the physical and bureaucratic structures of civilization to provide life’s necessities would not last long if access to these structures were suddenly removed, this one was demonstrably false even in Hobbes’ time. Life expectancy in 17th century England was around 35 years. And it is not entirely true today, even for the privileged minority among us who have access to the wonders of modern medicine. It is likely that human longevity has only very recently returned to what it was prior to the agricultural revolution. The number one cause of death—in Hobbes’ time and during the Paleolithic—involved childbirth. Infant mortality among humans was probably around 30%, which is actually lower than the 50% found in most other primates. Take infant mortality out of the equation, and there is probably not all that much difference between the life expectancy of a typical 40-year-old in the Pleistocene and a typical 40-year-old in the US in the 21st century. Longevity measured as life expectancy is a statistical abstraction, and there is a difference between average life expectancy and life span. There is no convincing evidence that the biological life span of a normal healthy human has changed at all in the last 250,000 years.
Hobbes’ chauvinistic assertions have become orthodoxy. Why? Why does belief in these five defining characteristics of uncivilized life persist despite the ease with which each one can be shown to be false? As with any other false orthodoxy, the facts are secondary to the role the orthodoxy plays in justifying and supporting the belief system as a whole.
