14 October 2008

hobbes' WAR OF ALL AGAINST ALL

Hobbes seems to understand that all people are in a war against all to live fulfilled lives, or get what they want in life.
Society is built upon competition. Business is competition. Jobs are competition. Love is sometimes a competition. Fighting for what you want is a social norm. When you get what you aimed for after this war, it makes it all worth it.
Human Nature has made people, and therefore society, competitive and willing to fight whatever is in the way for what they want.
I know that my thoughts always take me to movies, songs, or books, but I think they are some of the greatest teachers of philosophy and human nature. one song by the receiving end of sirens called "the war of all against all" triggered. I never thought about it in a hobbes view and thinking about it in that way has helped me understand the song more.

Look alive, gentlemen
Or fake your deaths; your wounds undressed beneath your costumes.
Some are so well rehearsed
For hearses it hurts, always the first to wave the white flag
And barricade themselves
In false pretenses, fox holed in trenches.
Forged casualties with casual pleas,
Dying to please the enemy
We die to stay alive, we kill to survive

We are the corp of corpses,
We are up in arms and armed
Bring all the king's horses and all the king's men

Push on, plod on, these legs like pistons pumping forward motion.
Convalescent men in uniform.
We have fallen to friendly fire, shrapnel freckles our spine.
Still our feet fall one by one.
Although it also has to do with war, it also reminds me a bit of Hobbes. People fight to stay alive, and kill to survive.


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