Very recently, throughout the whole world, political unrest has been boiling over and creating several revolutions, protests and paradigm shifts. I have been wondering what might have so many seemingly unrelated countries clamoring for drastic change. Ukraine, Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, Bulgaria, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Tunisia are just the tip of the iceberg and of course the countries that have been getting the most amount of dissemination of transparent news and information. Notice I used the words "dissemination of information". I am not saying media coverage since many of these countries barely make the news if anything at all and have been very reliant on social media.
These countries range greatly in race, culture, geographic location, political views and maturity. Then why do they seem to me like they are all commiserating and protesting the same cause. Was it East vs. West mentality? Was it capitalism vs. communism? It must then be a religious issue. No, it wasn't. Then what was left? The most obvious answer. It was simply that the government had stopped being a reflection of the people they governed and had decided instead to control them. To a certain degree the roles have reversed. The government should be a miniature sample of their constituents and act as such.
These countries' people had decoupled completely from their governments and the consequence was that the government, in response, had to reign them back in and condition them on how to think and act in order for the people to represent their government. Or at least that's what hey are trying. The leviathans were here.
The Leviathan is a concept created by Thomas Hobbes in reference to the problem of social order. Thomas states that human beings can live collectively in peace and avoid the dangers of civil unrest by creating a creature called the Leviathan to protect them. As most of us know, the creature is destined to grow out of control and turn on the very people it was intended to protect. As foretold, the masses were being pumped of the crustacean monsters' Tetrodotoxin; inhibiting them from critical thinking and trying to turn them into Zombie lambs. These people are clamoring for change.
But wait!!! I thought we had evolved past the absolute cynicism of Hobbes'. The social contract we had gotten ourselves into was no longer to save us from each other, but to protect our natural but not inalienable rights, from outsiders and from our new Golem (no wait, you can control a Golem).
Underlying Hobbes' need for a Leviathanistic state was the biblical burden of being born with a rotten set of moral codes. Or what could be labeled as human nature. Locke gave us the theory of "La Tabula Rasa" or the clean slate, saying that we are all born immaculate little buddhas. This makes Hobbes' argument flawed. By removing us from an inevitable demise in to "The Natural State" or the "state of war". If that was the case, then this monster can be tamed down to a companion and guardian when it becomes unruly.
To those Hobbes defenders, I would like to say that you should remember that America was practically created by Locke. The declaration of independence, being an almost "verbatim" copy of his political works, states very clearly how to set up the mechanisms or the safeguards to (at least in theory) be able to control your creature making, it at the very least, harder for your government to tell you what to do and limiting their interaction with society to guarantying your natural rights. Though this sort of thought would be considered "green party, Nader loving, liberalist, pie in the sky" rhetoric, it was, once again, the original blueprints for America. The United States might not be perfect but as of right now, I think, it holds one of the most modern set of working values and is currently at the top of its game and has many lessons to teach "through example" to these troubled states.
Though every person is created equal, not every country is. Some argue that you only use Locke's constitutionalism if your country is too wimpy to have its own Leviathan, well, what super-exceeds a leviathan? The UN? Some sort of bigger international or global monster? I am not quite sure. However, this does seem to be the base cause for this global political pandemic and a realistic remedy is sorely needed. Because even if David and Goliath teamed up against the Leviathan, chances are they will be massacred.
Rafael Michelena
