Government

I think our guest lecturer hit it on the head when, after talking about Confucius, said, ".. and we're only barely reaching out to scratch the surface".

In brief, my feelings about Locke are this: it's not a very deep look into the true nature of human society and nature. It felt, to me, like a political tract, as though it were using the frame of a narrative about the nature of man and civilization to justify an argument for private property and its' legal and violent defense.

Unlike Freud or Darwin, I don't think he was trying to answer a big question so much as he was trying to build a case for an idea, or belief.

I'm much more prone toward Rousseau's assessment of private property from his Discourse on Inequality:

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society."

In other words, private property is not a product of labour and an extension of Man in Nature, but a cynical product of civilization, built on the shoulders of bullying and imbalance of power.

I am fighting with my neighbor over a fence line, determined not to allow him one inch of what I think is mine. He, likewise, is determined to expand his reach to the last possible inch. Fucker. He's wrapping his property in chicken wire, built a locked gate, and has parked an ugly RV in his backyard. I don't want to see it. I hate the chicken wire. He brought in a backhoe and tore out the natural hill in front of his house (which is actually municipal property, not his), and replaced it with a horrific stone wall that bears no aesthetic connection to our surrounding landscape. He wants to cut the tops off the hundred or so trees in front of his place that denies him a view of the ocean (guiltily, I admit that most of the trees blocking my view were taken down many years ago.) Doesn't matter, he has no taste. That is, he doesn't share mine. In my opinion, he's ruining what is lovely about our rugged pieces of land on our little island.

But it's his property. He can do with it what he will.

I hate private property. But, even if we held all land in common, we would still have to deal with people who would lay claim to things and try to form an advantage over others, or just basically ruin the party for everybody. This, I think, is man's true 'State of Nature'.

There's a development on the other side of the island where all the lots have been created to make the least impact on the natural lay of the land. All owners must adhere to a strict building and use code. All amenities are shared and paid for by the strata. And no fences are allowed to be built. I want to live there. Of course, it's extremely expensive. So I'm stuck here with my RV-and-Chicken-wire loving neighbor, and absolutely no recourse but to try and get along with him.

I'm going to build a fence. As tall and long as I can, and blot him out of my life. This is the true nature of the social contract: not that we must agree to get along, but that we can't kill each other, so we're best to build walls and stay separate.

This is the legacy of Locke.

I wish we had more of Confucius in us. I wish virtue was defined by our conduct toward each other and not by our possessions. I wish the social contract governed our feelings about living together on a crowded planet, rather than our right to build fences to protect that which is ours from the use of others. I wish we had a society built on humility rather than aggressive acquisition.

Of course, I'm only scratching the surface. I know.