Did we ever actually escape the State of Nature?

A few weeks ago during discussion, we were put in groups and told to find a movie that represents a Hobbesian State of Nature. During this project, I chose the movie Mean Girls, and my group made the argument that this movie represented a group of people without a true social contract. One of our arguments was that a fear of violent death existed not in the literal sense but with the idea that the girls feared that their social standing was in jeopardy. This got me thinking; since there’s a way to represent the fear of death without an actual fear of physical death, is it possible that other aspects of a State of Nature can exist in a metaphorical sense? Furthermore, could it be possible that no American has truly exited the State of Nature?

First, a Hobbesian state of nature requires a natural self-interest.  According to an article on helium.com,  humans have an innate sense of self-interest. We are driven to perform even good deeds to others, like helping an elderly lady cross the street, out of our own innate desire to avoid guilty feelings for not making the right choice.

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Because not even our selfless actions are for the benefit of others, we really do have an interest in merely ourselves; this trait isn’t remedied by living in an American society.

Americans also have a sense of equality, a State of Nature trait. We can choose what to eat, what to wear, and what job we want to pursue. Some may argue that certain people, through predestination, have certain advantages over others. Although some people are born richer, it doesn’t prevent a lower-class citizen from rising the social ladder and gaining wealth. Although some children go to better high schools than others, it doesn’t mean the children at less prestigious schools can’t work hard and gain admission to prestigious universities. At the end of the day, everyone is given equality in the sense that they can all hope for “the American dream”.

Next, comes the State of Nature’s fear of violent death. It’s not necessarily true that Americans directly fear a violent death --although given news stories about violent crimes, it’s quite possible that they do—it’s much more likely that their fear stems from a death similar to my previous example from Mean Girls. The American fear of violent death is actually the fear of failure, something that we as children are ingrained to believe as the reason why competing and succeeding is so critical.

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To fail in America is terrifying. The effects, like being starving, ostracized, and homeless, are the equivalent of dying. Without a life goal or purpose to pursue, we get the impression that we’re nothing but a walking zombie, someone aimlessly existing without a purpose. To avoid this thought process, humans strive their hardest to attend the best universities and get bigger paychecks to avoid the looming fate that could come with doing anything less than their best.

Next comes quite possibly the most difficult argument to make for this case: the fact that we live in a society without a definitive social contract. It is true; there are rules in America, but does that necessarily mean that we’re in a social contract? First off, for a person to be in a social contract, he or she must come to the conclusion that being in a social contract is important and necessary. By doing this, he or she accepts the need for order. This doesn't indicate that every American citizen is in the social contract, though. The only person's thoughts that you know is your own. You cannot be sure that every person around you has come to the conclusion that a social contract is necessary. Because of this, it is rather likely that a significant amount of people are not actually abiding by the rules of the social contract because they don't know the dependency that they need on it.

The ramifications of this idea are actually quite substantial. Maybe we’ve escaped the literal sense of the State of Nature; maybe we’ve avoided the fear of dying, and maybe we can exist in a society where some type of peace is established. But, does that mean anything if we haven’t actually escaped the State of Nature in full? To an extent, yes, there is an existing option where people can choose to exit the State of Nature and abide by the rules in America. There's another side to this, though, because people don't have to play by the rules. If they haven't actively realized they need a social contract, they have the potential to act like they live in a society with no rules, creating a lack of peace. This lack of peace that exists in this society, according to Hobbes, means the Social Contract has not truly succeeded in protecting people. Americans still have the potential to be murdered or raped, there’s still a sense of competition with other people to succeed in school, jobs, and even asking out the girl across the bar. There’s still an inner sense of selfishness that even existed within Mother Theresa. At the end of the day, Americans, and humans for that matter, never truly escaped the State of Nature; we merely shrouded ourselves in the belief that because we live in a society with the option of accepting a social contract, we truly escaped the brutish lifestyle faced by the people of the past.