Human Injustice
In the United States of 2020, even the least well off Americans are among the most privileged and least oppressed people in the history of humanity. We should keep that in mind in our considerations of what justice demands of us in our particular social context.
Contrary to Rousseau's romanticized "myth of the noble savage," most of human history has more closely resembled Hobbes' understanding of the state of nature. Hobbes imagined life in primitive human societies to have been characterized by an endless “war of every man against every man" in which life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The best archaeological and historical evidence falsifies Rousseau's hypothesis and supports Hobbes' understanding of human life in a state of nature. In fact, the vast majority of human history and civilizations have been plagued by ubiquitous injustice and immeasurable cruelty and callousness.
Recommended Reading:
Napoleon Chagnon's Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes - the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists
Robert B. Edgerton's Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony
George Franklin Feldman's Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America: A History Forgotten
Lawrence H. Keeley's War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
Steven A. LeBlanc's Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage
Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Contrary to Rousseau's romanticized "myth of the noble savage," most of human history has more closely resembled Hobbes' understanding of the state of nature. Hobbes imagined life in primitive human societies to have been characterized by an endless “war of every man against every man" in which life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The best archaeological and historical evidence falsifies Rousseau's hypothesis and supports Hobbes' understanding of human life in a state of nature. In fact, the vast majority of human history and civilizations have been plagued by ubiquitous injustice and immeasurable cruelty and callousness.
Recommended Reading:
Napoleon Chagnon's Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes - the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists
Robert B. Edgerton's Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony
George Franklin Feldman's Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America: A History Forgotten
Lawrence H. Keeley's War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
Steven A. LeBlanc's Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage
Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined