“Bellum omnium contra omnes“–Hobbes’ “war of all, against all”–was the first word on the “state of nature.” It was a hypothetical then, a possible time when humans may have existed without government. Hobbes’ blatant stance against the very principle of empirical research ensured that this remained only a hypothesis, but he could hardly have tested it then even if he had been so inclined. Philosophers were only beginning to consider the possibility of the scientific method, and Hobbes was a strong proponent of the superiority of philosophical thought experiments. Anthropological data was only beginning, and even what little there was, was generally of the form of imperial apologia, describing the horror of barbaric pagan ways, and how desperately they needed the salvation of Christendom and European civilization. Hobbes’ “state of nature” owed much to Judeo-Christian mythology of the “Fall of Man,” and the inherent sinfulness of humanity. The individual human in the “state of nature” was, in Hobbes’ philosophy, a solitary predator whose cruelty was matched only by his cowardice. The result of such “anarchy,” in the traditional, perjorative sense of the word, was a life that was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Rousseau later challenged this idea, with his own ideas about the “state of nature.” Rousseau was impressed by the accounts of natives in Africa and the New World. Often, these accounts justified imperialism by casting European powers as a nurturing parent–placing natives in the role of innocent children. These accounts affected Rousseau deeply, and through him, all of Romanticism. The Romantics’ reverence for the native and the child are very closely linked, and for good historical reason. For Rousseau, “natural” humans were governed by natural pity and compassion. Life alone in the wilderness precluded all technology, speech or culture, leaving humans in a significantly keener, stronger, feral state. For Rousseau, the domestication of humans leads to weak people with atrophied senses and stunted intellect. Rousseau argues that human cruelty follows from the jealousy and inequality of society. In “The Origins of Inequality,” Rousseau described this “fall from grace” in terms of the invention of technology, private property, and the emergence of civilization. It is to Rousseau that we owe the concept of the “noble savage”–that uncivilized people are kinder, gentler, wiser, more enlightened and more noble than we.

These conflicting views still form the basis of our thinking about human nature. These are the two views with which we are most familiar. Hobbes sees people as bad; Rousseau sees people as good. Both were formed by Enlightenment philosophers as thought experiments, without any reference to what we actually know about “the state of nature.” Nearly all of that knowledge has been acquired since, so the fault does not lie with Hobbes or Rousseau. Given what they knew, their hypotheses were perfectly reasonable. Given what we know, continuing to base our concepts of “human nature” on these outmoded thought experiments so blatantly contradicted by the known facts, is completely irrational.

Perhaps the most basic error that both Hobbes and Rousseau commit is their inability to concieve of any society significantly unlike our own. Humans must once have been solitary animals, since there must have been a time before government, and how could humans live in groups without government? Given their miring in Creationist reasoning, that may even make some sense, but now we know that there has never been a time in the evolution of our species in which humans were solitary. We evolved from social primates, who evolved from other social mammals, going all the way back to the first organisms that discovered they increased their odds of thriving by working together. Many animals are well-adapted to a solitary life; humans are not on that list. We require societies to live, just as wolves do. Lone wolves are almost certain to die alone; so, too, a solitary human in the wilderness. Yet, as primordial as society is, government is a most recent innovation. We now know of many, many societies that function perfectly well without one.

Hobbes’ “bellum omnium contra omnes” is fictional, as well. We know now that such unrestrained violence is suicidal in the natural world. As Dawkins explained in The Selfish Gene, constant belligerence is most likely to lead to an early grave. Instead, conflict in nature only rarely ends in actual violence, as escalating displays of aggression give each side ample time to back down, before it comes to that. Plato first speculated that men acted morally only for fear of punishment, and this principle became the bedrock of Hobbes’ philosophy. While this may well be a common motivation today, it is now obvious that animals have restrained themselves and acted “morally” since the beginning of time–eons before the development of law, or the institution of punishment. This restraint came from simple evolution, and the fact that the alternative simply didn’t work.

Rousseau’s “noble savage” is also deeply flawed. Much of Rousseau’s picture of “the state of nature” came from imperialist propaganda. He failed to respect the sophistication and depth of native cultures. His “state of nature” also relied on a fanciful time before society, where humans were solitary. Most of all, however, Rousseau painted uncivilized people as innately superior to we civilized folk. What advantages they enjoyed were not innate, however, but systemic. If they were spared theft or murder, it was because their way of life made theft and murder meaningless–not because of their innate racial superiority. This “noble savage” myth is an insidious form of racism, where aboriginal peoples are dehumanized not by making them into demons, but by making them so simple that they are incapable of evil–and too innocent to be left to their own devices. It is a condescending fiction that turns grown adults into perpetual children.

The truth is not as simple as the question are people good or bad, as we so often put it. It is not as easy as Hobbes or Rousseau, because Hobbes and Rousseau are both wrong about the essential, inescapable fact of human nature. Namely, that humans are animals, pure and simple. We are not good. We are not evil. We are not angels or demons. As much as we may try to deny it, we are very much a part of this world. We are the product of evolution, and evolution bequeathed to us a system that is damnably hard to improve upon. If we find the world today is not to our liking, perhaps it would do us well to examine those cultural systems that evolution gave us, that worked for us so well for millions of years. I refuse to believe that striking bit of irrationality that of all the animals in the world, humans are unique twice–the only fallen animal, and the most exalted one. Our mythology talks of “the fall,” and makes us the worst of all animals. Or we can focus on our superior soul or intellect, and laud ourselves as the best. Neither is true, but those myths serve a purpose.

When we see problems in the world, like sickness, poverty, depression, stress, war, or pollution, we make no move to solve it. We chalk it up to “human nature.” We blame it on the myth of “the fall,” in one form or another, and move on. The myth keeps us from considering that those problems just might be solvable after all. Evolution does not create things so deeply flawed, so we invent stories to insist that we are. All so we don’t have to consider the possibility that we’re facing the systemic consequences of a single bad choice a few of our ancestors made 10,000 years ago.