Crossed Trails and What Hobbes Got Wrong

An Eclectic Humanist

This episode, continuing last week's theme of COVID-19, human nature, and social responsibility, begins with a random encounter in the woods. It then wanders through some speculation on Hobbesian and Confucian state-of-nature arguments, a brief digression into primatology, and some thoughts on North America's ongoing epidemic of selfishness and sociopathy that our fractured responses to the coronavirus, particularly among the “muh freedum” crowd in their active undermining of adequate public health measures, has brought to the surface. Of course, as merely pointing out a shortcoming is not particularly useful, I also suggest a possible remedy to this selfishness epidemic, arising from a more nuanced understanding of human nature than is common among both anti-maskers and the far political right. It would appear that, this time around, I felt like highlighting the “eclectic” facet of the “Eclectic Humanist.” Hope you enjoy it, or at least that you don't get whiplash.