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Originally Posted by debaser
Filtherton: I was saying that the ability for you to go to school is because our society puts a buffer betwixt you and the "state of nature". There is no different state for humans, it is what it is.
If it were not for the "societal buffer", we would not be typing this, because someone stronger than you would have come and taken your stuff, or you would be out taking someone elses, as a means to survive and prosper. We (most of us) have overcome this, to a point. It is a good thing. I would not enjoy living a nasty, brutish, and short life.
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I've had my shit stolen, and we all know that people get killed and assaulted every day. Society is a shitty buffer.
I see what you're saying and i don't necessarily disagree with it in principle, though i think that it's incomplete. The fact that i am who i am at this point in time, much less the fact that i am able to go to school, owes credit to many things that can be generally be considered to be completely separate from the influence of society: i haven't yet come down with a debilitating or fatal disease; i wasn't born with any noticeable (so far, at least) physical or mental handicaps of a nature that would preclude my survival; i haven't been seriously injured or killed in some sort of "act of god"-ey type thing; i have been able to gain access to resources essential to my survival; etc. Out of all the things i have just listed, human on human violence only really comes into play in the last one, and even then only as one of a multitude of ways in which to gain or procure resources. The "state of nature" of humanity, as i see it, is one of constant uncertainty, where that great fudge factor luck has more to do with survival than any one specific nonrandom thing.
I also think that a "state of nature" as we are using it here is nothing more than a label for arbitrary axioms about the nature of something, humanity in this case. It actually says nothing about humanity in its natural state, unless it takes into account the fact that humanity is always in its natural state. We are living in the "state of nature" right now. Humans are social animals, and as such, society is a state of our nature, always has been, always will be.
We are governed by the same things right now that we have always been governed by, the same things that currently govern every other form of life.
But, after writing all this, i think that all you're really trying to say is that the guy who is willing to resort to violence will always have the advantage over the guy who isn't, in which case i think it depends on the situation.