Happy Birthday, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

At 2GreenEnergy, we routinely remind readers of the ideas put forth by the contemporary and historical political philosophers, insofar as, in general, their thoughts have great import on some of today’s most critical issues.  We all have a great deal to learn from people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born this date in Geneva in 1712.  I hope you’ll check out this entry in the Writer’s Almanac:

….One day (Rousseau) was walking to visit his friend and fellow philosopher Denis Diderot, who was in jail, and he had an epiphany: modern progress had corrupted rather than improved mankind. He became famous overnight upon publication of his essay A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750)….. In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) he continued to explore the theme that civilization had led to most of what was wrong with people: living in a society led to envy and covetousness; owning property led to social inequality; possessions led to poverty. Society exists to provide peace and protect those who owned property, and therefore government is unfairly weighted in favor of the rich.

In it, he wrote: “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” His next two books, a criticism of the educational system (Émile) and a treatise of political philosophy (The Social Contract), both published in 1762, caused such an uproar that he fled France altogether. His work would prove inspirational to the leaders of the French Revolution, and they adopted the slogan from The Social Contract: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

Wow, that’s really shocking stuff to us capitalists in the 21st Century, isn’t it? We’re completely grounded in living with the social paradigm of self-enrichment, so much so that we’re no more aware of our greed and selfishness than fish are aware of the water in which they swim.

Yet there is no escaping the consequences of the disease called social inequality. We’re starting to see that not only is this morally depraved, but it’s impractical as well. When wealth is collected in the hands of a few and most of the world is living in poverty, social systems break down, hateful crackpots are elected, fascism ensues, and everyone, rich and poor alike, loses.