The species is born enslaved to insatiable hormonal gratifications
Education and wisdom are the emancipation proclamation for the species
Jean-Jacques Rosseau philosophized in his Social Contract, “man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.” That observation is stupendously counterfactual—like proclaiming the geocentric theory of the universe.
Men and women are not born free. They are born enslaved to their insatiable hormonal gratifications for power, wealth, celebrity, creature comforts, and sex. Among other things, they instinctively venerate the armored knight and disdain the thinker. Warfare and prostitution have earmarked the species from the beginning of time. They show no signs of receding.
The world is a catastrophe by any measure of justice—the touchstone of civilization and the end of government.
Politics attracts sociopaths—not a random sample of the population. They are philosophically empty and seek power, fame, or money as external affirmations of their existence to avoid plunging into despair. They subconsciously know that without power or riches, they would be ciphers unable to attract the attention of a flea. They would become semi-suicidal. Think of U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein’s clinging to power after her cerebral capacities have shriveled. Or President Woodrow Wilson craving the opportunity to run for a third term in 1920 after becoming non compos mentis. The examples are endless.
Education, critical thinking, and reflection are the emancipation proclamation for the species’ enslavement to its hormonal lusts. But who are the nation’s icons and role models? Brainless entertainers like Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen or witless illiterate juvenile rappers. The thinker’s influence is less than extras in a Cecil B. DeMille cinematic extravaganza. We have the key to our own emancipation yet we fiercely resist using it because of our congenital addiction to hormonal gratifications.
To paraphrase Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves that we are not free and flourishing.