These are the famous words of the great Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) writing in his best known book The Social Contract. And today, more than ever, these words are true.
Rousseau, like other humanists of the eighteenth century envisioned the concept of a “noble savage,” though I’m not sure Rousseau ever used that particular term. But he pictured early man as wandering the earth free from all constraints (borders and fences, indentures and allegiances, taxes and so on) taking food he found when he was hungry and enjoying complete autonomy and sovereignty. It was man in a “state of nature,” like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In the words of Rousseau:
“The earth left to its own natural fertility and covered with immense woods, that no hatchet ever disfigured, offers at every step food and shelter to every species of animals. Men, dispersed among them, observe and imitate their industry, and thus rise to the instinct of beasts; with this advantage, that, whereas every species of beasts is confined to one peculiar instinct, man, who perhaps has not any that particularly belongs to him, appropriates to himself those of all other animals, and lives equally upon most of the different aliments, which they only divide among themselves; a circumstance which qualifies him to find his subsistence, with more ease than any of them.“
Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality
Other philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes who came earlier spoke of the dark side of the state of nature (and that of human nature.) Hobbes mentioned the brutality one finds in the wild, the fear that people live in and problems with self-sufficiency, a topic Adam Smith would describe in economic terms.
“Worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
THomas Hobbes, Leviathan
According to Hobbes:
“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Yet, Rousseau grudgingly agreed in his tale of the Stag Hunt that there is a benefit of collective action for the purpose of attaining that which no single person could achieve (in this case, food to satiate their hunger.)
However, as people mingle together more and more, their lives also become more entangled and complex and at the expense of their sovereignty. A simple, single modern example that comes to mind is a Home Owners Association (HOA.) People in an affluent neighborhood sign a covenant and if it is a particularly restrictive agreement, they pay costly fines for not maintaining their yards properly, or they need permission to paint their house a certain color, or to park in their driveway, fly a flag, sublet, and so on. But back to Rousseau.
Rousseau sees civilization as having a corrupting and corrosive effect on humanity. In a single word, civilization is not normal. It is sort of a sociological “unnatural selection” as Rousseau begins his indictment in the last few lines of the quote which follows:
Men, accustomed from their infancy to the inclemency of the weather, and to the rigour of the different seasons; inured to fatigue, and obliged to defend, naked and without arms, their life and their prey against the other wild inhabitants of the forest, or at least to avoid their fury by flight, acquire a robust and almost unalterable habit of body; the children, bringing with them into the world the excellent constitution of their parents, and strengthening it by the same exercises that first produced it, attain by this means all the vigour that the human frame is capable of. Nature treats them exactly in the same manner that Sparta treated the children of her citizens; those who come well formed into the world she renders strong and robust, and destroys all the rest; differing in this respect from our societies, in which the state, by permitting children to become burdensome to their parents, murders them all without distinction, even in the wombs of their mothers.
ibid.
Which brings us to Dobbs, a conservative judicial remedy to Roe. After millions of unborn children lost.
And what of our chains? Are they of rusty iron, or perhaps of finely minted gold? No difference. They bind us equally. Are they mortgages and debt? Addictions? Toxic relationships? Impossible expectations? Poor self-esteem? Eating disorders? Gender dysphoria? Likely, any one of these can be true to some extent.
There was a time when I was much younger and felt encumbered by several of these issues and I would watch the geese flying north (or south as the season called for), wishing I could join them. Complete abandonment. Like Rousseau’s savage, geese move when they must, stopping to eat only when hungry, never consuming more than they need, never surrendering their freedom, for a goose is eternally free to leave the flock. Yet, we know nature is not that easy, and it’s not as romantic as it might seem, either. Many animals starve to death in the wild, or die of cold, of disease, or are ravished by beasts as a lion without mercy or thought slaughters a hapless gazelle.
And what of chains? More than likely, our chains are forged from sin. Jesus says as much in John 8:34 where He tells us: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” And slaves are tightly bound with chains.
Think of Eustace Scrubb in The Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawntredder. His disobedience to his sovereign Aslan caused him excruciating pain from the gold bracelet that encircled his arm as he slept.
The links of our chains may be “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21.)
Before we became justified and sanctified in Christ, we were part of an unholy alliance, described by King David as one among many “who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death, Prisoners in misery and chains, Because [we] had rebelled against the words of God” (Psalm 107:10, 11.)
Yet, when we come to Christ, God forgives us. Further in Psalm 107 (verse 14) David relates: “He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, And broke their bands apart.” We were freed, truly freed.
That freedom must be seized though. I once heard a story about people in an area in Asia who brought chickens to market each Tuesday. The farmers would take three or four chickens, tie their legs together, and slip a pole through the bonds. The pole would then be slung over the shoulder of the farmer and he would carry them to the market. At some point after he arrived at the market, he would cut the cords fastening the chicken’s legs together, but the chickens would flap around as if their legs were still tied, partly from habit, perhaps or partly from not realizing that they were no longer bound. It’s the same with people. We return to our sins, partly from habit, and partly because we don’t understand that we have been delivered. Once for all.
So, it’s a fallacy to think that we are truly free. We may be physically free, but our souls and spirits are not. And there are people in prison who have confessed their sin and have been redeemed who enjoy much more freedom than we who are in denial and are not constrained by bars. Maybe this is what Lovelace meant when he penned those famous words: “Stone Walls do not a Prison make, Nor Iron bars a Cage;”