7.1.07

No Mine or Thine Divine


That is the title of this piece here, which you'll see atop all this writing. The title comes from one of main themes of Thomas Hobbes' critical political theory concerning men and their poor judgment when left to fend for themselves, which generates the need for a social contract between the lot of us to agree upon doing more than just trying to kill one another.
To speak truth, men don't actually show poor judgment in a natural state, it's just that there's nothing keeping one man from brutally slaying the other for the things that he has. There is no justice in a state of nature (so says Hobbes), and so we've all got to spend the hogshead of our short time on earth defending ourselves from our neighbor’s axe. Luckily, we've got options. Hobbes' solution is for all to agree to a social contract, wherein a small portion of individual rights is given to an authority (a king) in order to receive defense against harm from your countrymen.
Hobbes thinks this king's authority must be absolute, and that it comes from the all-seeing, all-knowing grey bearded man of eternal all (God), and as a result a king is accountable to none, but should consider his moral obligations before doing anything rash. This was kind of the weak part of Hobbes’ argument (as the King is the only one left in a natural state, and there's nothing physically stopping the old robe and crown from grabbing at whatever he may please, so long as it's cool with God; and God's not very good at saying 'no', outside of Old Testament accounts, so when the king plays the "I'm going to bathe in the blood of whomsoever I choose, and if you agree, just say nothing" game, a game we all figure out is rigged and unfair by the time we're ten years old, there's nothing keeping him from drawing a daily bloodbath and soaking his crotchety old bones in some poor farmer's right to life). But nonetheless, his basic precept was 'do no harm' and his social contract theory is a (can there be more than one cornerstone? is it always 'the' cornerstone? It seems like the most basic of structures would have at least a couple) cornerstone for modern western politic thinking.
The title 'No Mine or Thine Divine' is a reference to that state of nature I mentioned earlier; a place where no one can lay rightful claim to anything because there's no higher power imbued upon anyone. All these silly monsters have no good reason to keep away from one another's throats, and so they've become a big bundle of battling brutes. Try and spot the edges of a page where you can barely make out the date 1651 (the date of Leviathan's publication) in my drawing. It's not easy to spot. In real life the edges of the little page in my drawing glow in the dark, so it's easier to spot. The one goblin figure who's perusing the page, he's about to figure it out, so don't worry, these poor monsters won't be pulling hair for much longer.
I will be offering Gyclee prints of this image in an edition of 100 in the near future, so please write me if you're interested.