Thomas Hobbes didn’t trust us. And the truth is, he may have had good reason.
In Leviathan, Hobbes imagines what humans are like without rules, without authority, without some consequence for action looming overhead. Strip away laws, customs, and those pesky consequences, and what’s left isn’t some Rousseau-esque garden of cooperation. It’s fear. Competition. Suspicion. Everyone watching everyone else, wondering who’s about to grab whatever they want.
Life, in such a state, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Which is a line people quote so often it’s almost lost its sting. But maybe it shouldn’t. Hobbes is saying something very plain and simple: without order, we turn on each other.
So we make a deal. We give up some freedom so we don’t have to sleep with one eye open. We hand our collective power to a sovereign (the Leviathan) not because it’s necessarily a good idea, but because chaos is so much worse (or, at least, that’s how it seems upfront).
John Locke hated this idea. Or at least, he tried to soften it some. Locke believed humans had natural rights (life, liberty, property, etc.) and that governments exist simply to protect those rights, not crush them. If rulers fail, the people are justified in replacing them. Locke trusted us more. Or maybe he trusted our better angels.
Then there’s Rousseau, who trusted society least of all. He thought humans were basically good until systems, hierarchies, and inequality ruined them. In his telling, the problem isn’t that authority is too weak; it’s that it’s illegitimate. True freedom, for Rousseau, comes from collective self-rule, from aligning ourselves with the “general will.”
Three thinkers. Three very different instincts.
And yet here we are, centuries later, still arguing about the same thing.
Look around and Hobbes suddenly feels uncomfortably modern. When institutions weaken, people don’t spontaneously become kinder. They become tribal. They retreat. They arm themselves; sometimes literally, sometimes psychologically. Trust collapses faster than markets. And into that vacuum steps someone promising order. Strength. Control. Safety.
That’s just the Leviathan, rebranded.
Modern Leviathans rarely announces themselves as such. They show up talking of stability. Of protection. Of “someone finally taking charge.” Hobbes would nod knowingly. He warned us this would happen. When fear outweighs trust, people will trade liberty for security every time.
But Locke and Rousseau haven’t disappeared either. You see Locke in every backyard gripe session where people say this government no longer represents us. You see Rousseau in every mutual support network, every cooperative experiment, every attempt to build something horizontal instead of hierarchical.
Which brings me to community. Real community. The kind you and I keep circling back to.
Hobbes assumes humans can’t self-govern at scale without force. And history gives him plenty of evidence. But what he underestimates, what he couldn’t quite see, is what happens in smaller, more human-sized spaces. Neighborhoods. Congregations. Mutual support circles. Time banks and Co-Ops. Places where people know one another’s names and stories.
Trust changes the equation.
The Leviathan is necessary when trust is absent. It grows in proportion to how disconnected we are. The more anonymous society becomes, the more power we hand upward. When we stop seeing one another as neighbors, we start seeing one another as threats.
Community, then, isn’t just warm and fuzzy. It’s stabilizing. It’s medicine for a very sick society.
Strong communities reduce the need for strong rulers. Not by pretending humans are angels, but by creating systems of accountability, reciprocity, and shared meaning that don’t require a boot hovering over everyone’s neck.
Hobbes feared chaos. Locke hoped for restraint. Rousseau dreamed of belonging.
We’re still caught somewhere in between.
Maybe the work now isn’t choosing one over the others, but learning how to live in the tension while building enough trust at the ground level that the Leviathan doesn’t need to keep growing just to hold us together.
Because, perhaps once it grows too large, it doesn’t just protect us from each other.
It starts protecting itself from us.
Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.
Cheers, friends.