States Reduce Violence

So did Hobbes get it right? In part, he did. In the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel: gain (predatory raids), safety (preemptive raids), and reputation (retaliatory raids). And the numbers confirm that relatively speaking, “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war,” and that in such condition they live in “continual fear, and danger of violent death.” But from his armchair in 17th-ce...

 Evolution by Langdon Smith

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish   In the Paleozoic time, And side by side on the ebbing tide   We sprawled through the ooze and slime, Or skittered with many a caudal flip   Through the depths of the Cambrian fen, My heart was rife with the joy of life,   For I loved you even then. Mindless we lived and mindless we loved   And mindless at last we died; And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift   We slumbered side by side. The world turned on in the lathe of time,   The...