The Body Project

In present time, we have already established certain rules, norm, and legal regulations. They guide us, put restrictions on us, and more or less they give us freedom to be who we are 'passionate" about to be. Do we really need to be controlled by boundaries and legal laws? How do we recognize 'good' from 'evil', 'right' from 'wrong'? Hence, many great philosophers have been debating on the relative importance of moral precepts verses the individual experience for centuries. Presently, there is no clear conclusion on the dispute; yet, there many hypothesis.

Whenever we hear ideologues to argue, we tend to believe one of the two. We either assume that one of the parties is mostly correct, or we assume both parties are mostly confuse. For most of my life, I felt comfortable to suspect that everyone is wrong, about everything. However, I am coming to conclusion that absolutely everyone is 100 percent right about everything.

Recently, as almost every night, while browsing the channels, my attention was captured by something very interesting, Although, I can what I saw was crazy. The premise this broadcast has is that we all need to acknowledge the fact that we are Islamic enemies, and they will not find peace of mind until we are all dead. Hearing such a statement on the National Television, makes wonder if there is anything I can do to save my life. Unfortunately, I need to accept the fact that no matter what I do or how I live, there will always be a handful of bigoted Muslim death machine, who will not satisfy until my blood is flowing in the waters of Charles River. On the other hand, as I walk on the streets of Boston, I cannot help to hear comments such as American foreign policy is making the worst of the situation.

Even though, the above example illustrates such a small piece of our reality, there is much more philosophical meaning than it appears. One side, we have the Iraqi nation, which seemed to be separated, and each one of them acts individually to preserve one. According to Thomas Hobbes; every human being in state of nature would behave " badly" towards one another. What Hobbes argued is that people have every right to defend themselves by any means, in absence of order. Famously, he believed that such a condition would lead to ' war of every man against every man' and make life ' solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short '. In same a manner Nigel Nicholson suggested that we, the rational human beings, are just what we were hundred centuries ago. In another words, we are still animals, genetically designed in body and mind for survival of the wild . This completely supports Hobbes's view. Even when a civil government is instituted, the state of nature has being disappeared between the individuals of the civil power, which exist to enforce contracts. In the case mentioned above, the Iraq nation is going through some very extreme political changes. Without a government, Iraqi people turned on one another as well as on the rest of the world. They live in state of fear, feeling that everyone around them is a treat to their life. Therefore, since one lives in constantly fright for his life, there is only one solution: to subsist by any means. If this were the only solution, how long would it take for the human race to self-destroy?

Fortunately, somehow we managed to coexist in this planet for hundreds of centuries. But how we did it? Obviously, not by killing each other. Since ancient times, there have been organized decree people followed and obeyed whether they agreed or not. One of the greatest philosophers, Thomas Hobbes recognized the essence of the human society's dilemma. He defined several fundamental principals, derived from nature and the natural world. In his theory of the natural law, he investigated how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act. As result of that, the natural law is a precept, or general rule, found by reason, by which man is forbidden to do that which destructive for his life, or takes away by means of preservation; and omit that by which he thinks it may best be preserved. As Hobbes suggested one should endeocor peace, willing to lay down right to all things, to uphold covenants, equity, accumulate oneself to rest, revenge only for the greater good, contumely, acknowledge one another as equal, and self-conduct to all who mediate peace. If we, all the rational human beings, succeed to follow the natural law, we will survive for thousand centuries ahead.

However, in the case illustrated above, it appears to me that more or less the Iraqi people acted in such way comparable to the state of nature distinguished by Hobbes. This creates dissensions between the masses and it weakens the society when it needs to be more united than ever. Yet, such a notion of disconnected actions in times of war can only have unpleasant end to the parties involved in. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has made clear observations on obstacles of men in state of nature to defend for ones preservation, bring us to conclusion that "human race will perish if it does not change its mode of existence" . He suggested:" since man cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist, the only way in which they can preserve themselves is by uniting separated powers in combination strong enough to overcome any resistance, uniting them so that powers are directed by single motive and act in concert" . It is apparent that sum of united forces is greater than the individuals. At the same time in when men cohesive in such manner, one losses some of the rights and makes virtue of necessities for the greater good of all. These takes me back to Hobbes theory of natural laws, which proposes that the concept of laws and morality intersect in some way. If that is true, where the war takes place?

War seems to be the most destructive and horrific type of human interaction. No other venue allows people to kill each other in such massive numbers or to cause incredible