A Nasty, Brutish, and Short Guide to the 41st Millenium

Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who sadly had almost no interaction with theologian John Calvin, is probably most famous for his terse, and rather grim, description of life: "Nasty, brutish, and short." The actual quote, from Leviathan (which already sounds more like one of Superman's foes than it does a work of social philosophy), adds in the terms 'solitary' and 'poor' for good measure.

What is important to remember, however, is that Hobbes is referring specifically to life outside the bounds of organized government. In this 'state of nature', every person is inherently free to pursue their own desires. As such, we each compete, individually, for resources, which results in a violent free-for-all that Hobbes calls bellum omnium contra omnes - the war of all against all.

In order to escape this constant struggle, men (by which I mean 'men and women' - it's commonly accepted usage, and much quicker to type) must willingly relinquish their freedoms and establish a social contract; say, for instance, "don't kill people and take their stuff." In this way, the population can establish a civil society.

The flip side of this, though, is the person to whom you're relinquishing your rights (because apparently you can't just give them away; you can only transfer them). That person is the sovereign authority, and, at least according to Hobbes, if he's a jerk you'd better suck it up and deal, because its a lot better than getting disemboweled for the clothes on your back.

An odd counter-example to this is the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000 (link to tvtropes.com description). For those of you not cursed with immense nerdiness, Warhammer 40,000 (or simply 40k) is tabletop miniatures wargame of the 'science fantasy' bent. It consists mainly of you and your opponent setting up little plastic men, rolling dice, and imagining your plastic men shooting, exploding, or chainsawing your opponents little plastic men to death.

So yeah, its essentially Army Men with rules.

In any event, in this (again, fictional) setting, its the year 40,000, and everything sucks. Billions of soldiers armed with little more than flashlights face off against bug-like alien monstrosities, hordes of demons pour out of rifts in the space-time continuum, and dark elder gods secretly plot to extinguish all life in the galaxy.

And those are just the external threats. For the general population, the odds aren't any better: you're either drafted into the Imperial Guard (where you'll almost assuredly die horribly) or sent to work in a city-sized sweatshop, and if you complain about either, you'll probably be tortured to death by the Inquisition (yes, that Inquisition). Millions routinely perish due to book-keeping errors. That is, life is essentially as Hobbes describes it: Nasty, brutish, and short.

The thing is, the entire human race is run by possibly the most powerful sovereign of all: The God-Emperor of Mankind. Depending on how you read the backstory, his endless wars might fall under the category of "doing what has to be done," but if his goal was to ensure a civil society, he's doing a pretty poor job of it.

Hobbes' theories fail, for the most part, to address the dangers of an oppressive, all-powerful sovereign. This might be a reflection of his times: writing during the middle of the English Civil War (yes, that's right, the Brits did it first), oppression probably seemed a lot better than anarchy. Still, his flat rejection of the separation of powers is not only archaic in hindsight, but, given its application in ancient Greek and Rome, these safeguards should have been an obvious necessity even at the time of his writing.

There's a lot more that could be said criticizing Hobbes (mechanistic view of humanity, poor geometry skills...), but instead I'll leave it here for tonight.

Next Time: The Ethics of Civil Service & Bounty Hunting
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Appended - I did promise tips on how to build a good 40k Army List, but since I ran long today it'll wait until another time. For those that were prtic, here's my own tentative list, which I'll tweak later. If you have no idea what's going on here, suffice to say that these are the little plastic men I intend to use the next time I have a little-plastic-men-battle. Don't worry; its more here for my records than anything else.

It's essentially a Mech Tau configuration, 1000 points, TAC.

HQ - Shas'el XV8 [100 pts total]
-Plasma Rifle
-Cyclic Ion Blaster
-Targeting Array
-Multitracker (hardwired)

Troops - 2*Firewarrior Teams [2*205]
-11 Shas'la
-Devilfish Transport
-Disruption Pod
-Flechette Dischargers

Heavy Support - 2*Hammerhead [2*175]
-Railgun
-Burst Cannon
-Disruption Pods, Flechette Dischargers, Multitrackers
-Hammerhead [140]
-Ion Cannon
-Burst Cannon
-Disruption Pods, Flechette Dischargers, Multitrackers