Same Boat Significance

The expression “we're all in the same boat” is a crucial factor in determining whether a group of people pulls together to successfully face a challenge or splinters into factions and fails. When a group—from a handful of people to a full society—coheres, they are able to cooperate with one another to keep the group strong and resilient. Many philosophers, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, have described such a society as one that has created a “social contract.” This term describes an agreement among society members to cooperate with each other and with the government, in order to create benefits for all. Those benefits can be crucial for the society to be able to provide for the welfare of its members.

History has shown that small groups have been more successful than large groups in creating and perpetuating the social contract. This is because a small group of people can actually feel that they are in the same boat. For example, when a band of our hunter-gatherer ancestors faced a crisis such as a flood, a troop of lions, or starvation, they naturally pulled together in order to survive. Additionally, everyone knew everyone... they all were literally in the same boat. That cohesiveness is much harder to sustain in large societies. So Rousseau and other philosophers described how large groups inevitably tend to disintegrate and descend into chaos, when members do not feel as if they are in the same boat.

One unfortunate example of when a large society can develop a strong bond is when its country goes to war. The exterior threat causes them to pull together to defend the homeland. The situation then creates an atmosphere of comradeship, that overpowers internal dissensions. Manipulative political leaders know how to unite the populace, by posing another country or people as a threat. This is often done today, for example, in the context of rallying citizens against immigration.

Throughout history the world has been divided into separate geopolitical states that often engaged in war with each other, either because they saw no reason to feel in the same boat with a neighboring country, or they feared it or wanted it. Now we have a global society linked tightly by commerce and the internet. Our communication abilities keep us closely and instantly connected, and yet fragmentation, competition, and polarization can make us feel that we are not at all in the same boat. While the global community should feel more connected, we in fact are fragmented even more.

Societies like the United States are suffering from a severe case of polarization. Rousseau and his colleagues would recognize this process as the disintegration of the social contract and the danger of descent into chaos. Will current societies be able to bridge the polarizing gaps and show their citizens that they are in the same boat, or will we tread farther down the path of disintegration?

Rousseau’s Covenant

The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed ideas in the 18^th century about the fundamental nature of humans and their societies. While his views on individual human nature were generally optimistic, he was quite pessimistic about the qualities of society. He wrote that, while we are born virtuous and free, civilization will inevitably make our lives unpleasant. The opening statement of his famous work, On the Social Contract, reflects this sentiment: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”

Much of Rousseau's philosophical work was about how to counteract society's and governments’ harmful influence on each of us. His concept of the “social contract” was a way protect our freedom. It is basically a covenant between the populous and the government which assures that citizens have the ability and right to rein in government, when it threatens to break that contract. Such a well-ordered society cannot endure, however, if there does not exist some kind of common will of the people. There needs to be some cohesion among citizens… some coming ground. Once citizens begin to fragment, however, they will lose their authority and their control, allowing the government to seize power and begin to violate the general will and harm the populace.

Whatever kind of regime is established—that is, whatever form of government is created—in order to be legitimate it must implement the will of the people, by creating a just society that provides for the common good. In this manner the government becomes the executive, while the people are literally sovereign. In fact, the people should be the source of laws that govern society... because those laws must be formulated in the interest of citizens. If instead, the government makes laws, then the people ought to have the authority to accept or reject them. The critical point is that the government should be implementing the will of the people—not dominating or controlling it.

The USA Constitution enshrines this concept by its very opening words: “We the people of the United States...” The Constitution goes on to define the government as being formed into three balanced branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Yet the core of the Constitution is the concept that all three branches must still be subservient to the will and welfare of the people. It is, after all, “We the people…"

Rousseau was concerned—if not convinced—that governments so justly conceived, will inevitably violate that contract by seizing inordinate power and responding chiefly to the desires of the rich and powerful. I think one could make a good argument that that is exactly what is happening in the US today. Things are out of balance. The needs and welfare of the people are being disregarded by the rich and powerful in Washington, DC, as well as in state capitals across the country.

Taking Issue With Tom

In the 17^th century Thomas Hobbes, an Englishman, wrote about what many philosophers at the time (and since) have referred to as the “state of nature.” They were describing an earlier, pre-farming era, when humans lived without a government and with no laws or enforcement to keep people's so-called baser instincts in check. In 1651 Hobbes wrote, in his landmark book Leviathan, that in such living conditions, there would be no civilization like he and his cohorts enjoyed. He said that, without 17^th century benefits such as industry, buildings, higher education, arts, etc., that the life of humans in a state of nature would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

This belief that 17^th century trappings of civilization were necessary for people to be safe and enjoy life, was shared by most Western philosophers at the time... as well as since then (although many cannot imagine now living without their TV or the internet). This idea was the bedrock of what was termed the “social contract,” whereby the attainment of safety and peace depended on people agreeing to adhere to the social contract's stipulations—which described how people should treat each other and get along peacefully, or else the government would come down on them.

Hobbes maintained that our natural passions are fundamentally competitive and egoistic, and that the fear we have of each other plays a central role in requiring the social contract, because it provides a barrier against the state of war we'd otherwise revert to, without the contract. In fact, he even felt that society required a strong, coercive sovereign to maintain that control. A stable society requires a strongman to keep us in our place, he wrote.

I disagree with Hobbes. He was writing within the context of what we can now look back upon and perceive as a brutal 17^th century industrial England, in which the dominant class was enjoying its privileges primarily due to the mistreatment and misery of the poor, who labored under horrific conditions in England's factories to provide all the trappings of life for the well-to-do. From the perspective of that dark time, it's no wonder that Hobbes looked upon people as self-centered and immoral—and that they required the heavy hand of authority to control them.

Furthermore, he was not speaking from the point of view of the oppressed poor, but from the view of those who enjoyed the advantages of education, art, industry, and infrastructure. 17^th century England possessed the best of the fruits of the Industrial Revolution, but only at the cost of keeping a large segment of its population in poverty and misery. In fact, Hobbes's lower-class general society lived a life that was indeed “nasty, brutish, and short.”

From Hobbes's outlook, one's property was supreme. The acquisition and holding of property brought about the belief that people necessarily lived in competition with each other, and often lusted after the neighbor's property. Thus, the philosophers and political thinkers of Europe at the time were also focused in individual rights; primarily on the importance of protecting one's property.

From that narrow perspective, Hobbes and his cohorts had little exposure to alternative cultures—cultures, for example, in which property was not supreme, individual rights were often secondary to one's community rights, and in which people had long lived in peaceful coexistence with one another... as well as with their environment. Had Hobbes traveled the globe and took the time to appreciate Earth's many indigenous cultures, he may have learned that many of these people—living in a true state of nature—did not have lives that were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Ever since the “rise” of Europe and America, 300-400 years ago, Westerners have developed a very parochial point of view that considers Western civilization to be far more advanced than other cultures. It seems to me that Hobbes helped to lay the foundation for that hubristic attitude. If we open our minds to this bias, we can see that the state of nature, rather than having to be brutish, was often gentle and peaceful... especially when its citizens had yet to acquire the tendency to be competitive and egoistic.