Are People Naturally Bad? Applying Hobbes to Online Learning

Whether you have a positive idea of human nature or a negative one makes a huge difference in how you respond to other people. In an online course, where you’re not going to meet individuals face to face, it’s easy to project your ideas and attitudes about people in general. Without the reality check of face to face communication, it is easy to assume that your fellow students, your instructor, and others are exactly how you imagined them to be.

One of the beauties of the online environment is its diversity. Imagine a class that is filled with students with differing viewpoints with respect to human nature. They range from those who tend to be suspicious and cynical about people’s motives, to those who assume that all people are wise, patient, helpful, and supportive.

In most cases, the course content or activities will not put people’s values and beliefs into collision. The fact that your fellow students have wide-ranging ideas about the nature of humanity may not come into play.

However, there are cases in which it does matter, and you’ll need to keep people’s differing viewpoints in mind as you process and respond to their comments in peer reviews, their posts in the discussion board, and their contribution in collaborations. If you’re taking an online course that requires you to weigh in on current events, politics, or ethical issues, you’ll find such awareness helpful. It is good to know that people interpret events and behaviors differently, depending on their core values and beliefs about human nature.

Some people believe people are inherently good. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle expressed the notion that the goal of politics and governance was toward the good, and to help satisfy every individual’s desire for happiness:

As every knowledge and moral purpose aspires to some good, what is in our view the good at which the political aims, and what is the highest of all practical goods? ... most agree in calling it happiness, and conceive that 'to live well' or 'to do well' is the same thing as 'to be happy.'

The function of Man then is an activity of soul in accordance with reason, or not independently of reason. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

Renaissance Humanists believed that human beings could be transformed through education. Further, Enlightenment writers such as Rousseau, and others whose ideas shaped the Declaration of Independence, and the documents affiliated with the French Revolution believed that people were good and able to self-regulate. It was not necessary to keep them crushed and cowed by a tyrant king or powerful state.

On the other end of the spectrum is Thomas Hobbes, who held a very negative view of human nature. He, as did Machiavelli, who, a century before, expressed pragmatic (and negative) views of human nature in The Prince (1515). Hobbes, like Machiavelli, believed that people are inherently selfish. Hobbes went on to accuse them of being vicious, violent, selfish, and dishonest. For Hobbes (and Machiavelli), it is best to have a strong leader to maintain order and civil discourse. If not, the natural condition of people will be that of perpetual war.

Hobbes wrote Leviathan, during the height of the English Civil War. Published in 1651, the text is a classic work of political philosophy. Again, the ideas and attitudes toward men and human nature tend to be fairly negative. After all, it was Hobbes who wrote that the lives of men tend to be "and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

He also believed that people have a hard time cooperating:

"If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end, which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only, endeavor to destroy, or subdue one another." (Hobbes, 38)

To look at things through Hobbes' eyes brings life into focus in a very disconcerting way. It is a view of nature and humanity that is so negative that it's almost hard to comprehend, except in the world of economics and politics. If you accept Hobbes’ views, you are likely to feel nervous and threatened by your fellow human being, and may tend to favor a tough, authoritarian leader.

After all, according to Hobbes, without a leader, we’re in a state of perpetual warfare:

Hereby it is manifest, that 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 such a war, as is of every man, against every man. (Hobbes, Leviathan, 40).

People who have such a negative view of human beings may not appear to be negative. They may seem very other-worldly. After all, such a negative view of humanity and human life may encourage you to focus on the afterlife, and to look at the spiritual side of life. Many mystics throughout time had little faith in human beings. Great revivalist movements in which the jeremiad was preached (with the urgent entreaty to repent now because the end is near), or those emphasizing the apocalyptic narrative (some Doomsday cults can be included in this category), were adept at undermining people’s faith in each other. They tended to through their lot to a powerful leader. Sometimes the gamble paid off. Sometimes it did not. Jonestown and Waco come to mind.

How does this apply to online courses?

If your instructor tends to think that the natural state of human beings is competition and ultimately war, then he or she is likely to believe that the correct role is to be the authoritarian leader. Rules are to be obeyed at all costs. People to transgress will be punished. There will be no mercy. Order must be maintained. Punishment will be swift and public. After all, those who break the rules must serve as an example for other.

Thankfully, most online degree programs adhere to a different philosophy of instruction, and focus on maintaining a nurturing, more flexible and encouraging atmosphere.

The one relatively universal exception to this rule is plagiarism. Many instructors are quick to assume that online students copy and paste from the Internet and purchase papers from places such as termpapers.com. Their underlying belief is that students have poor time management skills, procrastinate, hate to write papers, and lack self-confidence.

Such negative views lead to a sense that some instructors are on a plagiarism quest, and are eager to expose and to punish them.

A similar mindset is manifest in the area of assessment and test-taking, which results in an emphasis on making sure that no one cheats or commits academic dishonesty in a test.

So, even thought the dominant attitude in education at this point in time is that human beings are transformable through education, and that learning is one way to make a better person and fulfill one’s potential, there are vestiges of a competing view. It can be a bit confusing at times, because an instructor may seem to be easy-going in one area and not in another. Understanding the history of such ideas can be useful.

Here’s a final thought, that could be applied to lifelong learning, since it suggests that people are never satisfied, and are happiest when chasing a dream. From Hobbes, it’s framed in the most cynical of manners, but is inspiring nonetheless.

"Felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such finis ultimus, utmost aim, nor summum bonum, greatest good, as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose desires are at an end, than he, who senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another, the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the latter" (Hobbes, Leviathan, 38)

After you graduate with your bachelor’s degree, it’s time to start planning for your master’s — after all, you'll be at your happiest when you are pursuing something you desire.

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