juniusrapture User Profile | DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Literature

the Fall (part 1?)

Rousseau certainly sensed that somewhere along the line many humans had started to become corrupt, and he was writing almost 300 years ago, even before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the ideologically-driven abominations of the 20th century, not to mention the high tech compulsiveness and mindlessness of our own century. If one looks at the rest of the animal kingdom, there is really no parallel to the shit storms that humans have concocted not only for themselves, but for a good part of our fellow creatures as well.* Rousseau's view was that Society i.e. larger and more complex social groups had led to our corruption because in such environments people began to compare themselves to each other and as a consequence began to see each other as superior or inferior to each other, which in turn led to hierarchies and competition run amuck, as each was constantly trying to improve his position on the social ladder. Implicit in his view, I believe, is the idea that at a certain