One reason Hobbes’s “state of nature” thought experiment is so seductive is because, though the premise is glaringly false, the conclusions are true. Every Dissident should memorize this, it’s the most important passage in modern philosophy (if not the whole of philosophy, from Socrates on):
I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.
Or, if you prefer it in slightly more modern English:
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power … Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
That’s the bedrock of human existence, right there: Power. Everything that isn’t Power is nothing, until Power requires it; when it’s no longer useful to Power, it becomes nothing again. Nietzsche would’ve understood O’Brien perfectly.
But please note: Human existence.
Human — animals aren’t like that. They can’t be. They’re not mere automata, as Descartes would have it, but they’re obviously not self-conscious, either. All that Green hooey about animals living in harmony with their environment is, nonetheless, true. They can’t do any other, because they’re animals. Only humans can see that extra step ahead, all the potential dangers that will never let him rest content with the power he has.
And existence – not life, existence. The world Hobbes and O’Brien describe with such terrifying eloquence isn’t life, it’s mere existence. O’Brien couldn’t see where his philosophy led, but Hobbes could:
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
This is the end of power-for-power’s-sake. O’Brien was wrong about that boot stomping on a human face, forever. The “state of nature” doesn’t actually exist IN nature, but Big Brother’s Party created it artificially.
But for such a creation to continue, as O’Brien shows, it must be completely static … and that’s impossible. The opposite of Power is Entropy, and Entropy always wins in the end.
Severian, “Salute the Hat”, Founding Questions, 2021-12-07.
July 14, 2025
QotD: The inevitable endgame of power-for-power’s-sake
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