Humpty Dumpty, Part 2

I’m sharing this article from the Christian Science Monitor of 6/28/10 by William R. Polk almost verbatim. Polk has taught at Harvard and the U of Chicago.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s me
Couldn’t pu Huupty together again.

As long as this egg – this social contract - exists and we accept it, we do not need massive and intrusive military or police force – all the king’s horses and all the king’s men - to keep from robbing, raping or killing one another. Under its benign influence, we mostly continue to do what we do and refrain from what we should not do.

But, if Humpty Dumpty is knocked off his perch, we lose our implicit agreement on what is right and proper. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes likened living outside the social contract as a state of war, ‘of every man against every man;’ and the only way to keep order in such a state is the use of overwhelming and intrusive force. But that seldom works.

As we have seen in the attempts to impose order in Baghdad, New Orleans, and Hati, overwhelming military and police froce fails. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. History shows that the very act of attempting to impose security often has precisely the opposite effect. For example, the trigger of the American Revollution was the Brits attempt to restore order in Boston.

If Humpty’s fall is not long term, if people do not have a chance to adjust to the new lawless reality, he and the social contract can be resurrected. Thus in New Orleans and Hati, their descent into chaos was momentary, and while the effects were horrifying, they self corrected. That happened because even the pessimist Hobbes says, people everywhere really want peace.

But, if Humpty and the social contract are shattered and remain inoperable for a long time, relations between groups – particularly if they are easily identified by racial or religious differences – become fixed in new modes and the old consensus around shared values is virtually irreparable. For example, Somalia; this is a fine explanation of what’s happening in Somalia.

We have to be careful of pushing Humpty off his wall, both here at home and abroad. In fact, looking at the irrationality in domestic politics, the rise of extremes and extremism, the low approval ratings and the virulent attacks on the President and other institutions of our democratic system, it seems that perhaps the election of a truly compassionate (not a so-called‘compassionate’ conservative) Black, Domocrat has weakened our political social contract and pushed Humpty off his wall. Hopefully, this will be a temporary loss of consensus, as in New Orleans.

Yet overseas, when we invade and push Humpty off his wall, shatterring what we deem tyranical ‘undemocratic’ social contracts to replace them with ‘better’ ones, more like our own – which isn’t working all that well and which probably is not appropriate for an African or Arab context – we risk leaving anarchy in our wake and creating a breeding ground for the very forces we thought we were taming. Food for thought.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s me
Couldn’t pu Huupty together again.