“People will fight and people will die, voluntarily, to protect not only their body from being killed by somebody else, they will also fight and die to protect their identities, that conception of themselves, and of who we are” — Ohio State University professor Alexander Wendt (NOT pictured)
Social scientists wanting to get ahead of the UFO/UAP impact curve should pay attention to Alexander Wendt’s virtual address to the Scientific Coalition for UAP studies on June 4 in Huntsville, Alabama. A summary:
The tie that binds the “founding myth of the modern state” to the consent of the governed is called the social contract. We’ve been following the rules for so long we take them for granted. Because the rules are simple.
The state demands its citizens surrender their “natural rights” – to do whatever they want, e.g., stealing kidneys, ignoring traffic lights, or firebombing the house next door because the neighbors won’t stop throwing dishes and beer bottles at each other at 3 a.m. In return, the state promises to shield the governed from external threats that would demolish the foundations of shared or common identity. It also promises to “protect us from each other, from our fellow citizens who might become criminals, vigilantes or whatever else.” Without those guarantees, Wendt said, society collapses into a “state of nature” in which – quoting Thomas Hobbes – life becomes “nasty, brutish and short.”
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