This paper reexamines the foundations of governance through the tension between control and guidance, arguing that civilization’s stability depends not on the restraint of human nature but on its cultivation. Modern political and economic systems remain grounded in a Hobbesian view of humanity as selfish and fearful, justifying authority and competition as necessary mechanisms of order. In contrast, Rousseau envisioned governance as the fulfillment of collective moral freedom — a social contract built on cooperation rather than coercion. Drawing from psychology and evolutionary science, particularly Paul Gilbert’s theory of “care and share” versus “control and hold” strategies, this paper argues that empathy and cooperation are biologically ingrained, while self-interest and domination are socially manufactured. Capitalism’s valorization of individualism and materialism has led to a competitive game of survival, allowing our more bestial impulses to dominate; and thus reflects systemic misalignment, not human instinct. True governance, then, must evolve from systems of control to systems of guidance — structures that nurture compassion, equitable access to knowledge, and the shared conditions for human flourishing, without which no stable or just civilization can endure.
Keywords: Hobbes, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, individualism, materialism, anthropological pessimism, intuitive cooperation, human nature
Introduction:
If the goal of civilization is peace, we must nurture humankind to act from intuitive cooperation rather than reflexive individualism. The question, then, is how to design a social contract that protects individual freedom while strengthening the collective whole.
Contemporary governance still operates largely from a Hobbesian premise: that humans, left to their own devices, are selfish, competitive, and driven by fear. Civilization, in this view, exists to restrain chaos through authority and control. Rousseau, however, offered a countervision — one that has been largely lost in contemporary American political philosophy — arguing that humans are not inherently corrupt, but that it is the structure of civilization itself that breeds entitlement. The social order, normalized through governmental and economic institutions rather than human nature, becomes the true source of division and violence.
Recent studies increasingly suggest that humanity is generally oriented toward cooperation and empathy — that we are, by nature, inclined toward good. If that is true, then what is the corrupting force? How does our civilization push people into self-interest to the detriment of community? The answer lies in a system that rewards extraction over contribution, a hunger for accumulation over necessity. In societies where individuals do not see the fruits of their labor, stealing becomes rationalized; people feel entitled to take because their needs are not being served. When fundamental rights — such as healthcare, education, and housing — are privatized and commodified, people are trapped in a cycle of survival. The wealthy can purchase access to quality healthcare and specialized education, virtually guaranteeing admission to elite universities, while others remain bound to the status quo.
As Thomas Paine emphasized, the freedom of thought and access to information are the most vital forms of liberty. Yet still in our age, knowledge itself is a commodity — paywalled, privatized, and often manipulated. Capitalism, in its present form, feeds into the Hobbesian logic of fear and competition, manufacturing scarcity where abundance exists. We waste food, clothing, and resources not because there is too little, but because there is no profit in equitable distribution. The moral result is a civilization that drives individuals to fill existential voids with monetary gain and an idealized external image, mistaking possession for happiness.
Understanding this philosophical divide is crucial, for it shapes not only political systems but also the evolution of modern economic thought. It is visible in the prioritization of profit over people — a logic that breeds inequality and unrest. When operating from a place of survival or within a society that rewards betrayal in pursuit of monetary satisfaction, civilization is led down a path of self-destruction. The question of whether humans are cooperative or self-interested underlies how societies organize production, distribute wealth, and justify power.
Across three major schools of economic thought — the Marxist, Neoclassical, and Keynesian — we can trace the influence of Hobbes’s anthropological pessimism. In the Marxist school, Marx exposes the capitalist individual as a distinctly Hobbesian archetype: egoistic, strategic, and insatiably possessive. This figure is driven by a longing for control over the material world and an endless pursuit of wealth that ultimately leads to the destruction of social organization. The Neoclassical school further develops this image through the notion of the rational “maximizer” — an isolated agent who understands rationality purely in strategic and self-referential terms, detached from tradition, culture, or any sense of communal responsibility. Even within the Keynesian school, which sought to correct the faults of laissez-faire capitalism, the Hobbesian logic persists. Keynes’s model echoes Hobbes’s economic Leviathan, in which the state assumes the role of stabilizer and regulator over inherently self-interested actors, reinforcing the view that order must be imposed from above rather than cultivated from below (Domínguez et al., 2017).
Rousseau’s counterpoint, illustrated in The Social Contract, insists that moral and political freedom arise not through domination but through collective self-determination. As he writes, “the lawgiver… must have recourse to an authority of another order, one which can compel without violence and persuade without convincing” (46–47). A wise legislator, Rousseau argues, first seeks to understand whether a people “are able to support” the laws they live under (49). His critique of Peter the Great — who sought to make Russians into Europeans rather than allowing them to become themselves (51) — warns against imposing an artificial order that ignores the organic will of the people. Government, in this view, must be a living reflection of its citizens — the product of the people, for the people.
Rousseau’s vision reframes the social contract not as a restraint on human nature but as its fulfillment: government guided by the will of the people. If Hobbes’s civilization is built on control, Rousseau’s is built on cooperation. The art of governance, then, lies not in restraining human nature through authority, but in cultivating the conditions for empathy, knowledge, and interdependence. To take care of the earth and others is to take care of ourselves. Of course, the individual must have the freedom to explore their passions and expand their unique capacities — and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness cannot exist without the social structures that make such freedoms universally attainable. To achieve a peaceful society, we must recover this intuition of mutual responsibility and redesign our political, economic, and moral systems around the harmony of freedom and care.
The Evolution of Cooperation: From “Care and Share” to “Control and Hold”:
While Hobbes and Rousseau debated human nature through philosophy, research now gives us empirical insight into their opposing visions. As Paul Gilbert (2021) explains, early human societies evolved around “care and share” behaviors that prioritized interdependence, empathy, and collective survival. In hunter-gatherer communities, individuals who acted selfishly — hoarding food or dominating others — were shunned and shamed. Cooperation, not competition, was the condition for survival. These caring and sharing lifestyles not only strengthened group cohesion but also gave rise to the social and cognitive capacities that define humanity itself — complex language, moral reasoning, planning, and empathy.
However, as agriculture took root, mobility decreased, and the accumulation of surplus resources reintroduced the logic of competition. Resource storage and ownership created new hierarchies, giving rise to what Gilbert calls “control and hold” strategies — behaviors aimed at securing and accumulating more than others. These strategies evolved into systems of domination, inequality, and psychological alienation. As Gilbert notes, the oppressive and anti-compassionate behaviors characteristic of many modern institutions are the continuation of these control-and-hold logics — systems that shape not only social hierarchies but also psychophysiological patterns. Wealth and poverty alter the brain, reinforcing callousness in the powerful and chronic stress in the marginalized.
Gilbert identifies three possible responses to suffering — the “three C’s”: compassion, callousness, and cruelty. Compassion reflects sensitivity to suffering and a commitment to alleviate it. Callousness manifests as indifference, a moral numbness that rationalizes inaction when help feels costly. Cruelty represents the deliberate infliction of pain for pleasure or control. Disturbingly, modern society often valorizes the latter two: cruelty in repressive regimes and entertainment, callousness in market competition, and political apathy.
Furthermore, biologically, humanity is designed for compassion. Hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin, as well as neural systems regulating emotion and empathy, evolved to tune us into care (Porges 2007, Mayseless 2016). From infancy to death, our relationships shape our genetic expression, immune systems, and cardiovascular health. The “care and share” instinct is not merely moral but physiological and necessary for humanity’s well-being.
Yet modern environments distort this evolutionary inheritance. In contexts dominated by inequality and consumerism, “care and share” phenotypes are suppressed, while “control and hold” behaviors — entitlement, competitiveness, and self-justified greed — become dominant. Studies show that as individuals become wealthier, their empathy decreases while feelings of deservingness rise (Van Kleef et al., 2008; Piff et al., 2018). Materialism, as Kasser (2016) argues, promotes consumption, debt, and ecological harm while diminishing interpersonal connection and well-being. Thus, the ideology of rugged individualism — the glorification of self-fulfillment at the expense of collective enrichment — is not a natural reflection of human nature but a distortion of it.
Furthermore, Rand et al. (2012) found that cooperation often arises from intuitive responses over a reflexive, cost-benefit analysis — suggesting that prosocial behavior, whether innate or culturally learned, is deeply ingrained in human development. If evolution rewarded cooperation, and civilization now punishes it, then our crisis is not moral failure but systemic misalignment. Governance that nurtures compassion rather than competition, cooperation rather than control, would not be a regression into idealism but a return to our biological and moral origins. To reclaim the “care and share” instinct is to rediscover the evolutionary truth that our survival — psychological, ecological, and political — depends on the well-being of others.
The Root: Knowledge and Human Enrichment Through Experience
If our species evolved to thrive in cooperative, interdependent groups, then our political institutions should mirror this design; and if governance is the art of cultivating human potential, education is its root system — the living foundation through which moral, intellectual, and civic growth emerges. The freedom of thought, as Thomas Paine insisted, is the first freedom upon which all others depend. Protecting that freedom means protecting broad, equitable access to knowledge, and designing learning environments that prize curiosity, plurality of perspectives, and rigorous critical thinking over credentialing for its own sake.
Contemporary educational models, however, frequently reproduce inequality. When schooling becomes a commodity, access is stratified by wealth: elite private institutions and paywalled knowledge create gatekeepers of opportunity, while many students face debt, narrow curricula, and instrumentalized learning. The result is predictable — civic disengagement, weakened critical capacities, and an education that socializes students into competition and extraction rather than cooperation and stewardship.
There are, however, policy models that demonstrate an alternative. Finland’s system — often invoked for its combination of equity and high achievement — focuses on strong teacher preparation, free universal schooling, early childhood inclusion, and a curriculum oriented toward collaboration, well-being, and learning for life rather than test performance. Finland’s recent “Right to Learn” reforms explicitly aim to restore equity and address gaps in student outcomes, and OECD assessments continue to flag the country as a useful comparative case for educational equity and professionalized teaching (OECD 2022).
These principles are not confined to schooling. They extend to how societies handle harm and rehabilitation. Nordic approaches to incarceration emphasize restoration, dignity, and social reintegration — treating prisons less as instruments of exclusion and more as contexts for education, training, and normalized daily life. Norway’s humane prisons provide inmates with education, vocational training, and conditions intended to preserve dignity; these policy choices correlate with low re-conviction estimates relative to many Western nations. The Nordic Council’s work on prison education also stresses cooperation between prison services and other civic institutions as essential for meeting prisoners’ educational needs and lowering societal costs over the long term.
Together, these institutional examples illustrate what governance as guidance can look like in practice: systems designed to expand human capacities, rather than to control them. Education that privileges diverse perspectives and critical reasoning builds citizens capable of empathy and deliberation; justice systems oriented toward rehabilitation reduce harm and restore civic bonds. Both kinds of institutions operate on a bottom-up logic: professionalized teachers, community supports, and local rehabilitative programs co-create environments that shape behavior and values — more in line with our evolved “care and share” tendencies than with the modern incentives toward “control and hold.”
Recent electoral movements have revived the idea that democracy thrives only when its citizens are materially and intellectually empowered. New York mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, prioritizes access to universal childcare, city-owned grocery stores, fare-free transit, and affordable housing. Such initiatives move beyond charity toward structural justice, arguing that civic flourishing demands collective infrastructure: systems of learning, health, and economic security that allow individuals to live meaningfully rather than merely survive. Reporting on Mamdani’s campaign illustrates how these concrete proposals translate a moral vision into governance — one where democracy safeguards not only the right to vote but the capacity to think, learn, and participate fully in public life. As Winthrop (2021) reminds us, “participation in civic life is essential to sustaining our democratic form of government. Without it, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people will not last.” In this light, policies that universalize care and access are not simply social welfare measures; they are democratic imperatives that preserve the very intelligence and interdependence upon which freedom depends.
Of course, Nordic models are not unproblematic myths to be imported wholesale. They rest on comprehensive welfare states, social trust, and institutional histories that differ markedly from countries with entrenched inequality and privatized public goods. Still, they provide actionable lessons: invest in teachers; coordinate social services to reduce recidivism; and prioritize policies that expand, rather than gatekeep, access to knowledge.
If governance is to move from control to guidance, its root policy is clear: protect and universalize the conditions for learning and rehabilitation; decentralize profit incentives that convert education and knowledge into exclusive capital; and design institutions so that human development — intellectual, moral, and social — is the primary metric of success. The result is not utopia but improved stability: societies in which citizens are equipped to think critically, care for one another, and collectively steward both civic life and the planet.
Conclusion:
If governance reflects our collective self-understanding, then the task before us is not merely institutional reform, but civilizational recalibration. We must move from a paradigm that restrains human nature to one that cultivates it — from systems of control to systems of guidance. As psychological and evolutionary research affirms, cooperation, empathy, and curiosity are not deviations from our nature but its most generative expressions. Yet the structures we inhabit — economic, political, and educational — too often suppress these capacities in the name of competition, productivity, and order.
The path forward lies in restoring the moral and intellectual commons: schools that teach for understanding rather than obedience, circular economies that reward care and sustainability rather than accumulation, and governance that measures its success not by GDP, but by the flourishing of its people. It is demonstrated that when societies prioritize trust, equity, and education as public goods, civic health deepens and punitive systems give way to restorative ones.
Ultimately, the health of a democracy depends on the intelligence and morals of its citizens — a truth that underscores the urgency of protecting education, critical thought, and civic participation from commodification. Civilization, at its best, is not the triumph of control over chaos, but the art of guiding human potential toward compassion, innovation, and the shared good.
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