We are falling back into history, by which I don’t mean the history of the West or of any particular nation but the history of the political world and human settlements from time immemorial, that is, for as long as we have records, monuments, artifacts, cave art, primitive tools and other memorabilia. (I use the term “history” to incorporate what we call “prehistory,” which is pre-literary but discoverable.) Whether we consider Thomas Hobbes’ description of the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” or the erection of a harshly authoritarian governing Leviathan to ensure self-preservation, the picture is one of endemic inequality, poverty, famine, perpetual conflict, and despotic control of a laboring and subject population.
