Few philosophers have ever had a lower opinion of humanity than Thomas Hobbes.
This was a man who lived through the English Civil War, watched governments collapse, saw neighbors turn on neighbors, and concluded that human beings left to their own devices would spend most of their time fighting, conspiring, and inventing new reasons to dislike one another.
For this, generations of readers accused him of pessimism.
Then Reddit was invented.
Had Hobbes lived long enough to experience the internet, he would have spent approximately fifteen minutes on Reddit before quietly updating Leviathan and making it considerably darker.
The War of All Against All Has a Comment Section
When modern people hear Hobbes's famous description of life in the state of nature as a condition of perpetual conflict—a "war of every man against every man"—they tend to imagine primitive forests, lawless frontiers, or post-apocalyptic wastelands.
Hobbes, after visiting Reddit, might have suggested a different example.
A thread about pickup trucks.
The original question is always innocent enough.
"Which truck should I buy?"
Within minutes, tribal identities emerge.
Ford owners gather on one side.
Chevrolet owners assemble on another.
Toyota owners arrive to explain why everyone else is an idiot.
Soon there appears a mysterious diesel faction whose entire worldview seems to consist of towing capacity, engine displacement, and unresolved childhood trauma.
Statistics are cited.
Counter-statistics are cited.
Personal anecdotes become peer-reviewed evidence.
Someone accuses someone else of destroying America.
The original question disappears entirely.
Civilization has once again failed.
Hobbes would have recognized the process immediately.
The conflict was never about trucks.
It was about status.
The World's Largest Glory Machine
One of Hobbes's most enduring insights was that human beings are driven by three principal causes of quarrel: competition, fear, and glory.
Competition for advantage.
Fear for safety.
Glory for reputation.
Four centuries later, Reddit has successfully transformed all three into a user interface.
Competition became karma.
Fear became downvotes.
Glory became the ability to tell strangers they are wrong.
The karma system in particular would have fascinated Hobbes.
As best anyone can determine, karma consists of imaginary internet points awarded by anonymous people who will never meet you and whose opinions have no practical consequence whatsoever.
Naturally, millions of people devote enormous amounts of time and emotional energy to acquiring it.
Had Hobbes understood how easily humans could be motivated by meaningless numbers, Leviathan might have been half as long.
Why construct elaborate theories of political obligation when people will voluntarily fight to the death for digital stickers?
Every Man a Scholar
What would have surprised Hobbes most, however, was not the hostility.
Human beings have always been hostile.
It was the confidence.
The internet has solved one of history's oldest problems: the burden of uncertainty.
Every citizen now possesses complete expertise in every conceivable field.
Constitutional law.
Epidemiology.
Macroeconomics.
Military strategy.
Medieval theology.
The mating habits of penguins.
No topic is too specialized. No question too complex.
Somewhere, at this very moment, a man named LibertyPatriot1776 is explaining monetary policy to an audience of thousands despite having learned economics from a podcast and three YouTube thumbnails.
His confidence is absolute.
His knowledge is optional.
Hobbes spent decades studying philosophy, mathematics, politics, theology, and classical literature. Reddit has produced millions of people who arrive at identical levels of certainty after reading a headline and half of a comment.
Progress is a beautiful thing.
The Printing Press Was a Mistake
The internet has accomplished what previous generations of thinkers only dreamed possible.
It gave everyone a printing press.
For centuries, publishing required effort. A person needed money, education, connections, paper, ink, and at least one individual willing to pretend the manuscript was worth reading.
Now all that is required is an opinion.
Since opinions are among the few resources humanity has never lacked, the results have been spectacular.
One Reddit discussion about pineapple on pizza somehow escalated into debates about constitutional rights, cultural decline, and the collapse of Western civilization.
The topic remained fruit.
Hobbes watched an entire kingdom descend into civil war over sovereignty.
Even he might have been impressed.
Yet Somehow It Works
The truly annoying thing—for Hobbes, at least—is that Reddit occasionally works.
Beneath the tribal warfare, the performative outrage, and the endless arguments about lawn equipment, people do occasionally help one another.
Someone asks for advice.
Someone else provides it.
A stranger fixes another stranger's problem.
Communities form.
Knowledge is shared.
Friendships emerge.
Against all odds, millions of people cooperate every day without descending entirely into chaos.
This would have irritated Hobbes.
Not because it disproved him.
Because it complicated things.
For all his cynicism, Hobbes understood something many of his critics forget: people desperately want society. They want order. They want belonging. They want recognition. They want to participate in something larger than themselves.
Unfortunately, they also want to be the smartest person in a discussion about leaf blowers.
The result is modern civilization.
Hobbes Was Not Pessimistic Enough
The most Hobbesian place on the entire internet may be the subreddit dedicated to unpopular opinions.
The premise is simple. Users share beliefs that supposedly run against conventional wisdom.
In practice, thousands of people post extraordinarily popular opinions before congratulating one another for their bravery.
It is a magnificent system.
Everyone receives validation.
Nobody risks anything.
Everyone goes home believing they are courageous dissenters.
Had Hobbes encountered this phenomenon, he might have felt a strange sense of peace.
For centuries, readers accused him of being too cynical, too distrustful, and too pessimistic about human nature.
Then the internet arrived and subjected his theories to the largest field test in human history.
The results were decisive.
Thomas Hobbes was wrong about many things.
But after reading Reddit, he would likely conclude that his greatest mistake was believing human beings were only capable of arguing over matters that actually mattered.
The war of all against all, it turns out, can be fought over pickup trucks, pizza toppings, and lawn equipment.
And somehow that may be the most comforting discovery of all.
— John Handcock