My Personal Political Philosophy and How it Compares to Rousseau's

I hold the view that humans are born good. They have an inborn capacity to feel guilt, regret, and compassion, and these imply a natural tendency towards being good as opposed to being neutral or evil. I agree with Rousseau's conviction that in the ideal environment he describes in Emile children will best develop their natural tendencies.

Now, I am quite aware that I could have said that I view humans as evil because of their inborn capacity to feel hatred, rage, and malice. In the context of the evolutionary origin of these feelings, however, it should be clear that these feelings are part of what make humans good. To be good means to help one's kind, and to fight against those who are of a different kind. Evil and what is morally wrong is generally something that is harmful to one's own kind.

The question is now how we should define our own kind. The capacity to biologically reproduce is a dividing line between different species. But this is not enough to base one's identity on. A more sensible dividing line is nation and race, which refer to subclasses of human beings.

Different races (i.e. nations) should have radically different political systems and social structures to differentiate them (to make them genuinely different). The questions of who should rule and what the social contract should be are too important to be predefined by tradition or the opinion of the majority. Rather, there should be a variety of answers implemented by various races. I believe that Rousseau's view that "each person [should] willingly surrender some of his natural liberty to the community of the whole in order to gain protection and security" (King, p.531) should be just one of the possible social contracts. Another possibility would be to for each person to give up all of their natural liberty in order to be part of a powerful society.

I think that Rousseau's ideas were quite appropriate for his time, and a necessary first step for a new chapter in the evolution of political systems. Rousseau and his contemporaries' ideas of representative and responsible governments have spread so effectively that the few characteristics that remain to distinguish different races today are mere superficialities such as language, ethnicity, gestures, and mannerisms. The meaning of race inevitably loses its significance in a world where the coincidence of the particular location on this planet in which an individual is born determines his race.

This leads to the possibility of a new way of defining a race, based on one's views on pedagogy, economic systems, religion, art, and science. Much change is necessary until such races could begin to evolve. People would need to hold much stronger convictions than they do today. This may be facilitated through the use of genetic engineering or drastic social engineering. And I am sure that one of the prerequisites will be to do away with the stultifying routine and regimentation of schools, which Rousseau had already criticized in the 18th century. Unlike him, I do not have a particular set of alternatives in mind, but I believe the state should take the liberty to actively experiment with different kinds of environments with the young.

To summarize, my political philosophy consists of a vision of racist nations vying for power, nations struggling without the use of bombs and guns, but making liberal use of human manipulation, mind-control, and genetic engineering. In short, I advocate an era in which nations will use any means short of physical force to recruit and maintain their populations.