Smile a while… not all the time - Peeping Tom

Here's a section of Peep's column from today's Kaieteur News.

I was asked by one reader to give an explanation of Hobbes Theory of Chaos. Since I myself had never heard of any such theory, I advised the reader that it would be better if he asked Stella herself [see Stella Says…Let’s Continue Our Discussion on Autocratic Rule].

Then when in yesterday's newspaper Stella took this matter to another level by asking the Alliance for Change what they thought about Hobbes philosophy of controlling a state through chaos, the truth came flooding in. Political theory was posing a huge challenge to Stella and she was certainly being confused because Hobbes never advanced any theory about controlling a state through chaos.

On the contrary, Hobbes political thought was about the necessity of an organizing coercive force or government to prevent a state of anarchy. I therefore have a duty to correct this mistake.

I do not know where Stella invented this view about Hobbes theory of chaos being a way to control the State. I can assure her that it finds no place in political philosophy and exists only in her imagination or her attempt to pretend that she knows about such matters.

When Hobbes spoke about the state of nature he was seeking to show what would happen in the absence of government. He was not by any means proposing that this condition be promoted by the State in order to control the population.

We have heard all manner of things by talk show hosts in this country but never have they descended to the level of arguing the possibility that the PPP is employing (encouraging) chaos to keep the nation in a suspended state of confusion and insecurity so that the people will constantly cry out for the government to intervene.

However, now that she has introduced it, I hope she will prove the Peeper wrong and explain how Hobbes indicated you can control a state through chaos. If she finds herself in some problems, she may seek the advice of that other adviser who claimed that Marx developed the “materialist dialectics”.