An Emotional State

For thousands of years, politics have predominantly presided over societies across the globe. They have functioned in many capacities, ranging from constructive, inventive, and fruitful, to malevolent and cataclysmic. The common trait that these societies exhibit is that they had to form, evolve, and fall apart at some point in their respective existences. A consistent driving factor in these life cycles of different societies exists in the prevalence of fear among its constituents. Human sentiment plays an immense role in the development of society, and multiple classic political theorists acknowledge this in different capacities, with fear, in earlier times, being regarded as the most detrimental of the sensibilities. No matter where on the spectrum of human emotion these feelings may lie, they have a definite impact on the founding and sustaining of states. Furthermore, that impact lies within the sovereign body that so chooses to react to these emotions through their governing patterns. Strong emotion invokes the greatest capacity of power, and this unstable entity is not ideally a property that one would wish to have influence in the scheme of politics.

The state of emotion affecting our lives is generally ignored by conventional thought, even though it plays such a colossal role in day to day life. The potential power it holds can be used as a tool for mass influence. Early realist thinker Thomas Hobbes recognized this and argued that fear and love create a type of complex relationship between the ruler and the sovereign (Hobbes, 95). These properties are crucial because they implement a feeling from the subject(s) that create a need for aid and support from the empowered. According to Hobbes, this dependence leads to an agreement, which he referred to as a covenant, between man and government that requires them to forfeit some rights in exchange for a guarantee of safety. Fear generates a need for protection and proves to be the more deciding factor in this consensus, and fellow philosopher Machiavelli would agree with Hobbes in this aspect.

Machiavelli also entertains the idea of fear playing a more critical role in the preservation of society. In The Prince, he argues that fear proves to be non-perishable once the feeling is created (Machiavelli, 68). It is much more consistent than love, which varies with the times. The subjects may see you as a martyr for a time and as a thief another. He states that these disposable feelings prove to be problematic because they are so unreliable in how strongly they influence the populace. How the people feel about the ruler is not nearly as important as how much authority the ruler exercises over them due to their apprehensiveness towards the sovereign. Fear is a much more controlling factor because it creates a sense of subservience and compliance (Hobbes, 94). While each of these theorists find these characteristics to be compulsory and significant, their stances ring cynical with later theorist, Rousseau, who argued that it was more government’s duty to carry out the wishes of the populace rather than act as an unwelcome blanket of protection (Rousseau, 24-25). He felt that the primary purpose of government was to create a harmonious faction of citizens, be responsive to their needs, and carry out the will of the common good. I find that this argument against the institution of fear in controlling society seems more valid and modern than the points that Hobbes and Machiavelli present. If government were truly carrying out the general will of the populace, there would be no need for fear, as the people would then be in control of sovereign operations rather than vice versa (Rousseau, 35). This renders the influence of emotion within the relationship of ruler and ruled irrelevant. If the populace does not feel adequately ruled, they can demand new leadership and expel the entity that they believed to have a negative effect on the society, without having to worry about the power of influence being involved. Neither fear nor love toward our sovereign leaders serve any actual purpose because they are now left disposable and easily substituted. The role of emotion goes nonexistent as general government control is allotted to the people.

Letting a balance of fear between authority figures and commoners dictate the effectiveness of the sovereign is leaving too much to the sovereign to control. They would possess too much influence, and power struggles would most likely be frequent and barbaric. One common arena we see this in today is in the middle east, in the lands of Israel/Palestine. For over one hundred years, this region has been disputed over by Jewish Zionists & Arabs, religious and non-religious, with many interstate wars and short-lived intense clashes along the way (Lieberman, 7). Often times, these disputes have come about at times when the status quo was in question due to the lack of an influential figure in control. Without a solid leader, or even a sovereign body to dictate borders, this region has witnessed dynamic skirmishes ranging from all out war to plain bitterness in daily life among the citizens of the dissected lands. This type of community cannot flourish so long as the influence of fear continues to determine the sovereign body in charge. An official governing body has not been able to establish these due to the constant shifts in power, and until the hollow leadership dissipates, it will remain this way. The puppet-like leadership that has been present in the middle-east has been empowered and weakened time and again, and this skittish administration has failed to create a solid foothold in Israeli-Palestinian society due to their lack of fortified influence (Lieberman, 9). When apprehension of your neighbors and constituents is the primary medium through which your government functions, it is sure that government productivity will be hindered and effectiveness of leadership will undoubtedly be undermined.

In our modern world, there is no room for feelings to dictate how communities conduct themselves. We must be more worried about the interest of the populace rather than the influence of the sovereign. Having a powerful, fearful leader does not promote the advancement of the state any further, nor does it help the populace in any particular way. Instilling an element of fear within the people of a nation is not necessary for a functioning government in modern society; we have our own wishes and desires for what we want government to be. We are capable of controlling our own society through democracy, and allowing this unstable element of fear to have any clout creates instability. We have advanced past the days of fearing our leaders, and now the only leading figures we should need to fear are ourselves.

Cited Works
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Broadview Pr, 2011. 94-95.
Lieberman, Victor. The Hundred-Year Struggle for Israel and Palestine. USA: Cognella, 2012.7-10.
Machiavelli, Niccoló. The Prince. Grant Richards, 1903. 68-70.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacque. The Social Contract. Cosimo, 2008. 24-35.