State malaise

The above unsatisfactory theories to justify the existence of something as basic and evident in human lives as the state are responsible for a certain malaise that has been felt by humans vis-à-vis their states for the past 2500 years. This malaise has left individuals’ minds wanting—and wondering (if not, wandering): if the state is something unnatural to humans, something artificially constructed by them, perhaps there are other (better) alternatives? What if there is something out there that is better than living in states for us, patiently waiting to be invented in some distant future? What if our ancestors were simply wrong to have chosen states as their primary form of organisation? State malaise is further aggravated by the pitting of individuals against their states (see also §26.00.08), as is, after all, bound to happen whenever a contract, and a contractual relationship, is involved (the confusion of the state with its government, see §12.00.01 but also §12.01.05, although not caused by social contract theory per se, has not helped, either). By contrast, if states are finally acknowledged as being natural to humans, because they are the only natural individualisation and identification mechanism that turns humans into individuals and makes possible a meaningful life, then our efforts can finally be focused at understanding, not questioning them (releasing, in this way, political philosophy from the shackles of the ‘should’).

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