Whilst reading the papers this morning, something struck a chord in that part of my brain that goes back to the days when my brain filled my skull. After a lot of poking about, I came up with a phrase to Google and came up with what I wanted.

This is it. It comes from writing by Thomas Hobbes, a Brit who lived between 1588 and 1679. “Man is not naturally good but naturally a selfish hedonist -- "of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself".  As human motives were, in their natural state, guided by unenlightened self-interest, these could, if left unchecked, have highly destructive consequences.  Left unrestrained, humans, propelled by their internal dynamics, would crash against each other.  Hobbes tried to envision what society would be like in a "state of nature" -- before any civil state or rule of law.  His conclusion was dispiriting: life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a "war of every man against every man".  

Nonetheless, as all people are equal (in a physical not a moral sense), possessing a passionate love of survival (right of nature) and some degree of rationality (law of nature), Hobbes concluded that a viable, working society would arise as an equilibrium between these competing forces.  The logic is simple.  Any person's right of nature justifies violence against everybody else. Consequently, in the interests of personal survival, people will come around to agreeing that they should renounce their right to use violence.  However, this yields up a tense and unstable equilibrium.  The moment one party deviates from their promise, all will deviate and war restarts.”

It strikes me that this very old statement has much validity today. It encompasses everything from road rage to street violence through to the lack of integrity in what now passes as politics. I think I’ll have to go back to my old mate Hobbes and see what he said about winning National Lotteries. I spoke a couple of days ago about the difference between holidays and retirement. I don’t think I’d have gone looking for the statement on a holiday but as it is I got quite determined to root out the background to something that was whispering to me from so long ago. Oh, and by the way; Google – Respect!

We’re running down to the Great Day of Democracy when we have our say – huh! Some chance. There is no prospect of a Tory getting elected here so I will vote for the Lib Democrats. My attitude for them is that they are just about OK as individuals but G*d forbid they should ever get to a position of power in Westminster (or Holyrood)

I’m seriously impressed with this broadband business after years of saying it was not needed by me for the way I used the internet. That is still true – what has happened is that my style of cyber-wandering has changed. I now follow a heck of a lot of blogs on all manner of topics. Something that intrigues me is where the vast spread of journals etc. will lead. Think of the mobile phone. I remember when I was buying them for my Arabs. They were about the size of a brick, had a very short range and had to be licensed by BT. The waiting list for licences was yards long so we had to buy licences on the black market at about £1000 a go. That was a grand in 1980 terms. Looking at what today’s mobiles and smart phones will do and feed that into blogging as it is now.