Christopher McCandless was a man who wanted badly to give up all material goods and live in the wild. The book Into the Wild depicts McCandless journey of giving up his standard American life to take on the wild. The book depicts how he lives off of nature, hunting his own food, but mainly has to pick berries for food. McCandless loses a lot of weight and eventually dies of starvation because he is unable to successfully hunt food.
Rousseau argues that man in the state of nature is faster stronger and happier. He believes they would be stronger and faster because they have to acquire their own food and build their own shelters. He believes they would be happier because they have not been affected by material goods and don't have to worry about other people trying to take advantage of them. Rousseau argues that when men come together and learn how to enhance their lives they have become more evil than when they are solitary. In Rousseau's state of nature men are stronger men, but looking at the story of McCandless it seems to be the opposite. McCandless fails trying to live in the state of nature because he is unable to effectively gather food for himself. McCandless lost extreme weight, while trying to live on his own. Instead of McCandless getting faster and stronger, he got physically weaker. It seems that men not living in the state of nature will be stronger because they are able to acquire food easily and depending on their standard of living will be able to become stronger. McCandless died in the state of nature because of his lack of strength. Therefore, Rousseau's argument that men are stronger and faster in the state of nature is not accurate.
ReplyDeleteObviously from your argument we can see some of the drawbacks and inaccuracies of Rousseau's State of Nature. However, I think there are difference lies there. The state of nature that Rousseau talks about should follow a standard timeline, by which I mean that human being first experienced the state of nature and then started to gather into groups and finally become educated and form society. This order cannot be reversed. McCandless here jumped back to the so-called “state of nature” by his definition from the modern society. Thus he may not able to resist all those difficulties compare to those people who grow up in a situation like this. For example he may not able to all the antibody to resist all those germs and may also lack of the skill of hunt. Actually, from this story we are able to examine that people are becoming weaker after getting involved into the modern world because they are not able to adjust the surroundings once they got back to the state of nature.
This is a great comparison to Rousseau's theory. I think the problem that this theory leaves out is the key element of survivial. When coming together, it can be debated whether there will be more evil or not, however it can't be that survival is better established. Having others help with everyday needs not only helps your life but also theirs in return. It is better to alive and dealing with possible evil than dead dealing with nothing at all. This, as you pointed out was one problem in Rousseau's theory.
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