Sans Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes

Etching and aquatint prints.
The caption on the print states the following:

Government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter in such contract. Such agreement is not voluntary and therefore illegitimate. Give up your “state of nature” to me to maintain order. I will free you from “war of all against all” Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes. SIGN YOUR NATURAL RIGHT TO ME.

The title of the prints is Latin for “without war of all against all” based on the social contract, the philosophical concept in which a person gives up his/her natural rights of sovereignty to a government in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. Thomas Hobbes described human life as short, harsh and uncivilized without the law, a place of chaos where anarchy would be the only way of living. The “state of nature” would enable any one to act as he/she wishes and potentially cause harm to anyone around. In order to prevent chaos the judicial system protects everyone from possibly harming one another.

However, despite the fact that it builds civilized society, the people who are born into the pre-existing laws of the land have no choice in regard to the laws that exist. In a sense members of a society are in a way coerced or forced into a system without a choice. Sometimes individuals are born into societies that do not accept them or see them as equal and are made to suffer. Others suffer because they are born into a system that is completely corrupt and have no option but to survive in a facade. This image explores the vulnerability of the individual behind the veil of ignorance at the hand of the institutions set in place by those before them.