Good essay on jean-jacques rousseau: discourse of inequality

Savage men were the most effective species at his time. All other species depended on pure instinct while man had all the freedom making him superior. However, the condition of his life was way better compared to the modern man. The man at this time had only the needs for Food, sleep and sex. This is the reason why man never used to fight each other during this time. All men only had the urge to satisfy their needs, and they were all happy. There wasn’t any wickedness or greed as man had no idea about evil or good. His only worries were hunger and exhaustion and desire which they easily fulfilled due to their superiority.
Did inequality exist back then? Yes, inequality was in existence at this time. Sometimes there were some activities that could only be done by the strong in the society. However, men were always friendly to one another, and they would help each other. This is where man started to develop a form of communication between them to improve their interactions.
After so much success together, men started spreading to other parts of the earth. Natural disasters, weather patterns, scarcity would then hit man hard. This made him devise better ways of living including building of shelters to shield from these disasters. He started being possessive acquiring land, property after convincing others that property and land could actually be owned.
This led to people starting to mark out territories building huts and developing tools. Then families began staying together and dividing up roles since women now had a ‘home’, where they could stay. With homes to stay in, land to cultivate, and families to care for, man got lazy. All the luxuries of man became the needs that lead to man becoming dependent on one another. The language between men developed rapidly, societies and tribes were formed. Man began to judge others choosing who to interact or do business with.
This is where things started getting difficult for the human species. They were now divided into rich and poor, have and have-nots. This made the poor man to either work hard for survival or steal. Here men and tribes started warring with each other over resources, taking from the rich what they could. The rich thus decided to come up with a political order to keep man in check for his deeds. This would make the rich powerful and the poor weak in the society.
The people realized that this government did not help in fixing the inequality they were experiencing. This led to more troubles for man that has been witnessed ever since. Man had the decision to abandon the system and start over or continue with it. However man decided to try to fix the system that could never work. This led to the growth of monarchies. The first laws were necessary, because they convinced man that they could be ruled by laws; they never realized that only laws that were part of a social contract, that they voluntarily accepted, could really bind them.
The powerful ones then destroyed these laws and put in place new ones, the people instead of returning to nature unbound decided to stay put and follow these new rules. When no one came along to remind them of that, they gave up their freedom because they didn’t know how to fight for it. Wise men in the society reduced the harms of governments by insisting on ‘democracies’, but the rich dictated the terms of even those democracies, and all that did was spread out the corruption. The more important wealth is and the more corrupt a society is, the farther it has fallen from that original state where all men could be happy and fend for themselves. Only in corruption do our wants exceed our abilities. Inequality is wrong when it exceeds the inherent inequality in our natural abilities.

Works Cited

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Raleigh, N. C: Alex Catalogue, 1990. Internet resource.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Works of Jean Jacques Rousseau: Confessions. Roslyn, NY: Black’s Readers Service Co, 1900. Print.