David Hume There Are No Accidents Essay

Just like how Master Oogway says “There are no accidents,” to David Hume, there are no accidents when it comes to the creation of society. To Hume, society has been created on the basis of stabilizing possessions. What’s mine is not what’s yours, and Hume makes this clear when establishing this rule. Humans have come to a compromise of isolation, which is born from the threat of scarcity in which people agree to leave each other alone to attain peace within society. In Hume’s eyes, human nature is solely composed of two things, passions and understanding, and without understanding, humans would revert to nature. But this prompts the question, if these two things are fundamental to human nature, how exactly did society arise in the first place? I

By saying that men cannot exist in nature by restraining his passions, Hume creates an image of a civilized society, one in which we coexist to combat the issue of scarcity by controlling our passions. Granted, it is obvious that scarcity can never be completely resolved, but it can be alleviated within society when generations upon generations are taught about this aforementioned rule. In nature, scarcity is inherent and fosters competition between all living beings, but the distinction between humans and animals can be drawn here. Unlike humans, animals are not capable of processing rational thought and complex ideas, but the trade-off is for natural human ability to survive. Individually, we have none of it. Necessity facilitates scarcity, because as human beings, our physical ineptitude to sustain ourselves is what motivates us to participate in societies (344). In layman’s terms, we want things and we need things, and the scarcity of external goods is what pushes human beings to form hive