Nederland, Colorado. A town in Boulder County that had embraced
marijuana dispensaries for profit, found itself just outside a wildfire that
burned 600 acres in July, 2016. Two homeless men were charged with
fourth-degree arson for failing to put out their camp fire. The townsfolk
reacted in anger, pointing to the increasing number of homeless people in the
nearby national forest. Officials had been forced to deal with “more emergency
calls, drug overdoses, illegal fires and trash piles deep in the woods.”[1]
Some residents urged the U.S. Forest Service to crack down on the homeless by imposing
tighter rules on camping, or banning it altogether in certain parts of the
woods most popular with the homeless. An analysis drawing on the political
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century English philosopher can be
employed to reveal a broader perspective on the problem.
In his masterpiece, Leviathan,
Hobbes theorizes that people in the state of nature once made a social contract
wherein they ceded their political freedom to a sovereign, who could forestall
civil strife and war. Self-preservation is the dominate motive here. In
agreeing to give up some freedom to a system of laws and police, agreeing to be
bound by them, people believe themselves more likely to survive.
Social-contract theory more generally is not limited to the
political dimension. In living in society, people agree to give up some of their
economic self-sufficiency that comes from living off the land. Economic
interdependence comes from specialization of labor, trade, and even the use of
money. In an economy, people are interrelating parts rather than being wholly
self-sufficient. As recessions and the loss of particular industries
demonstrate, being a part in an economy is not necessarily best for a person’s self-preservation.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that people for whom the
socio-economy—a system of interdependence—does not make self-preservation more
assured would head to a forest to live off the land. The homeless in the
national forest near Nederland can hardly be blamed for doing what is necessary
to survive. Hobbes maintained that people have the right (of self-preservation)
to fight off execution even though the punishment is issued by a sovereign who
rightly holds all political (and theological) power.
To be sure, a state of nature in a forest located next to a
modern society may be inherently problematic. That one homeless man camping
long-term in the national forest outside of Nederland asked a forest official
when the trash would be picked up points to the problems entailed—problems that
would not exist were we all in the state of nature. If modern society can no
longer tolerate people living in the state of nature, then places must be found
for the extricated humans within the socio-political economy consistent with
their self-preservation.
In the E.U., the operative principle is solidarity. Social
policy is the typical means by which governments implement the principle
wherein self-preservation is taken to be a human right that a society is
obligated to protect. In the U.S., the principle is scant—eclipsed perhaps by
that of economic liberty within interdependence. Hence, the safety net within
American society has gaps. It is only natural for people falling through them—for
whatever reason—to seek self-preservation outside
of society. It is also natural for people accustomed to the safety in
society to fear the human landscape outside of society, where liberties given
up in society are taken back up. These liberties are feared by the people in
society as they have given them up in exchange for safety. Therefore, we can
see, using Hobbes’ theory, that it is in the interest of the residents of Nederland
to petition the government of Colorado to accommodate the forest people back in
society rather than continue to fight their nearby presence by pushing them
further away from society.
1. Jack
Healy, “As Homeless Find Refuge in Forests, ‘Anger is Palpable’ in Nearby
Towns,” The New York Times, August
21, 2016.
