The Utopia of Rules

by David Graeber

Western intellectual traditions have always tended to assume that humans’ powers of reason exist, first and foremost, as ways of restraining our baser instincts. The assumption can already be found in Plato and Aristotle, and it was strongly reinforced when classical theories of the soul were adopted into Christianity and Islam. Yes, the argument went, we all have animalistic drives and passions, just as we have our powers of creativity and imagination, but these impulses are ultimately chaotic and antisocial. Reason—whether in the individual or the political community—exists to keep our lower nature in check, to repress, channel, and contain potentially violent energies in such a way that they do not lead to chaos and mutual destruction. It is a moral force. This is why, for instance, the word polis, the political community and place of rational order, is the same root that gives us both “politeness” and “police.” As a result, too, there is always a lurking sense in this tradition that there must be something at least vaguely demonic about our powers of creativity.