Notes from the Aboveground
By: John Sullivan

Notes from the Aboveground provocatively argues that competition for power leads totalitarian man inexorably toward a libertarian order. The relationships examined between human nature, power and ideology are a synthesis of Hobbes, Mandeville, and Nietzsche, but the conclusions drawn depart from them and are startlingly original.

The feature of man that premises Notes from the Aboveground is egocentrism. Defining the ego as a need for social recognition, selfishness takes the form of both success and charity, dynamically creating the nexus of civilization.

While aggressively challenging man’s opinion of himself, Notes from the Aboveground suggests that civil institutions are not the product of enlightened thought, but of appeasement to rising power.

Societies are the result of the balance of power, and as human competition intensifies, power is won by increasing portions of it, the unplanned wisdom being that it is limited to the preservation of order, and with it the species.