Definitive Adjectival Trio

How many quotes survive from my freshman year introduction to a Western Philosophy course?  I can call upon “I Think Therefore I Am,” and imagine Descartes with his candle.  Spinoza followed.  He was hard. I have nothing like a quote I can reach for.  I just remember re-reading paragraphs over and over.  Leibniz and his monads made more sense, sort of.  But Hobbes?  Yes.  Who could forget “The Leviathan,” or at least four words of it.  Perhaps because it was originally written in English, unlike any of the other thinkers, that the words “nasty, brutish and short” ring out as such a definitive adjectival trio, in describing the state of nature.

Automobiles can be a pressure cooker.  We don’t always bother to pull over, when we argue in a car.  But there is a significant element of danger to arguing while driving and sometimes its best to just pause.  And if its really heated, well it may just be best to step out of the vehicle and take a deep breath, rather than say something you’ll regret.  And this all makes sense, unless someone has explicitly warned you that getting out of the car would be dangerous.  Such a warning might and should absolutely deter one.

I was following the election news when my eye caught a blurb and link to an article about a woman in China who was attacked after storming out of a car in an argument with her hubby.

As one almost invariably does, these days, I clicked the link.  Soon I am watching cars crawl through a jungle adventure land on a surveillance camera.  One car stops.  A woman steps out and moves around to the driver’s side.  We know this will not have a happy ending.  Moments later a jungle beast lunges for her and in a second, makes off with her as if she were a rag doll.   The husband and mother jump out quickly, before they think.  In the end it is the mother who will die and the first woman, miraculously, unimaginably live. 

Watching how quickly the attack takes place somehow I thought of Hobbes.  In the attack caught on film, the strike is so swift and so overwhelming that her humanity, and posture of control are swept away and she seems suddenly, mouse-like, besides this pitiless cat, this enormous tiger.  There is no deliberation, to time to plead, no justice, no negotiation, simply a swat and a decision, almost certainly “nasty, brutish and short.”