The Noble Savage and the Woke Citizen
23rd July 2026
Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not invent the idea that man is naturally good, but he was the thinker who gave it the intellectual form that would eventually transform much of modern political culture. Since then, the belief that human beings are born naturally good and are corrupted only by society has become part of the cultural mainstream. Consequently, if evil does not reside within man himself, then it must be found in institutions, traditions, the family, religion, inherited culture, or any form of authority.
Formulated in the eighteenth century, this thesis has survived revolutions, world wars, and the collapse of the great ideological systems. Today it reappears in the language of woke culture. The terminology has changed, but the underlying intellectual structure remains the same. The problem is no longer sin, human frailty, or personal responsibility, but a system of oppression said to have distorted an originally innocent human nature.
For Rousseau, natural man lives in harmony with himself. He is not virtuous because he has acquired virtue, but because he has not yet been contaminated by civilization. Property, social prestige, and institutions become the true sources of selfishness. History is thus understood as a process of degeneration.
Rousseau did greater damage to human civilization than Marx ever could.