| <<< PREVIOUS PAGE An Overview of RNT Coding |
The Securitarian Worldview
The securitarian worldview “builds on the simple story that the community is threatened by violence and physical harm” (Simmons, 2020, p. 76). Someone who is narrating from the securitarian worldview will value security and seek to protect themselves from abuses of power that threaten their security.
The securitarian worldview is made up of three sub-narratives, each of which presents a different permutation of the sentence “The Victim is abused by the Villain.”
- Defense – “Innocent Civilians are threatened by Dangerous Enemies.” (Securitarian vs. Dignitarian)
- Unity – “Innocent Civilians are threatened by the Selfish Elites.” (Securitarian vs. Libertarian)
- Stability – “Innocent Civilians are threatened by the Ignorant Masses.” (Securitarian vs. Egalitarian)
Examples of the Defense Narrative
Innocent civilians are threatened by dangerous enemies.
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 (1651/1994)
A commonwealth by acquisition is that where the sovereign power is acquired by force; and it is acquired by force when men singly (or many together by plurality of voices) for fear of death or bonds do authorize all the actions of that man or assembly that hath their lives and liberty in his power… men who choose their sovereign do it for fear of one another, and not of him whom they institute; but in this case they subject themselves to him they are afraid of. In both cases they do it for fear, which is to be noted by them that hold all such covenants as proceed from fear of death or violence void; which, if it were true, no man in any kind of commonwealth could be obliged toward obedience.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose (1880)
Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other.
George W. Bush
“Statement by the President in Address to the Nation” (September 11, 2001)
The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.
Kenneth Waltz
Man, The State, and War (1959)
Moreover, conflict is shown to lie less in the nature of men or of states and more in the nature of social activity. Conflict is a by-product of competition and of efforts to cooperate. In a self-help system, with conflict to be expected, states have to be concerned with the means required to sustain and protect themselves. The closer the competition, the more strongly states seek relative gains rather than absolute ones.
Examples of the Unity Narrative
Innocent civilians are threatened by the selfish elites.
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 (1651/1994)
For if we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent in the observation of justice and other laws of nature without a common power to keep them in awe, we might as well suppose all mankind to do the same; and then there neither would be, nor need be, any civil government or commonwealth at all, because there would be peace without subjection.
The Book of Genesis (The Bible)
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Amitai Etzioni
The Moral Dimension (1988)
A responsive community is much more integrated than an aggregate of self-maximizing individuals; however, it is much less hierarchical and much less structured and “socializing” than an authoritarian community. We need to reject the Hobbesian notion that individuals must subordinate their basic rights as a prerequisite for security. Threats to security are not so high as to require that we all yield to the Leviathan to shield us. Nor can we build on the Lockean notion that all rights are vested in individuals, who may or may not wish to delegate some of these rights, on the basis of their deliberations, to a community. Individuals and community are both completely essential, and hence have the same fundamental standing.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1835/1966)
The jury teaches each man not to retreat from responsibility for his own actions; a manly disposition, without which there is no political virtue. It vests each citizen with a sort of magistracy; it makes all feel that they have duties to fulfill toward society and that they enter into its government. By forcing men to get involved in something other than their own affairs, it combats individual egoism, which is like the rust of societies.
Examples of the Stability Narrative
Innocent civilians are threatened by the ignorant masses.
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 (1651/1994)
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
The Code of Hammurabi
(inscribed in the 18th century BCE)
Hammurabi, the prince, called of Bel am I, making riches and increase, enriching Nippur and Dur-ilu beyond compare, sublime patron of E-kur; who reestablished Eridu and purified the worship of E-apsu; who conquered the four quarters of the world, made great the name of Babylon, rejoiced the heart of Marduk, his lord who daily pays his devotions in Saggil; the royal scion whom Sin made; who enriched Ur; the humble, the reverent, who brings wealth to Gish-shir-gal; the white king, heard of Shamash, the mighty, who again laid the foundations of Sippara; who clothed the gravestones of Malkat with green; who made E-babbar great, which is like the heavens, the warrior who guarded Larsa and renewed E-babbar, with Shamash as his helper; the lord who granted new life to Uruk, who brought plenteous water to its inhabitants, raised the head of Eanna, and perfected the beauty of Anu and Nana; shield of the land, who reunited the scattered inhabitants of Isin; who richly endowed E-gal-mach; the protecting king of the city, brother of the god Zamama; who firmly founded the farms of Kish, crowned E-me-te-ursag with glory, redoubled the great holy treasures of Nana, managed the temple of Harsag-kalama; the grave of the enemy, whose help brought about the victory.
The Concept of “harmony” in the confucian tradition
(in Eno, “The Analects of Confucius,” n.d.)
The Master said, the junzi acts in harmony with others but does not seek to be like them; the small man seeks to be like others and does not act in harmony.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“Statement on Signing the Social Security Act” (1939)
Today a hope of many years’ standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last. This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health. We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
| NEXT PAGE >>> The Libertarian Worldview |