One of the world's oldest surviving pieces of text is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Etched upon a series of Sumerian tablets some 4,200 years old, it tells the story of Gilgamesh, king of the ancient city of Uruk.
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In the epic, we witness Gilgamesh presiding over a flourishing Uruk. The city is remarkable, home to glorious palaces and temples, bustling markets, and gleaming ramparts.
But not all is well. King Gilgamesh is proud, vainglorious, and tyrannical. He arrogantly struts around the city, tearing sons and daughters away from their parents in order to murder or rape them. The people of Uruk plead with Anu, the god of the sky, to save them from Gilgamesh's tyranny and restore some semblance of liberty.
The key message here is: The path to liberty is a narrow corridor, requiring a balance between state and society.
The god Anu hears the people's pleas and comes up with a solution to what the authors call the Gilgamesh problem. It is the question of how to control the power and authority of the state so it benefits rather than oppresses society.
Anu's solution? To have the creation goddess Aruru create a counterpart for Gilgamesh – a man equal to him in strength and power, who could balance him out. His name was Enkidu.
At first, Enkidu succeeded in pushing back against Gilgamesh's tyranny. But soon, the two struck up a friendship and began to conspire together. With their combined strength, the possibility for checks and balances completely disappeared. Despotic power was there to stay.
So why didn't liberty emerge in Uruk? In short, because society wasn't mobilized and therefore had no political might. As a result, elites – in this case, Gilgamesh and Enkidu – had no reason to remain benevolent.
Liberty requires a balance between state and society. Too strong a state, and you're left with despotism. Too weak a state, and violence and lawlessness emerge. The space between these two extremes is a narrow corridor to liberty.
Why a corridor and not a door? Well, because traveling in the corridor is a long, drawn out process – governments and institutions aren't forged overnight. And the corridor is narrow because it's not easy to restrain a powerful state – nor to keep members of society working together rather than tearing each other apart.
When a society fails to enter the corridor, the consequences can be dire.
