Such willful ignorance was sown early into Enlightenment individualism. Hobbes planted it in his “social contract” thought experiment on ending mankind’s “war of all against all” in a “state of nature.” He utterly unnaturally considered “men as if… sprung out of the earth…suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full maturity without all kind of engagement to each other.” The early English feminist Mary Astell mocked these mushroom men maturing “without…mother…or any sort of dependency.” - blogs.scientificamerican.com