Humanity and rulership.

I've only read a few pages of Hobbes' work, "Leviathan", but it seems to sum up the idea that for humanity's own good, they need a strong centralized leadership that will protect them from their own self serving natures. As it was pointed out on the [1], this is a bit of a problem when said leaders are humans themselves. But what happens if humanity was ruled by a non-human entity, such as a robot, alien etc? Would that make it better than a human run government if it helped to curb what Hobbes thought was humanity's selfish impulses? Or would it make it worse since said rulers have no understanding of humanity to govern humans effectively?

I got this idea after watching an earlier episode of Startrek where a robot named Landru was secretly leading a planet full of people so they are nice and peaceful with no strife, wars, or chaos(except for certain special times when everything becomes anarchy). If one were to look at it from a non-sentimental point of view, Landru's system of government seemed to fit Hobbes's model of rulership pretty well.

However, looked from another perspective, Landru was only able to control the populace by turning them into contended cattle. Double true for its personal enforcers, who are so indoctrinated they're unable to live independently without its guidance. Even Kirk points this out by claiming that Landru was in fact harming the society it was governing by reserving all creativity and thinking to itself (hence why it refers to its absorbed individuals as being part of "the Body", similar to how Hobbes envisions the Leviathan).

It depends on what exactly that non-human entity is. A robot or alien may have problems with understanding humanity as you mentioned, but a creator-deity would not and may even know humanity better than it knows itself. Of course, that still leaves the question of whether said deity is benevolent, malevolent, or neutral.

However, that still leaves the problem of how such a ruler uses its absolute authority to deal with control and rebellion. One way is by limiting or removing free will (which seems to the the route Landru took). Another is to allow free will but to annihilate all rebels. A third way is to change human nature by increasing humanity's self-control over its impulses and desires in order to bring them in line with the ruler's, which would eliminate unconscious rebellion but still leave the possibility of conscious rebellion.

I don't agree with Hobbes at all. What his ideas seem to be calling for is a supreme leader with little to no checks and balances on their powers. This is very dangerous: most similar rhetoric is just a cover for the sovereign serving their own interests- see the Kim dynasty, Mao Zedong and many others. Whilst similarly batshit leaders (not naming any names) have been elected in the US and UK, their powers were limited by the courts and the fact that they were answerable to an elected body meant the damage they did was nowhere near as bad.

I think that the tendency to be corrupted by power is applicable to all forms of sapience, not just human ones. It's just the human ones are the only ones we know.

And yes, rulers are very much human and tend to turn out worse than their subjects could possibly be. Which is why checks and balances, as well as diffusion of power, are important - so that one person in charge would not cause too much damage.