It seems like Hobbes could be restated thermodynamically: the lowest energy highest disorder state is the most likely and therefore the default.

Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- those are all low energy high entropy states.

The opposite of solitary is cooperating and connecting and that's provably difficult to achieve (see game theory). Brutish is also a game theoretic "all defect" scenario which is very likely. Cooperation and peace are harder to achieve and require more sophisticated game playing strategies that integrate results over multiple iterations.

Poor, nasty, and short describes low energy high disorder states.

So ultimately the question is how and why do we exceed the bare minimum, because exceeding the bare minimum state required for survival and procreation is pretty much the definition of a great or exceptional society or period of history.