On the Nature of the Social Contract
Introduction
As human ideation goes, the existential abstraction our intellects identify as a “state of individuality” can, at times, be a quandary byzantine in its manifestation inasmuch as the nature of it can be expressed in as many ways as there are human beings living upon this planet. As “individuals,” many of us habitually identify “the other” as something separate from our “self,” mitigating their significance—often objectifying their presence—within the boundaries of our awareness and categorizing them into presumptuous classes of phenomena.
But they too are human—eh?
It can be very difficult for our kind to sense the humanity that our communicative ethos attempts to define as “the other.” In turn, many of them fall into the same agnostic trap, employing the theosophical attributes of social experiences common to our multi-faceted anthropological appeal, to explain the true nature and appearance of our company. We like ourselves and tend to like those attributes we share in common with our fellows and that is how we arrive at a tenuous tolerance of everyone around us. Yes, yes…I can agree that there are those of us who subscribe to gratuitous mean-spiritedness as natural behavior expressed through their character and attitude. They lack compassion, care little for the fates of those around them, hate themselves, and behave in ways we can only describe as deterministic—sometimes barbaric! Hence, they become predictable and rather boring. That too is an indication that our all-too-human notion of individuality might be a rather subjective distortion of the reality we attempt to understand through the lenses of our world view—our Weltanschauung.
In general…
This notion of a “state of individuality” arises through our developing “self-awareness.” Self-awareness is the culmination of a process undertaken by our evolving intellect during the early stages of our human development. Normally, this process involves our more fundamental intellectual and emotional appetites to understand, instinctively, that our “self” is something other than the person of our mother. It is important to understand the significant contribution made (or not made) by the woman who gave birth to us and often attended to our every emotional need. This important but subtle influence is contrasted with that of our father—who, normally, attends to parental duties that support our guidance and developing sensitivities through a personal and rather unique interpretation of the reality we share in common. Rarely does emotional guidance come from our father. We remember him as practical, rational, and often over-protective. These characteristics can be the only expression of “love” and affection offered whereas mother is the wellspring of unconditional love and warm affectionate understanding. I’m certain that you see there is a mysterious balance of such contrasts between the two most important people in our lives. One does not over-ride the other; more importantly, their attributes complement each other.
It is this balance that creates the rather neutral foundations of our self-awareness—allowing us to mature over time, giving birth to our “individuality” as it is expressed by our personality. There is a practical reason for the manifestation of such behavior; it underwrites the elaboration of “family” as the fundamental organizational imperative for any of us so inclined to participate in the grand scheme of the Cosmos.
Family is the oldest form of social relationship.[1] In general, people coalesce into a “family” through relationships the roots of which are previously established between each participating member. Each member becomes aware of the responsibilities associated with their unique biological role in procreation. There forms an unspoken understanding between family members. The mother understands the role of the father. The father understands the role of the mother. And, the children, once they have become “self-aware” understand the role of their parents.
The mother knows her role instinctively. The father knows his role instinctively. The children know their role through an understanding that their unique dependency upon their parents is a matter of survival. Through these interactions, decisions are made. The parents take charge and that authority is accepted by the children. Recognizing their own inadequacies, the children assert their dependencies and addressing these dependencies become the responsibilities of their parents through choice. At this fundamental level of human organization, the primal notion of—what Rousseau called—the “Social Contract” becomes the principal ideation guiding human procreation, cooperation, and organizational authority.[2] It is an unwritten agreement; the “Social Contract” is one that is engaged instinctively. It has a very narrow focus on obtaining specific objectives that underwrite the preservation of the nuclear family and the survival of its participants. This is the practical “State of Nature” in which our original forebears found themselves. Thus, an original “State of Nature” begins with humans adapting to the uncertainty and hostility of a natural world within which they struggled to preserve their own human process of procreation.
Family members don’t “legislate” their participation in the affairs of their family. They carry their decisions wrapped in a thought flow that is disciplined by a hostile Cosmos and their instinctive desire to cope with their daily routine. So, this “Social Contract” is one of Natural Law and not Positive Law. It follows the idiosyncrasies of the nuclear family which Rousseau explained “…[is] the only society that is in any sense natural.”[3] He thought of the Social Contract “…not [as] a historical fact but a hypothetical construction of reason.”[4]
The Premise
Rousseau made some unsupported assumptions in arriving at the reasons for the early formulation of the “Social Contract” as a construction of reason. For one, he reasoned that life in a “State of Nature” was a happy one in which there was great equality among men. As with many of our human philosophers during the “Age of Reason,” there are some really major misconceptions in this their doctrine (in this case “Egalitarianism”). They make assertions based on practical reason and Logos rather than material and empirical evidence to support their claims. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach to philosophical discussion but, if one ignores tangible fact then the argument becomes more of a hodge-podge of bad science mixed together with religion and occult knowledge indicating that it is the invention of a mind “exploring the wisdom of separation.” Some of the major points I’d like to make are detailed below.
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism, as a metaphysical argument for a specific cosmology, is an argument of the order of a “fallacy.” Now it is true that Rousseau did not have the convenience of today’s archeological evidence and scientific methodology but, during his time, there was plenty of contemporary evidence that suggested early man’s life was anything but “happy” and the traditions of the clan and tribal customs of his age underwrote the speculation that there was little equality among men.
So, his rationalization of the “Social Contract” as a “…construction of reason...” can be considered a fallacy as it is an argument that uses poor reasoning. It is based on assumptions and not on facts the revelation of which could have been affirmed had he examined the development of human governance looking east over the Eurasian steppes, the deserts of the Middle East, and south to the jungles of Africa. More significantly, he could have studied the reaction the early explorers and Imperial Conquistadors had towards indigenous peoples; their attitude and treatment of the natives wasn’t something we’d find “egalitarian.”
Now, “an argument can be fallacious whether or not its conclusion is true. A fallacy can be either formal or informal. An error that stems from a poor logical form is sometimes called a formal fallacy or simply an invalid argument. An informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that does not originate in improper logical form. Arguments committing informal fallacies may be formally valid but still fallacious.
- Fallacies of presumption fail to prove the conclusion by assuming the conclusion in the proof.
- Fallacies of weak inference fail to prove the conclusion with insufficient evidence.
- Fallacies of distraction fail to prove the conclusion with irrelevant evidence, like emotion.
- Fallacies of ambiguity fail to prove the conclusion due to vagueness in words, phrases, or grammar (e.g., “perhaps,” “most likely,” etc.)” [Wikipedia {clarification mine}]
The one thing that Rousseau started to elaborate upon but then left the discussion’s development to progress and the passage of time was that early man may have made such “social contracts” in the form of an unspoken understanding between individuals. The interpretation of such thought already existed between men and women and their offspring; it was a thought flow inherited by survivors within the human communities that lived within the great expanses of the natural order. Archeological evidence confirms that these early human communities existed in relative isolation from one another. How then could any of them have been presumed to possess a philosophical or, much less social, equality? A natural division of labor and individual skill and capacity would have established a hierarchy of managerial authority in much the same manner as do chimpanzee colonies.
Okay, so Rousseau didn’t have the work of Dr. Jane Goodall to pour over but that’s not my point. My point is this: Since “The Age of Reason,” modern man has obsessed over this notion of a “Social Contract,” complaining that contemporary governments have failed in the execution of it. The ideation of a “Social Contract” is, in fact, a very modern philosophical construct and, granted, during The Age of Reason, we didn’t have automobiles, computers, or fast food restaurants but those ideas they were ruminating over were the product of their thinking and not of the expectations of those who came before them. Our ancient forebears didn’t call their cooperation a social contract. Neither did they understand it to have a provenance extending into the ancient and forgotten origins of our species. Yes, the Greeks gave us the idea of “Democracy” but Greek Democracy like Roman Republicanism was engineered and institutionalized to protect the ruling elite and not the commoner occupying a residual “State of Nature.”[5] These are the ideas of modern thinkers; people who were several degrees away from the hunter/gatherer, the nomad, or the tribal clansmen and women of our storied heritage.
Long before Rousseau began his inquiries into Natural Law, the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (April 5, 1588 to December 4, 1679) attempted to frame the concept of a social contract from the point of view that early man possessed a natural desire for security and order. Again, this is a reasonable assumption. He reasoned that early man, as a hunter/gatherer, lived in a state of constant fear and selfishness, his living conditions confused and pitiless; his lifespan inordinately short. In order to secure his personal safety and continued existence by avoiding all of the desolation and agony the State of Nature guaranteed him to be the better part of his life experience, Hobbes asserts that he entered into a “Social Contract” (presumably with “the other”) to secure his future fortunes. This dilemma required the “natural man” to surrender all of his “rights” (defined by what, we are left to speculate) and “freedoms” (the ideation of which are as diverse and mesmerizingly complex as there are individuals who might conceive them) into a “Social Contract.” Bear in mind that our understanding of the term “contract” involves some sort of Quid pro Quo.
Hobbes goes on to speculate that this nascent social contract and the authoritative relationships that came with it required the “natural man” to submit his complete obedience to this mysterious “authority” in exchange for his safety and the protection of his “property.” Hobbes theorizes that this submission to a “Quid pro Quo” ultimately led to the emergence of an institutionalized “office” (yet another abstract notion) which we can call a “ruler” or “monarch” of some kind, who would then become the absolute authority over the lives of all of those individuals in that specific human community. I can see Thomas Hobbes “seeing it” this way; the guy was erudite and a genius at that; but I just can’t fathom how our ancient forebears—as smart as they were—could see it that way. I mean, they were awful busy hunting and gathering and staying out of trouble—you know…apex predator trouble. To make such a leap of intellectual abstraction is somewhat astounding as prior to their understanding, the archeological record demonstrates that human communities were managed more along the lines of that paradigm that governs chimpanzees.[6]
In such a primordial archetype of governance, the Alpha Male is in charge and everyone submits to him or he’ll beat the snot out of anyone who challenges his pathology. Alas, after considering these momentous deliberations, we are left with the disturbing revelation that Thomas Hobbes, God rest his good Christian soul, was a fervent supporter of absolutism.[7] Funny how that modern-day philosophical principle of governance should contaminate his inquiry into so ancient a notion of human cooperation as the “Social Contract.”
Later, John Locke attempted to clarify this notion of the “Social Contract” explaining that early man’s state of nature was not as disconsolate as Hobbes may have ventured. He reasoned that it was on the order of virtuous and pleasurable but man’s “property” was not secure.[8] He considered that ancient State of Nature as a “Golden Age.” How he arrived at this assumption is confusing inasmuch as man, though a successful species, is not an “apex predator” and is often the victim of a species that is![9] In that “Golden Age” of the natural man, Locke continued, the ancients possessed a complete knowledge of “human rights” as they received them directly from Nature (Or, as we say today, God but that is another discussion.). Locke then validates this assumption by rationalizing that the “State of Nature” as it concerns human beings, is the natural condition of humankind. In other words, it is a state of perfect “liberty”—a mysterious power to live life in whatever fashion one finds suitable. Locke, like Rousseau believed the ancients to be “…free from the interference of others.”[10] In this blissful “state of nature,” everyone enjoyed the blessings of egalitarianism.
John Locke reasoned that “property” (real property, personal property, community property—any kind of objectified “property”) was not secure from the ruses and ploys of other men because at that time in ancient history, there existed three conditions:
- There was a dearth of institutional (Positive) law (this is a reasonable assumption considering the fact that writing had not yet been developed and refined);
- There weren’t any Judges who could be considered to be objective in the way that they thought (the Judeo-Christian Bible tells us in the “Old Testament” that there were);
- And, there was no mechanism through which humankind could employ some sort of cosmic power to execute Natural Law with any equity (I guess the Druids were all talk and no action then?).
Given these conditions, one would think that ancient humans, living in a “State of Nature,” might have worried about their property so, to protect it they entered into the “Social Contract.” Locke asserts that, under the terms and conditions of this “Social Contract,” our forebears surrendered only the right to preserve and maintain order and enforce the law of nature? Go figure. If they couldn’t maintain Natural Law on their own or through their community then how would some other fellow maintain it? Locke continues by assuring us that individuals reserved other rights (again, guaranteed by Nature as inalienable) such as the inalienable right to life, liberty and estate (which often required some sort of situational awareness). Do you see where Locke is going with all of this? You’d be right if you thought a “Constitutional Republic.”
“According to Locke, the purpose of the Government and law is to uphold and protect the natural rights of men.[11] So long as the Government fulfils this purpose, the laws given by it are valid and binding but, when it ceases to fulfil it, then the laws would have no validity and the Government can be thrown out of power. In Locke’s view, unlimited sovereignty is contrary to natural law.”[12]
The supposition
This is a cardinal rule and its attitudinal perspective makes sense. If that is the case, then why worry about arranging a “Social Contract” or the violation thereof? If we must write the terms and conditions of any Social Contract into the verbiage of our Primary Rules of Recognition, why bother with legislation that mitigates those terms and conditions? When the Social Contract is compromised by reason of the diminution of our expectations of honesty, integrity, and morality there is no Social Contract. Wouldn’t you agree? Why then do we apply the rule of law legislated to protect the inclinations of those who have put themselves above the law to violate the Social Contract they swore to uphold?
After examining these origins, it becomes apparent to us that the ideation of the “Social Contract” cannot be legislated, let alone understood by the people with whom we think to negotiate the imposition of any “rule of law.” If you’re going to insist that Natural Law be codified and integrated with Positive Law to form a platform for a judiciary to interpret, confirm, reject, or otherwise amend these bodies of “law,” in the interest of maintaining life, liberty, and property, then you must also understand the destructive influence raw political power will ultimately have upon the imposition and maintenance of any kind of legal arrangement. That’s why governments are always legislating Positive Law in the form of acts, ordinances, regulations, and criminal and civil laws. Positive Law must continually be reviewed and rewritten to address the evolution of political power and its corrosive influence upon the society that entrusts it with governance. The sociopath who manipulates the reins of power to attain every possible opportunity at the expense of everyone else around them doesn’t really care about any “Social Contract” that may have been negotiated with an earlier body politic. Their psychopathy requires them to live in the moment and, as these observations affirm, the belief that imposing a “Social Contract” is one the focus of which is in preserving their status quo far into the future. It is the thought flow of immaturity—the unsophisticated, intellectually vacuous practitioner of every manner of parasitism. You are “free” to do whatever it is that you want but “Liberty,” my dear fellows, requires one to be in a constant state of individuality, self-reliance, responsibility, and perseverance.
It is your responsibility to attend to the welfare of your life, fortune, and property. You may decide to do that by establishing adequate provisioning, for you and your family or establishing an equitable and honest foundation of personal wealth through the management and development of your personal skill set. If you aren’t a hermit, you do these things by creating an acceptable social function within your community. These are the conditions of a human’s “Natural State.” They are the prerequisites to the notion of “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” and are adopted intuitively. They are defined by the order of Nature within which you must live, enjoying the experiences that accompany commitment and not entitlement. The moment that you negotiate any one of them away, through the contrivance of a Quid pro Quo “Social Contract,” you have sold yourself into the context of enslavement and, from that moment on, your fortunes will rely on the intellectual and emotional disposition of the managing authority to whom you have sworn your submission. “Social Contracts” are soluble, intangible, and indeterminate; we shouldn’t bother with them.
It’s good to be the king!
Let’s see…what the hell was I thinking anyway? Oh, yeah; I remember now: Hobbes theorized that submission to a “Quid pro Quo” ultimately led to the emergence of an institutionalized “office” such as a “ruler” or “monarch” of some kind. This “king” would then become the absolute authority over the lives of all of those individuals in a specific human community. I find this assertion extraordinary for, while logical, it is based upon a romanticized ideation of human history and is, therefore, theoretical in its speculation. As I opined earlier, the concept of “king” grew out of the evolution of a creature anthropologists refer to as the “Alpha Male.” Our kind didn’t “give license” to the development of an abstract notion of “ruler” or “king.” The bad-ass Alpha Male seized that position in the social order through the imposition of his brutal psychopathy—a formidable force of that “Natural State.” And, he maintained it through continued coercion, objectifying his fellows as blockheaded dullards deserving of his contempt and bad temperament. Granted, there were Alpha Males who were, at times, heroic and magnanimous but these archetypes were insufferably few and far between. If you’ve arrived at the choice point of accepting the empirical evidence that our present-day socio-political arrangement and its attendant infrastructure is more the product of coercion than it is of our own individual thought flow, then human history will illuminate the context of our organizational society and not moral dogma or ideological inference.
Some background…
Allow me to use an allegory that will demonstrate the irony of Rousseau’s definition of the “Social Contract.” Within the context of our present paradigm for governance, the government is supposed to have entered into some sort of “covenant” with the general public whereby “it” (i.e., Government—as a bureaucracy of technocrats) agrees to protect our lives and property in exchange for our submission to its insistence that we follow its “rule of law.” Sounds reasonable. Okay, so you break your ass laboring for decades to pay off your mortgage. Your real property now belongs to you and your heirs and assigns free and clear—right? Well, citizen, you have to pay real property taxes to your city or township, school taxes, and county taxes. Tell me then, what will happen to your home—you know, the one that you labored for decades to pay for and maintain— if you fail to address your obligations under “the Government’s” rule of law and pay all of those taxes? Why, “the Government” will seize your property and evict you throwing you and your family out into the street. Then they’ll sell your property at auction to the highest bidder. It’s that simple. Yes, yes, it might take the Government a few years to get around to slapping you with a writ of forfeiture but this is how “this system of things” works.
The process of seizure of private real property is called “Civil forfeiture.” Upon notification of the Government’s intent to seize your property, a court will transfer the ownership of your property to whichever governmental unit has filed a claim against it. The government brings this “civil” action against the property itself (not the land, per se but the dwelling as well; the home), and not against you. “Civil Forfeiture” is a legal remedy employed by our “technocracy” to secure a specific financial amount the Government thinks that it is owed. It is not a criminal proceeding—that would indicate that you had not kept the terms and conditions of this “Social Contract;” and is not considered a form of punishment by “the judiciary.” Just a note aside, civil forfeiture may apply to all types of property, such as real property, vehicles, equipment, and accessories. How could this have happened under the terms and conditions of a Social Contract that was struck to secure your safety and property? After all, you paid off your mortgage—no?
You see, dear citizen, you pay a mortgage to secure your “right of occupancy” and not your “ownership” of the land and its dwelling. Over the millennia, the Government “legislated” the rule of law such that it now owns the land. You never owned the land. You lease the land from its true owner, the Government. It will seize your dwelling during a Civil Forfeiture to pay for the cost of the Civil Forfeiture then sell the “right of occupancy” to someone who can come up with the cash the Government thinks that it is owed. So, in reality, you have no “property.” And, having been disenfranchised of your home, neither will you enjoy any notion of “safety.” You’re on your own. Tell me again, what is the benefit of entering into a Social Contract? Think on this as it is the best example that I can give you.
Might makes right
Rousseau thought that the “strongest” of those among us wouldn’t be able to have their way all of the time and this is true. Even in chimpanzee societies, the alpha male is eventually challenged by a younger and stronger opponent and must “forfeit” all that he believes belongs to him alone. Coercion or brute force, then, is the “cause” of this petulant philosophical incongruity we refer to as the “Social Contract” and its “effect” is our desperate attempt to continually associate the wiles of Natural Law with the contrived morality of ideological dogma. Natural Law is manifested in its social infrastructure while ideology can only be rationalized as speculation. Rousseau thought that the concept of “Might makes Right” was ridiculous and that the imposition of such a hypothesis would lead to “inexplicable nonsense.”[13] In real life, it often does! But it does us no appreciable good to think that all power comes from God either. This is not to say that “God is dead” in the minds of modern man as the philosopher Nietzsche was reported to have said when he wrote:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”[14]
No, this is to contrast our modern-day thinking with that of our ancient forebears. Rousseau elaborates on the “causation” through his own metaphor:
“A highwayman jumps me at the edge of a forest. I must—compelled as I am to do so—hand over my pocket book. But am I also bound in conscience to hand it over—even if it lies within my power to retain it? The pistol he points at me is, after all is said and done, one of the powers that be.
Let us agree, then, that might does not make right and that we are obligated to obey only such powers as are legitimate…
No man, as we have seen, has any natural authority over his fellow man and might, as we have seen also, makes no right. We have nothing left save agreements, then, to serve as a basis for all legitimate authority among men.”[15]
Sometimes the power to preserve and protect ourselves comes from within. Are any of you beginning to understand the ephemeral and completely unreliable nature of this idea? The entire prospect of striking an amenable agreement with someone who cares less for us than we care for ourselves is philosophical sophism!
When we attempt to elaborate an actual understanding of what a Social Contract is, we are explaining what we would “like” it to be; we are directing our decision process to make invalid assumptions about our state of individuality, nature, and our point of view—we are speculating. And, when our expectations are not met—as most often they are not—do we assert the original terms and conditions of our “agreement?” Most often we just “knuckle under” and quietly accept the outrageous consequences of our child-like trust. After that first capitulation, we become vacuous prey animals and, eventually, our social order amends itself to our own foul choice points while we—engaged in an exhausting cognitive dissonance—accept, on our own behalf, this modified “state of nature.” Such an “agreement” is like making a deal with the Devil in which you are willing to conform to the dictates of “authority” and that authority has no intention of maintaining the terms and conditions of its end of the bargain. So much for the ideation of a “Social Contract.”
I don’t think that I am being “presumptuous.” I’ve studied the history of Western Civilization and have found it to have documented a reoccurring theme. It is a theme of the psychopath; a liar, fraud, and usurper who routinely savages the lives of those around him. Whenever someone with integrity comes along to confront the charlatan, he or she is ruthlessly assaulted from every side by a cabal of psychopaths and sociopaths who, though just a small portion of our planetary population, engage every cheap trick they can advance in the cause of deception and outrageous embezzlement!
“Social Contracts” are a tool of the psychopath[16]
Surprisingly, we’ve all had numerous experiences with psychopaths. There seem to be a lot of them prowling the hallowed halls of our political and educational institutions and I’m not talking about the community bully. Humans being what we are—great apes engaged in survival—we have a capacity to deceive and to lie. So, I’m not saying that psychopaths are great deceivers and liars. I’m trying to explain what researchers have learned about them. They engage in deceptive acts and outright lies all of the time! They even deceive and lie to themselves. The focus of Psychopaths is to surreptitiously influence your “thought flow” through his or her deceptive mind set. They do this through the kind of language that they employ—a tactical manipulation of the facts of your reality through the way in which they describe those facts to you; an almost absolute “truth” at its core. Here are some of the things that researchers have noticed about this unusual propensity to throw bullshit draped in the guise of “truth” as that truth would come from The One Infinite Creator:
They use colorful metaphors, analogies, and hyperbole. Most of the time, when they’re spewing their beguiling schpiel, they may, at first, sound informed and intelligent. But most often, they’re posing convincing arguments that support their fabrications. Allow them the opportunity and they will submerge your consciousness in an orchestrated sophistry the purpose of which is intended to over-rule your free will, consume your energy and material effects to underwrite their speculation, and discredit you. To discredit you they’ll try to make you look like the “fabricator,” projecting all of their personality traits upon your character to invalidate your personal integrity. If you attempt to challenge them by questioning their claims or motives, they’ll never give you a straightforward answer, talking in circles or raising issues with some other fabrication that suits their “disinformation” campaign; they are extremely evasive. When their deceitful plans are exposed and their lies revealed in detail, they’ll accuse you of being the perpetrator of all that has been wrong with the world. A feature of our post-modern, manic social re-engineering a la Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is the legitimization of fabrications that are then presented as absolute facts. Psychopaths go through great lengths to “create” information that, while total fiction, can be understood to be affirming evidence that can be used to “credential” their wild-ass claims. Often this bogus documentation offers more detail then the a “real event” might have been understood to have. If challenged, they play the emotion card. After all, deception—to them—is very entertaining; they are malevolent bullshit artists who employ deceit and lying as tools of their chosen vocation.
So, I think that it would be in our best interests to think about all of the geopolitics, “social engineering,” and megalomaniacal entanglement we’ve witnessed over the last three or four decades. It’s gotten the planetary population into endless conflict and millions of people have lost their fortunes through the imposition of financial savagery. We were told we’d be safe if we allowed these people to build political power and accumulate massive wealth at our expense, trampling all over our Constitutional liberties in the process. Isn’t that so? Since 1982, we’ve had 114 “mass shootings” claiming the lives of 932 people and injuring over 1400![17] All the while this insanity was underway, we suffered through 911 while our Military was engaged in a string of wars that are still a work in progress to this very day![18] Those dots connect to tell me that we’re not safe and the idea that we “own” property is an intellectual abstraction more along the lines of a ruse! Ask yourself, “Just who are these academicians, politicians, and politically correct commentators filling our consciousness with the noise of sedition? If you can give yourself an honest answer, then you’ll understand just why there is no such thing as a “social contract.”
[1] King, Charles, J. and McGilvray, James A: Political and Social Philosophy: Traditional and Contemporary Readings; McGraw-Hill Book Company (New York: 1973); Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, pages 126 – 137.
[2] Ibid. page 126, Book 1, On Convention, Section 2.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Kurio, Tarique Yousuf, and Hector, Ursulo.O; What is Social Contract Theory? . (Academia.edu: 2019); page 5 of 7.
A Case in point…
[5] Simpson, D. P., MA; Cassell’s New Latin-English English-Latin Dictionary (London); page 93. The word: “Casa” (from the same root as castrum) refers to a hut, cottage, or cabin. It is the reference Roman patricians (the landed aristocracy) gave to the dwelling of a plebian (a commoner). Page 202: The word “Domo” refers to a house or home. It is the reference that Roman patricians gave to their own dwellings. In modern Italian—the closest modern language to Latin—the popular jargon for a dwelling is “casa.”
What does this tell us? It indicates a pervasive and severe dichotomy in cognition between the ruling elite of ancient Rome and the common folk over which they ruled. With the eventual disintegration of the Roman elite, commoners—more plentiful at the time—chose to keep the word “casa” to identify their homes. While this example is based on historic inference, this observation demonstrates that there was no “egalitarianism” as we would know such a concept today and therefore, we could determine that not everybody was considered on “equal” footing with everybody else. The historic and, more importantly, the archeological evidence suggests that such social disparity existed far into the ancient past. These political and social sentiments were inherited and practiced by each generation down through the ages and—in many forms—remain the dominant social customs of modern times as well.
[6] Sagan, Carl and Druyan, Ann; Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (New York: 1992); page 257, Chapter 14, GANGLAND.
[7] Kurio, and Hector, Op. Cit., What is Social Contract Theory? (Academia.edu: 2019); page 2 of 7.
[8] Ibid; page 3 of 7
[9] Take the technology away from us and we’re back on the menu. One can argue that our intellectual superiority actually makes us an apex predator and I will agree to that conjecture but take away our technology and there isn’t any meaningful way that we can convince a grizzly bear that we won’t taste so good.
[10] Kurio, and Hector, Op. Cit., What is Social Contract Theory? . (Academia.edu: 2019); page 3 of 7.
[11] Think on this: If you already possess these “natural rights” as God-given, why do you need someone to protect them? I mean, they’re already yours—right? Yeah, I know. I’m confused.
[12] Ibid; page 4 of 7.
[13] King, and McGilvray, Op. Cit. The Social Contract, On Force, page 127.
[14] Kaufmann, Walter; The Portable Nietzsche; Penguin Books (New York:1976), The Gay Science: [125] The Madman, pages 95-96.
[15] King and McGilvray, Op. Cit. On Force, page 127
[16] Moscovici, Claudia; Dangerous Liaisons: How to Recognize and Escape from Psychopathic Seduction; Hamilton Books, (Lanham, Md : 2011). Author’s Note: This discussion was taken from information in the C. Moscovici’s book and from the Web Site: https://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/
[17] Wilson, Chris, Time Magazine: 37 Years of Mass Shootings in the U.S. in One Chart; (October 2, 2017). On the Web here: https://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/
[18]List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll; [Wikipedia]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll