Our Current Social Contract is Immoral
The social contract is an unwritten set of rules that those living in a society have set for themselves on how they will coexist. The rules seem to all involve a few common themes, giving up personal liberty for ‘the greater good’ and committing violence against your neighbor for ‘the greater good’. Many will also argue that this violence committed against your neighbor and friends is just the price we pay to live in a civilized society. These transgressions against your neighbor are necessary to live in a civilized society, what we need to coexist, is a poor argument. How is violating your neighbor’s rights seen at all as a way to coexist?
If I were to put the question to you like this:
Do you believe that it is acceptable to harm your neighbor unprovoked?
The answer to this is clearly no. So why then does the social contract dictate that we should harm our neighbor? For the good of others? So we need to harm them to help them? Is this the end conclusion that we come to? That to help your neighbor you must first hurt them? I feel we can all agree that harming your neighbor is simply a moral delemia, and not a hard one to figure out at that, harming your neighbor is morally reprehensible.
What does this have to do with the social contract one might be asking at this point? Glad you asked, the social contract that we all seem to live under at this time asks us….no, rather demands that we harm our neighbor unprovoked! We are obligated by the social contract of the time to harm our neighbor unprovoked so that we can also help them. I’m not sure how else to say it but this is immoral.
An argument most will use, as mentioned before, is that this is the price we pay to live in a civilized society. To take this on I will reefer to how we have already established that harming your neighbor is immoral. The implication though that this is the price we pay is how people being harmed is essential to a civilized society, taking another person’s property by force is what makes us civilized. This is just madness. The price that someone has to pay is an immoral act. For the social contract to work we must be immoral, that is what people are saying when they tell you “this is the price we pay to live in a civilized society.” If your idea of being civilized involves immoral acts it might be time for one to reconsider the ‘social contract’ that they subscribe to.
Establishing now that the social contract is immoral let us start with one that IS moral. Seeing how aggression towards your neighbor is immoral we can conclude that the opposite would be moral then, nonaggression is the moral choice in our new social contract. But where does this nonaggression principle (NAP) come from? It comes from property rights, the rights that not only do we own ourselves but also can own property. This is the basic premise of where the NAP comes from, and that by excepting that we all have a right to self ownership that it is then a violation of those rights to take the fruits of their labor or property. By taking from another person, no matter if for good or not, a violation of the individual’s rights has been committed.
We need to recognize that this is a moral issue not an issue of “how will (fill in the blank) be paid for or provided?” When we act upon our principles and not our wants we will become a better more loving society. Understand that this is a moral issue that then forces us to come up with other solutions to issues, solutions that aren’t immoral, solutions that don’t involve violations of rights, solutions out of actually caring for everyone that just might involve things like donating and volunteering for starters.
Thank you reading and please don’t forget to like and share!
Keep that coffee warm for us.
LWS
