Commentary on The Social Contract

Before I even begin the argument of this paper I want to address what someone said in class that piqued my interest. The statement was, “The social contract was made a long time ago. It should be changed to reflect how things are today”. That statement, while not extremely detailed, gets behind the idea of societal agreements and social contract; When does the agreement of the past need to be changed to an agreement of the now? The thing about contracts is that they would be useless if they were constantly changing to match the status quo. That’s why there’s always a bit of breathing room before a change is made. The social contract will always have that societal bound of acceptance. I go back to the quote, that I’m reminded of, from Thomas Jefferson, that mankind is more disposed to suffer rather than right the wrongs that they live with. Society is not going to push back from one infringement by the state, it is going to react when the final straw breaks the camel’s back.

For an example of this go back to the 1920’s with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. This amendment completely banned the consumption of alcohol nationwide. With the supposed purpose of stopping commoners and citizens from getting drunk. In essence; under the presumption of promoting general welfare. What was the reaction to this? Let me give a hint with a term called ‘The Roaring 20s’. An entire subculture of Speakeasies, the location of illegal selling of alcoholic products, was created in defiance of the new national law. A split between what the people wanted and what the government enforced.

The text above is how and why a social contract can be “broken” or “unmatched” with current cultural attitudes.

To get a better understanding of my attitudes on the current social contract I want to give a detailed description for the different “parts’’ of a contract. The social contract is the set of written and unwritten standards individuals, groups, and institutions must abide by for a society to function in an orderly manner. This contract is a bilateral agreement which means it binds to both parties once it is ratified. For the social contract with the state both parties have obligations to the other. The state/government has the responsibility to keep ‘the people’ in line for “the general welfare”. This is in the form of fines, imprisonment, and the judicial system. The people have the responsibility to keep the government in line. This is in the form of elections, impeachment, and the democratic system. This is not exactly the same for countries with different political structures . The contract is part express and part implied. For the implied size it is only when one party takes direct opposition to an action that this “behavior” was against the contract that was formed. The opposition through actions will sooner or later be set into words and writing.

To maintain a democratic system compromises must be made which consider both sides and leaves both with an unwanted, but equal, outcome. This leads to the question; Does a decline in social capital, features “that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putman 7), lead to a decline in civil discussion and civic engagement? Henceforth, is the social contract for political discussion, to maintain a healthy democracy, broken?

Putman’s observation with the degradation to the social contract is the decrease in voter turnout “had by 1990 declined by nearly a quarter” (Putman 11). There is a presumption that ‘how can this system be working if we are seeing a decrease in X’. In which Putman would be exactly right in this regard. There would be no other reason for people not voting then a disinterest in the system they are directly involved in through their vote. However, in recent years of the 21st century there has been an invigoration in all types of people to start voting. This either is a slight deviation from the trend because of the current political system or a start of a new trend of how people view the current political system.

These two diametrically opposed trends need an explanation. How exactly are we getting more active and less active at the same time? The answer: the internet.

More and more discussion is being moved into online spheres. Not only is this changing how people communicate, it is also changing how ideas spread. For me personally I’ve had more political discussion online with complete strangers 10 times over than I have ever talked in real life. The key aspect to the internet is anonymity which leads to the battle of pure ideas rather than the content of the individual. Everything about them could and can be hidden. This leads to a relatively new term that we have seen before with campaigns such as BLM and Pride Month, “online activism”. Online activism is similar but extremely different from in-person activism. Rather than seeing a group of people in one location protesting or advocating for one item or another it is a bunch of profile pictures typing or posting on different forms. The thing about this though is not everyone’s social media page is exactly the same. Their information ecology is slightly different to other individuals because an algorithm optimizes for their engagement, not others. So whatever predisposition someone has will be used to bring them further into a specific view.

This is not healthy for discussion. The whole point of having civil engagement is seeing different sides. The point is thesis, antithesis, synthesis or in layman’s terms positions, opposition, combination. What we currently have is a system that promotes a hive mind mentality and it takes extreme effort and will to not only view and see the other side out but to also to understand a different angle. The weird aspect of this is that even though these factors are at play people are still going outside of their phone. They are stepping outside their online networks to actually go outside and do something such as vote. Be it better or worse this is exactly the case of what happened during January 6th. Individuals had made up their mind to such a degree as to take action.

I don’t believe that the current social contract is broken. It is rather adapting to political discussion. Everyone is being thrown into a digital space they are unfamiliar with and have no idea how to navigate it. Imagine a scale with society tipped as far to the right as possible “use social media, watch YouTube, Google it, Wikipedia that”. Forgetting the past items of how a society used to function. Hope is not lost since all these mechanisms that made a society function before the invention of current scale technology can be used in combination with new mechanisms made online. Leading to an even faster and ever evolving discussion to not only change how we communicate differences in political topics but to also take effective action on these new ideas.

“The total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent” (Putman 22). I can find countless online communities dedicated to the passion of bowling. Some of these people may even live in my area. A new invention is supposed to add and improve how we live our lives. So while the social contract of how people interact is changing that doesn’t mean we have to bowl alone.