Current concerns about the precarious state of American democracy have motivated many to assess what we must teach and enact to preserve government by the people. An assessment of the social contract is timely and necessary. The great thinkers and political philosophers manifest the complexity and the structural members of social edifices. From Plato to Rousseau to Locke, Hume (and many others) the relationships of the government and the governed are explored and it is clear that many things must be in place to build a functioning society. We must rightly assess these structural elements to determine their strength and viability. It is clear that four main elements must be in place.
First is the rule of law.
Rule of law presupposes a body of agreed upon conventions we call cultural values. There must be a basic agreement on some levels as to what is right and what is wrong. There must be a covenetal standard for behaviors that clearly delineates the duties of good governments and good citizens. When the agreed upon conventions are abrogated, chaos ensues. This area is now in flux and we see controversy around race, education, health (think vaccination) and wealth, executed unprecedented fury. We have killed nuance about any issue and replaced it with simple dualities like white supremacists VS BLM, Critical reace Theory VS white /protestant history and, finally truth VS fiction.
Wealth Inequality
The social contract theorists dig deep on this issue. Economics-in simple terms- is the study of production, consumption and the transfer of wealth. Agreement in the economic sphere is essential to the viability of the social contract. Lack of individual wealth is perhaps the most dangerous part of our current condition. Impoverishment is one free radical that poisons us. This wealth inequality has become enfranchised in law… laws that protect predatory capitalism. Rousseau explains the problem: “laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and no one has too much.” Our current economic condition makes it logically impossible to govern with consensus.
The Common Wealth
Societies are as healthy as their poorest individuals. Economic stresses, values decay and a host of other factors are killing the most important aspect of the American Society: opportunity. How does one build a life when housing, health and education are priced out of the market for the majority of the nation’s citizens? When opportunity dies, so do national states. I remember when The United States was described as the, ” land of opportunity.” This is no longer true for many.
Education
I believe that we should be educating our children regarding race theory, alternate histories, science and civics but one subject is more important than any of these…we need to actively teach kindness. As Goethe said, “kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.” In fact few positive human interactions exist without kindness and trust. Moves towards democracy from ancient Israel to the Magna Carta, to the present day are all based on kindness and trust. The weakest link in the social chain is a fundamental lack of empathy… the belief that those fellow citizens who are struggling deserve it. That attitude is becoming too popular in our society. “Commonwealth ” is not a hard word to understand. If we don’t understand that our personal prosperity is based on the prosperity of our fellow citizens the future is bleak.
Without action on the four elements we will witness the slow death of the American social contract. At the bottom of the rubble pile will be the pursuit of happiness.
Going forward I hope we predicate our actions on the words of Aesop…”no act of kindness is ever wasted.”
Olio Folio 