The Social Contract, II

Earlier in The Chrysalis, I wrote about the current crisis of the Social Contract, and the different responses of various groups to this crisis. It’s something I try to keep a close eye upon, as it is often considered a pre-revolutionary omen, if you will. That is, an existing Social Contract is felt and perceived as no longer responding adequately to new, evolving, or emergent psycho-spiritual needs, so this is what I intend to be understood when I write that institutions are usually the last thing to change during transitional periods, and there is a conflict between those institutions and these emergent or evolving psycho-spiritual needs. This is the process formally referred to as “delegitimisation”. So, let’s review this again.

The “Social Contract” may be more or less explicit or implicit, more or less formal or informal, more or less conscious or unconscious. It may be formally codified in constitutions, legislation, and charters, but also simply as custom and tradition, an agreed upon set of protocols that serve as a map for how people are to relate to one another and their institutions or environment overall that there might be peace and not violence A “criminal” is someone who grievously violates the Social Contract.

The received and existing Social Contract is, as noted earlier, very frayed if not irretrievably broken. While it served to satisfy earlier human psycho-spiritual or communal and political needs, it apparently no longer does so, and the result is disorientation, perplexity, and even social mayhem and social violence.

The existing Social Contract evolved from out of the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm — and Gebser would say ultimately out of the perspectival consciousness structure. Since the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm or “world view” is no longer perceived as completely valid or universally true, it follows that the basis for the conventional Social Contract is also undercut. It is not in accord with the new understanding of reality, so there is a dissonance, and this dissonance is working it’s way through the psyche as the problem of “cognitive dissonance” or “21st Century Schizoid Man”. So even though there is a pressing need to articulate a new Social Contract (which some are doing) there is also great resistance to any change in the existing Social Contract, which is called “reactionary”.

When we speak of “transition” or “transformational” ages, then, it implies changes in the Social Contract, and such prior ages where beset with mass confusion, or even neurotic if not psychotic symptoms or aberrant thought and behaviours. The Late Middle Ages are, of course, a reminder of what is involved in such Ages of Transition, for the seeds of the early Renaissance were already planted amidst the chaos and dementia of Late Christendom. The Social Contract then was the Scriptures, and there are plenty of people still today who would like to see a return to those times (like the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik), which would just inevitable recycle the same problems that led to the demise of Christendom in the first place. Likewise for the Islamists.

Social media, we might add, has also altered the terms of the Social Contract, having also thrown into disarray conventional social, political, and constitutional norms. There are many factors in play that result in fragmentation and dissolution of the present Social Contract, and our responses to this have not been all that appropriate or responsible, for the most part, which is why we are barrelling towards a social disaster. (Just as an example, although a strong majority of people in my home Province believe that climate change is happening and that it is anthropogenic, an equally strong majority doesn’t want to do anything about it). So it is not just the personal ego-consciousness that is in disarray, for very often the ego-consiousness is a reflection in the individual of social conditions.

This might be a useful way to reflect on present problems in society. Such crises are, nonetheless, extremely fertile conditions for new creativity and creative exertions. The Renaissance is a classic example which, although it did not last very long, set the course for the whole Modern Era that is now passing away itself, and awaiting it’s own new inspiration and breath of life — the mood that was probably behind the popular play Waiting for Godot.

There are many, many contenders for a new Social Contract. The one that wins out will be the one that is most responsive to the emergent psycho-spiritual needs of the populace, which may not even be consciously known. But the existing one is no longer viable or tenable.

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