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Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world
wilberfan @lemmy.world

Do you ever despair at the apparent lack of regard for the "social contract" by so many?

In this case, I'm referring to the notion that we all make minor sacrifices in our daily interactions in service of a "greater good" for everyone.

"Following the rules" would be a simplified version of what I'm talking about, I suppose. But also keeping an awareness/attitude about "How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment? "Common courtesy", "situational awareness", etc...

I don't know that it's a "new" phenomenon by any means, I just seem to have an increasing (subjective) awareness of it's decline of late.

195 comments

  • I think many people just have a fundamental misunderstanding that they are indeed a part of something larger.

  • You only feel bound by the social contract of the community / communities of which you actually feel part in your day to day. The one-two punch of neoliberal hyper-individualism (and the associated deliberate deconstruction of community) and online communities of special interests leads to people walking about a shared world with widely disparate senses of what their 'social contract' stipulates.

  • Yes.

    I remember years ago, meeting some Ayn Rand fans, and many of us who knew them considered them deluded and selfish. I remember the despair I felt when drump’s election proved that the deluded and selfish had increased and risen. And then the pandemic shone a spotlight on just how many had become proud of their delusion and selfishness. And yes, I sometimes get very depressed about this, but find ways to see the good and positive, and continue to hope.

  • Not enough people were taught that they should treat other people how they, themselves, would like to be treated.

    Well, it’s that or they just have zero self-respect.

  • It's the prime source of despair for me at work, as a custodian. Be it staff, clients, or coworkers - being a lazy selfish piece of shit feels pretty common.

  • I doubt that's a new thing honestly. I've always been encountering people who think only of themselves.

    But also, a part of this social contract should be things like "nobody's perfect" and "everyone makes mistakes". That goes with your part together too, sometimes we don't think something through and may come ofd as selfish or ignorant. But that's also normal if it just happens randomly sometimes and it's not too much of a pattern.

    I think these days we tend to demand perfection too much, and write someone off way too quickly.

  • I was on the subway, standing, recently when an elderly man got on board. I'd guess he was in his 70s. Had a crutch under his arm. Had one or a few small bruises on his face. He looked frail. No one with a seat made any effort to offer him their seat. He stayed right near the doorway of the subway, and I thought "oh, maybe he's just going one stop." He wasn't. He just didn't expect anyone to vacate a seat for him.

    I remember the subway before personal music players, and now 'smartphones' were ubiquitous. From what I can see, common courtesy has fallen sharply with the rise of 'smartphones' (and the concomitant "I'm walking around completely oblivious to my surroundings and focused on what's on the 4 inch screen 4 inches from my face")

  • I feel like I run into microcosms of this in a few online games.

    Worlds like Sea of Thieves, The Division's dark zone, and Stalcraft, are built with the idea that "anything goes" - players exist in the same world, with no rule to prevent them killing each other to steal their possessions - and even some decent rewards for doing so.

    I actually mostly enjoy playing those games for all the times people don't do those things. I don't despair the moments that betrayal does end up happening - mostly, I just find it wonderous and satisfying anytime we manage to dismiss that possibility and treat each other peacefully.

    This could be a poor effort to correlate my interests, but one thing I think affects this issue in places like America is cars. You don't see 20 people out on the street. You see 20 cars on the street. Tinted windows, faceless metal grill. A lot of people have been burned by one poor experience with neighbors taking sidewalks or transit, and so they want to stay isolated in their own protected cabins.

    I think the world really relies on chance interactions between strangers, for both parties to learn something about each other and the world - often leading people to "care more" and develop more of that social contract. The trick is, most people DO follow a social contract, but it might only be for the individuals they're familiar with and that they feel similar to. The internet has unfortunately had its ill effects too - people can choose to stay in spheres where people specifically agree with their worldview, and won't ever run into "randomized neighbors" the same way as they would walking down the street.

  • I feel we have been taught to ignore the social contract and compete with each other for survival instead by the increasingly capitalist structures among us.

    Also, in most countries a smaller proportion of the population is 'bought in'. Home ownership is way down. A lot of days, I kind of passively hope for collapse because the status quo is shitty. So there's little incentive to uphold the social contract for me because there's little hope it will result in a good outcome for me.

    And this makes perfect sense and is predicted. As wealth inequality rises, social contract breaks down

  • Yes, but from a slightly different viewpoint. Namely, people are so disenfranchised from their society on average that the idea of a social "contract" makes no sense. People are not at all represented by "their" governments, and in their righteous anger they conflate the oppression by governments with that of their people.

    If you put on a crown and shout that you're better than me, I'm not going to respect your authority by default. You need to give a reason to do so, such as protections, rights, privileges, opportunities, camaraderie, etc.—or the implied or explicit threat of violence against those who disobey the law, as is the current setup. Right now, the only thing that my government does for me is wage wars in foreign lands, building ill will and corpse piles on my behalf. For many people, their government harasses them or just wants them straight-up dead.

    I think that many people confuse the ill-will of governments with the avarice of their ordinary citizens [1]. It is, at best, tied to the apathy of their citizens, whom have themselves been relentlessly beaten into understandable submission.

    The point I'm making is this: if people are already out to destroy you, what good is the social contract to you? Fuck them. This is the attitude that drives people not to care for others.

    Now this lack of care for others is not my viewpoint! I do separate the actions of the state from the people they "represent" as much as is possible [2]. However, I'm in a position of relative comfort and privilege. I have the energy to take a fraction of a second and cool off when I start to see myself blaming humanity for things. Most people don't.

    Lastly, in regards to situational awareness and common courtesy specifically...I really had to learn that, and I'm not the only one. "Do unto others as you would want done unto you" doesn't really work for me because I generally want different things than others. I have difficulties reading social cues. Even as an adult, I have to go far beyond "Do unto others..." to suss out what the right course of action is, because I typically would want something else or nothing to happen. Situational awareness and common courtesy are not inherently obvious or intuitive, and I think we do a disservice to ourselves by pretending that we don't generally learn courtesy from others.

    [1] In areas where street justice is a thing, it is not at all uncommon for the public to side with non-state bullies in conducting oppression, although usually still with tacit state support.

    [2] Patriots and ultranationalists do exist unfortunately. Non-state ultranationalists need to be taken to task along with their state-sponsored brethren.

  • It's a bit of confirmation bias. Once something "big" happens to you, you start seeing little things that you'd before just write off.

    But a part of it is the increase in homeless people. Many of them, thanks to mental illness and drug addiction, can't follow a social contract.

    Of course, naturally, they get left on the street where they ruin everyone else's day instead of being forced into an area where they can exhaust themselves out, and get their illnesses treated.

    Because that would cost too much money, of course, as if letting those people lose their grip on reality and break shit doesn't already cost money.

195 comments