“Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains!”—Rousseau, The Social Contract 1762
In the beginning, there was the Social Contract: a freely constructed community of Individuals who willingly give up their natural Freedom and voluntarily consent to the community's Laws if—and only if—it can sufficiently protect their Life, Liberty and Property/Pursuit of Happiness.
This is the foundation of Liberalism (the type of System we currently live under), which was discovered through a hypothetical thought experiment called the State of Nature: a device used by early Enlightenment Philosophers to imagine how Man would live if stripped of all seemingly conventional attachments to Country, Religion, and Family and existed only as the isolated, separate beings that the unity of our individual Bodies suggests.
The point of this experiment was to foment a conspiracy to undermine the legitimacy of all previously existing political regimes by exposing their Rulers’ supposed claim to serve the Common Good as nothing more than a means to exploit the Ruled for their own selfish, greedy ends.
(The formula goes something like this: We are all Selves + the Self is naturally selfish = its two strongest motivating passions are Self-Preservation and Self-Interest)
The goal was to give an equal Right to selfishness to the Ruled; to allow them to be the sole judge of their own Interests; to have the Right to freely choose Rulers who would best serve those ends. And, once the old legitimacies were sufficiently disposed of (i.e. Revolution), then the Rulers and the Ruled could consciously—using their Reason—construct a new Contract that would equally protect the Interests of both parties.
But, if one constructs a Society founded on our basest, most animal instincts will it not eventually reduce us back to them; if all these Social relations are shown to be merely conventional, with no natural basis, how do you prevent that line of thought from eventually extending to every form of relationship? And now, “History” has seemingly led us full circle back to the once fabled State of Nature—not as an experimental hypothesis as those who first proposed it, but, instead, as an ever increasingly realized reality.
The Youth today are now well provided for by our Country—and continue to demand more and more social security from their government—yet there is really little to no reciprocal civic engagement required of them; they are free to choose which, if any, Religion they wish to practice; and now, even sexual involvements have been completely liberated as well—no longer necessarily leading to commitment or Family life—completing the triumvirate of conventional attachments: Country, Religion and Family. We now exist as the naked Individuals who once “inhabited” the State of Nature—but with one little difference: we still inhabit Society and like to think of our-Selves as “civilized” creatures, but, as the State of Nature originally showed, the result of disconnected Individuals all asserting equal Rights to a finite amount of Nature’s bounty is really…a War of All Against All.
Despite the radicalism of the Philosophers that first proposed this new scheme for Society, they never imagined the break down of the Family as well, and had relied on this semi-natural, or at least unavoidable, necessity to provide some sort of bridge to connect the Individual and Society. The Individual would take a material stake in his community, in order to provide the best possible atmosphere in which to raise his Family—a way to ensure the Common Good that flows naturally out of our Self-Interest. Also, the concern for the safety of one’s Family is a powerful reason for loyalty to the State that protects them.
Rousseau, however, knew better and could see where the rising tide of Egalitarianism and Individualism (which he agreed with in principle) caused by this new philosophy would eventually lead. This inspired him to devote his entire career to encouraging passionate, Romantic Love to attempt to create a bond between Men and Women that was greater than mere Bourgeois calculation of Self-Interest. But, based on this sketch by Chappelle, it would appear that his great effort has failed and our view of our-Self as simply freely contracting Individuals has now penetrated our every relation—officially destroying any semblance of a natural basis that once connected Human Beings to one another.
Rousseau tried to discover/create Molecules (Family), as opposed to simply Atoms (Individuals), as the building blocks of Society because then Society’s parts would already be moved by different motivations than mere Self-Interest—which then could hopefully be extended to Others. People in love constitute a visible proof that Man can act for other reasons besides the Economic/Utilitarian motivations that dominate Modern Theory. In contrast, each partner in the Molecule is instead motivated by forces found in true attachment and concern for Others, whereas a Society constructed out of radically separate Atoms creates no shared basis of concern—only diffidence or, even worse, war.
We have now turned the most intimate connection that can unite two Human Beings into just another contest in the War of All Against All—the final development of founding all human relations on mere contracts; simply another contest for the “Will to Power” to assert itself. The only possible peace is to be found in an artificial construct: the Business Contract—which we enter into for as long as it is convenient and serves our Interests; a union of two equally Self-ish Individuals who hopefully each have a good lawyer to settle the statistically inevitable Divorce.
And you know what the silliest part of all this is: a concurrent attempt by the same Individuals to turn the actual Social Contract—the societal one—into a more compassionate/caring relationship—i.e. some sort of Socialist type structure that could help to reduce our selfishness—while at the same time reducing real Human connection to an abstraction, with no natural basis. In the end, it appears that we all love our Rights, but hate their consequences. We want to be respected as an Individual, but also want to have real human connections.
And, what we are creating instead are a bunch of Social Solitaries and Isolated Individuals—all with their “own little separate systems”—who have no alternative to collapsing into their Self because everything else has lost its foundation. There is no longer any connection—natural or artificial—to make us care for anyone, except for number one; to draw our attention outward and give us a reason to care about a Community or Society; to not just use one another simply for bodily pleasure…
