MONDAY, NOV 14, 2022: NOTE TO FILE

Social Contract Theory Revisited

If the current contract is incoherent and selects for failure...

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: RETHINK, FROM THE WIRES, QUESTION NORMS

Abstract: Per Wikipedia — Thomas Hobbes' work Leviathan (1651) discusses the concept of the social contract theory. Social contract arguments typically are that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some freedoms/rights and submit to the authority (of the ruler/s, or to the decision of a majority via representatives) in exchange for protection of their remaining rights/freedoms or maintenance of the elite serving social order. The relation between natural, God-given, and legal rights was often the topic of social contract theory. The term takes its name from The Social Contract, a 1762 book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that discussed this concept. Although the antecedents of social contract theory are found in antiquity, in Greek and Stoic philosophy (Protagoras and Epicurus) and Roman and Canon (church) Law, the heyday of the social contract topic was the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, when it emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy, e.g. by voting you consent to be governed per a social contract such as those in power define/imagine it, a dynamic that selects for growth. In the 21st century Jack Alpert is thinking about the not yet obvious need for a new social contract. Since the early 19th century, the prior two centuries of social contract storytelling leading to 'democracy' in some form (e.g. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the 'representative democracy' of the USA, the 'socialist consultative democracy' of China), was taken as a received wisdom, a given 'fact', an unquestioned consensus narrative of the nature of society and its global governance that served to legitimize its norms (growth). Since the mid-19th century, the legitimacy of modern techno-industrial society and its monetary culture has been assumed, has not been topical. No right thinking person questions what works to support 8 billion people and counting up to 10.4 billion by 2086.

COOS BAY (A-P) — The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent of any political order (termed the 'state of nature' by Thomas Hobbes), which, given that humans are animals and human eusociality and natural history as an evolved animal (hominin) was cluelessly unknown at the time, resulted in a view of the human condition that was wholly as imagined/asserted, e.g. by citing Job 41:24.

In this imagined/presumed condition, individuals' actions, choices, free will, are bound only by their personal power and conscience, often in conflict with the collective herd of commoners in need of guidance/governance. From this shared starting point, social contract theorists sought to demonstrate why rational (rationalizing) individuals (animals) would/should voluntarily consent to give up their natural/God-given freedoms, rights, and privileges to obtain the benefits of political order, i.e. the short-term putative benefits of working to make overcomplex societies persist a little longer in their taking ways.

Assume everything modern techno-industrialized peoples envision, e.g. narratives about nature, the natural order, natural rights, individual rights, God-given rights, freedoms, liberties, political order, societal norms, the greater good... are based on error, ignorance, and illusion. Assume the consensus narratives, starting with 'self' and 'other' stories, are the social constructs of dysfunctional individuals, denizens of socially disordered, overdensity societies who do not, cannot, listen to Nature who has all the answers to questions of persistence (of what works long term). Human exceptionalists, expansionists, listen only to primate prattle, so they see only the Emperor's fine clothes but not the elephant in the room.

Assume you are a pre-modern, non-expansionist human living between 375k to 60k years ago, or you are a San living as a nomadic forager in the Kalahari today. Your social contract (as lived, not as stated or believed in): live in band-sized cooperative groups of trusted others (20 to 50, range 5 to 85) in association with other bands that also listen to Nature and endeavor as K-strategists to do what Nature selects for long term to persist. Individuals and family units can leave their band of birth (exogamy is a need) or current association and join another band if invited/allowed to (a band or camp is not forced to accept immigrants). Bands are typically matrilocal or bilocal (duolocal, neolocal, unilocal at wife's desecration), and rarely among pre-expansionists are groups (such as where the biophysical economy depends almost entirely on hunting) patrilocal (and patrilineal/patriarchal). There is no hereditary or formal hierarchy, though some individuals have/merit more social standing/approbation/recognition/respect than others (but not more food/energy or finer dwellings).

Assume you are an early neolithic agrarian, a forager-gardener, living as your ancestors did, but in longer term or permanent cooperative settlements of 20 to 50 trusted others. For a time, perhaps a few millennia, you live as K-strategists sensitive to environmental limits, as your hominin ancestry did for over six million years and other animal ancestors had for 800 million years. The social contract: listen to Nature and live in a manner that works, that Nature selects for as evidenced by persistence. Live in a group size that human biology has evolved to make work.

For a few millennia after adopting low-intensity agriculture, humans do remain normal, but agrarian ways allow for larger, higher than normal density societies with fewer repeat interactions (which selects for cheaters, e.g. leaders), which selects for hierarchy, alpha-males, patriarchy, social classes, inequality, and hereditary elites lording over commoners, i.e. to patriarchal empire building from chiefdom to state level, a condition that IS war; a dynamic that selects for its own failure (as evidenced by 10k years of history). The social contract: serve your own and others' short-term self interests and prosper, for a time.

Assume you are a modern techno-industrial person, product of an expansionist society, living in and serving a monetary culture whose Wood Age was followed by a Coal Age with biomass (e.g. peat, wood, whales), oil/gas, and fossil-fuel built hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar PV empowering your globalized economic system (for a time) that is not remotely sustainable/viable, whose trajectory incurs multiple forms of overshoot (ecological, complexity, density, financial, civilizational, cognitive, psychological, social, informational overshoot). The social contract: pursue short-term self interests remorselessly/profitably to be served by hundreds of energy slaves and thereby prosper greatly, for a time. Live so as to incur the greatest possible overshoot debt by stealing from the future (posterity) so you can die with the most toys and stuff unless, one trusts, transhumanist technology can soon prolong your life forever.

Assume you foresee the outcome of living as a modern techno-industrial Anthropocene enthusiast (overshoot is followed by descent), and agree to endeavor to renormalize as a complex, adaptive, dissipative but evolvable subsystems of Gaia, individually and in viable communities. You refuse to use any technology that might allow you, qua individual, to live longer than enough to serve posterity (e.g. as a transhuman), the next 100 generations (your final gift is to make room for them). You agree that no human (inclusive of posterity), insofar as is possible by applied human effort, determination and foresight shall die a premature death (i.e. your children, grandchildren... the 100th generation will not die a Malthusian death by famine/starvation, conflict, pestilence/disease, poverty, vice/murder/war, misery, stress, calamity/catastrophe, or overshoot debt). The social contract: live in cooperative band-sized groups of trusted others (20 to 50, range 5 to 85) in association with other band-size communities that listen to Nature and endeavor to do what Nature selects for long term to persist. The communities cooperate (form a global alliance, e.g. a United Federation of Watersheds) to prevent any community from engaging in any form of empire building dynamic (metastatic growth for its own sake) that would select for the denormalization of humans unto a state of non-viable pathogenicity (e.g. modernity).

Because the potential to destroy a planetary life-support system using technology enabled overcomplex, overdensity expansionist societies will persist (I=PAT), some humans (enough, 0.01%?) will have to stand down from their hubris heights to intentionally, consciously, meta-reflexively agree to a social contract that might work to enable humans (posterity) to persist as the millennia pass (to maybe sidestep extinction) and evolve into forms of viable civilization—most beautiful and most wonderful.

 

A Real Solution

Based on the work of Jack Alpert and colleagues, what do you tell a grandmother that would make her vote for a social contract that selects for what works to allow humans to persist long term (i.e. vote, including with her feet, to live in a viable civilization). When the failure of modern techno-industrial society (as a form of civilization) becomes increasingly apparent, a new social contract becomes thinkable to more humans. Agree (or not):

1. No human (inclusive of posterity), insofar as is possible by applied human effort, persistence, and foresight, dies a premature death (aka The Prime Directive).
1. The social contract prevents individuals from reproducing at will.
   1. In a steady-state system, an increase in the death rate needs to be followed by an increase in birth rate.
   2. Any reduction in death rate is equaled by a decrease in birth rate.
      1. The Hippocratic Oath selects for human life saving and extension.
      2. The Oath requires that, to first do no harm to posterity, that a pre-reproductive life saved be balanced by one birth prevented, and that illimitable life extension is incompatible with evolvable life.
   3. Birth rate adjusted up or down to follow an increase or decrease (including foreseeable) in regional carrying capacity or change in per capita consumption.
2. Gives private ownership of mass to the next 100 generations.
3. Limits hierarchy through intergenerational wealth dilution.
4. Prevents the consolidation of political power.
5. Maintains minimum basic income (fixed sustainable energy consumption).
1. Provides each individual with basic services (e.g. baseline medical/dental care, access to information).
2. Provides an unrestricted fixed stipend (of discretionary perpons not restricted to a form of consumption, e.g. energy) to each individual.
6. Provides a path for individual achievement.
7. Prevents expansion of human activities into Nature's four-fifths of land and shore.
8. Anabolic processes (bio-production) exceed catabolic processes (respiration and dissipation) in agroecosystems.
2. Those who disagree self-select out of the social contract and social system.
   1. Those who agree, but live in a region where most disagree with The Prime Directive, can vote with their feet and leave.
   2. Those who disagree, but live in a region where most agree with the social contract, can be helped to leave or be shunned.

Pick a binary cognitive pathway, a position to agree or disagree with. The condition is a binary fork that involves two incompatible claims. Whichever you pick, it follows that those who disagree are incompatible with those who agree.  For example, under Pol Pot's social contract, anyone who was literate was an enemy of The People, the State, and would have to be put to death (or emigrate if possible). Agree or disagree. Two outcomes are that all literate people die/leave (none can choose to be illiterate) or all supporters of Pol Pot die or renounce Pol Pot. The two views cannot coexist.

Agree or disagree with the following: No human (inclusive of posterity), insofar as is possible by applied human effort, persistence, and foresight, shall die a premature death (i.e. your children, grandchildren... the 100th generation will not die a Malthusian death by famine/starvation, conflict, pestilence/disease, poverty, vice/murder/war, misery, stress, calamity/catastrophe, or overshoot debt). Any human who disagrees is deemed insane and involuntarily committed (or allowed to emigrate) until their death or proof of recovery. A viable society cannot be a two-party system divided on this policy. The agreement (the social contract and its details) is called The Prime Directive. The death penalty is retained for only one offence: violation of The Prime Directive. In a normal or healing body, a metastatic cancer is not compatible with existing or world-be normal somatic cells.

If you leave out the "(including posterity)" bit, then only those currently making demands upon Nature's resources matter. The World Socioeconomic-political System (WSS) selects for short-term self interests. Add the parenthetical, and for the Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) form of civilization you add a poison pill which, if swallowed, has implications fatal to modernity's narrative of life, the universe, and everything. Swallow the poison pill and, for posterity's sake, you will choicelessly change everything.  Don't swallow the red pill, and be revealed as the metastatic agent you have become (given that you were not born that way though your were born having the potential to become that way).

Destroying a planetary life-support system would be a violation of The Prime Directive (TPD). Exceeding the human carrying capacity of the world system, or any portion thereof, would be a violation of TPD. Exceeding carrying capacity is clearly evidenced by causing any species extinction or preventing the evolution of new species over the next 10 to 20 million years to replace lost biodiversity due to Anthropocene overshoot, a condition that is maximally in violation of TPD as overshoot debt will kill billions of those whose ancestors were Anthropocene enthusiasts prematurely.

Violations of TPD are evidence based, not determined by popular vote or opinion. Humans don't get a vote other than on matters of personal human preference. Persisting or not may be a preference (e.g. suicide), but how to persist, what works for a complex society to persist as the millennia pass, is not. A condition of overshoot debt, of a debt payable by posterity in misery and premature death, cannot exist without all possible maximum human effort, determination and foresight applied to correct it, e,g, by rapid birth-off (among those who agree to support TPD).

To reduce posterity's overshoot debt, the greatest possible violation of TPD, the human population must be rapidly reduced to well below maximum carrying capacity to allow for biosphere recovery. Rapid population decline by birth-off (to avoid die-off) works the same no matter what the target population may be (e.g. 1,000 million, 100 million, or 10 million). To allow biosphere recovery (maximum empower for all life on Earth including humanity's posterity), an objective target population may be in the 7 to 35 million range for those not having energy slaves serving them, so an initial target populate would be 50+35 million, the total population that three mega-cities might support (up to 50 million) plus the population of low-intensity forager-gardeners living on a one-fifth Earth to leave room for Nature. Once achieved, then further assessment determines what further non-rapid reduction in the human population may be needed to maximize the carrying capacity of Earth for humans without degrading the environmental productivity of the planet (the MPP of the world system).

If humans had rights, a self-accredited right to reproduce at will would not be among them as all products of the New Education system would consider self-evident. So if you are among those who agree to avoid Malthusian deaths, then implied is agreement to form a New Education system based on a matter-energy systems worldview that is compatible with a viable form of civilization (and incompatible with a modern techno-industrial monetary culture worldview).

 

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