The Social Contract. Is Blind trust worth it? | Barra McCluskey | TEDxBelvedere College Youth
Transcriber: Anastasiya Shykas Reviewer: Dana Sarhan Before we begin, I'm just going to go over something that's probably pretty familiar to everyone here, and that's a parent child dynamic. Now, obviously it's built on love, but as the child matures and goes through life, parents feel the need to. There is a certain trust between them. Parents, well, obviously caring and loving their children sometimes have to put rules in place for their own well-being. Children decide to follow these rules because in their eyes, if they follow them, they’re rewarded. I don’t know. They let him stay late at night. But if they go against it, they’re punished. There's no reason they should go against it. This is a bit of a weird way to start this talk, but if you can imagine the relationship between someone choosing to follow rules that are imposed upon them by a figure above them, even just imagined a very basic version of the social contract. Hello, I'm Barry McCluskey, and this evening I'm going to be talking about the social contract. It's a very long history idea. A lot of people have discussed it and lots of philosophers have discussed it but at its core it has remained the same. Now, overall, I'm going to make a slight assumption here and presume a lot of people don't know what the social contract is. But by the end of these 18 minutes or so, I hope to have informed you on some of the major ideas that have been discussed. The main idea of the social contract that has persisted through time, regardless of criticism or changes, is that a group of individuals collectively decide to give up some of their freedom and put power into a political figure or political body. This political body is trusted with protecting them, ensuring their well-being, and in exchange they are helped through life. They are protected. Now, why would they give up some of their freedom? Because in their eyes, it's worth the validation of the benefits. A lot of philosophers have discussed it, and there's been many somewhat related ways to the social contract throughout history. But the first major one came from a philosopher called Thomas Hobbes. Now, Hobbes lived during the English Civil War, and he saw the issue between the parliamentarians and those who supported the monarchy. And he couldn't really align himself with either side. He didn't agree with the monarchy that their divine right to rule, which in short, means that a king's right to rule is appointed by God. He didn't agree with this, but he also didn't agree with the parliamentarians idea a sharing between power of the monarchy and the parliamentarians, he found a way that was both related to both of them and neither at the same time. He argued that any power appointed to a political body or figure must be appointed by the people it rules over. In his masterpiece work Leviathan, Hobbes doesn't dive straight into what is called the social contract. He first establishes the state of nature. The state of nature is the natural way humans live in life. It's a state where there's no government and humans are essentially free. Despite this, it's not a very pleasant time. Every human is trying to survive to lengthen their own lifespans. There's no cooperation. Humanity doesn't progress at all because we are all self-concerned. We are all fighting for survival to go out. And it is a war of all against all life in the state of nature was, as he saw it, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Lovely. Now he saw the way to escape. The state of nature is by entering a social contract. The people who wish to escape the state of nature give power to what is called a soul. It might be an individual. It might be a collective group of individuals, but it is considered a sovereign. It is above them. It rules. It is entrusted with protecting them, imposing certain laws to punish those who go against humanity. Now, Hobbes understood that some of these sovereigns can be terrible. They might have tyrannical leaders, or that people might be very poor at leading these people. After all, this is a newly established thing. There's no experience. It could go horribly wrong. But Hobbes saw this as still a better alternative than the state of nature. Hobbes argued that a sovereign was better than the state of nature. He saw that while he wasn't really arguing necessarily for the social contract, he was arguing heavily against the state of nature, and this was the solution. Hobson's model of Leviathan. The title, it comes from the biblical creature, and it's depicted as a massive giant towering over the land, wearing a crown symbolizing its power. Hobbes does show this as being made up of tiny individuals. Its power comes from the collective, the collective will of the people to form it, and through that, it gives it power. Hobbes's model has been pretty much the groundwork for every other philosopher that I'll be discussing, and it's been criticized. It's been built upon. It's been a great one, but it's differed slightly from the next philosopher I'm going to discuss, which is John Locke. John Locke agreed that the state of nature was the basic foundation of human, but he didn't see it exactly as Hobbes did. Hobbs saw it as violent, while Locke saw it as apolitical but not amoral. Humans aren't naturally inclined to kill each other to fight for violence. There was no need. It was peaceful. Now, Locke saw this state as being ruled by laws of nature, and these were God appointed. These were God given. They basically ensured that no person could harm another's body, another's person's possessions. It couldn't hurt another person because if you did so, you went against God. But if people start taking more than what they need, they are taking from God directly. And this was Locke's idea that the state of nature had to be established. People couldn't necessarily just take everything they wanted. Some people had to be punished for theft, for stealing, for going against God. They could then decide to give power to those who would punish the people who had gone against God, and they decided that this was necessary. However, Locke believed that since people had decided to form this body, it was only right that if this body was wrong in any way, shape or form, that they had a right, if not a need to go against this body. They could, if seen fit, tear down the social contract that they had formed and build up a new one. Yes, they returned to the state of nature, but this was all necessary for them to build upon it. Locke saw human rationale and human identity, and the rights of the humans that sets them apart from Hobbes and the next philosopher I'm discussing actually proposes two theories on social conflict. Jean-Jacques Rousseau titled Two Social Contracts in two of his works. One of them is called The Origin and Foundations of Inequality Amongst Men, and it's often referred to as the Second Discourse. And the other one is described as the social contract. One of those, these were easier to remember than the other. The second discourse shows how humans have evolved politically over time up into what was then the modern age. They started out in the state of nature, where there was no hierarchy, no governance. But over time, communities have formed. They came together and humans now see each other together, started to compare, each others started to compete. Yes, they now form this sovereign, this body. But they're now starting to see each others in certain way. They're setting this up not for the good of the people, but for the good of the individual. They are solely concerned with their own goods. These governments that exist favor those who are wealthier, those who are well-off, those who are higher up in the hierarchy because they are pushing stronger for this to be formed so they can protect themselves. It was naturally flawed, and the second writing of this, The Social Contract, proposes a sort of remedy to it. He argued that humans have the rights, have the morals to look at society and to identify the flaws that just because historically something had happened, they didn't need to let it continue. The social contract that had to be formed had to be rebuilt. It didn't need to be followed like by the books. You don't need to accept it. You needed to look at it and go, here are the flaws and rebuild it again. Humans are essentially free in this, but as of now, we're unknowingly pitted against each other by a government that unwittingly favors certain classes. He argued that we needed to build it again, to start anew. That our current political and moral standpoints had been were corrupting our actions, and that we needed to build a new one and exercise our idea of free will. The final philosopher I'll discuss. And it's quite a recent philosopher is John Rawls. He published a book called A Theory of Justice in 1972, and he kind of brought that discussion to the social contract for a long period of time. There was not a lot of discussion about political philosophy. So he was pretty much one of the most influential political philosophers of our modern time. He imagined humans in a scenario called the original position, and in this position he accounted for human morality, and he argued that people have this ability to argue and reason from a universal point of view. In this original position, which isn't exactly the state of nature, humans are behind what is called the veil of ignorance. They don't know certain things. They don't know race. They don't know age. They don't know any hierarchy. They don't really know what a good life is. But in this position, they're able to discover the fundamental nature of justice. They're able to argue and reason without personal preference. The society they build is built purely on the idea that it benefits everyone. They accept anything that is good for them, even if to some means it ends up putting them in a very disadvantaged situation, because where they are behind the veil of ignorance is in society. They are taking what they see, they are taking what is rational. They are forming this new government full of common will. Humans can't have individual willingness. They have to conform to this will in order to progress. They are essentially forced to be free. This state had to be given full democratic power, and this couldn't be some appointed position that people could agree on. It had to involve every single member that it impacted him. This is pretty impractical in this day and age due to the massive population of Earth, but it's what Raul saw as the only possible way we could ensure a free, rational, just society. The social contract has changed over time, and I haven't even touched on so many incredible ideas that has been discussed. But a lot of criticism has remained the same. And one that is persisted is the idea of consent. Now, David Hume was a philosopher who was an early friend of Rousseau's, and he was a pretty early critic of the Social Contract. He argued that the consent of the governed, while it was the most important factor, hadn't been used to build society all the time, essentially discrediting this idea of the social contract. A lot of the consent in this day and age between governments and people is tacit or implicit consent. Nobody here probably signed a contract to follow their government. They did it willingly. So it's assumed that you've given your consent. You're benefiting off this country. They're giving you food, clothes. They're protecting you, and you're following their rules. But you have never said you're going to follow them. It's just assumed that you're going. This means that a lot of arguments in must say there are explicit consent, and only then can a person be fully assumed to follow the social contract. It leaves no room for any misinterpretation or any confusion. Of course, if people are to give consent, they have to give it freely. No one can be forced into a social contract. No one can be forced to obey a country that does not serve them. Any social contract that is formed by individuals who are not freely choosing to form it, who are coming together through force, through threat and building. This society isn't a legitimate social contract and cannot be respected as such. I'm getting into the end of my speech, and you're probably wondering, what on earth am I talking about? I'm not saying that you go out there and you tear down our government. It's first of all, I have literally signed a contract that says I can't, like, publish anything or promote anything, so I'm not going to promote that. But we are all people who have possibly unwittingly been living under a social contract, and we're living by a social contract that was made years before any of us. I don't remember possibly personally agreeing to this government. I have agreed, but my consent has been implicit, has been tacit. It's assumed that I'm following this government because of its benefits, but I haven't necessarily agreed to follow it. If there's any flaw in a social contract, if any person based on age, gender, race, orientation, anything is neglected by a social contract, we, the individuals who build it, have the right to tear this down, to build it anew and to ensure that it is fair. Our past has been built on social contracts, either clearly or unclearly. Our present is being run by them and our future will also be. But it's up to us to stop and go. Are we obeying and are we protecting the rights of every individual in this world, in this society? My name is Barry McCluskey. This has been my Ted talk. Thank you.