So it’s come to this. Have you see the video yet where the high school football players attacked the official? Rumors have circulated that one of their coaches either approved of the attack or even ordered them to do it. My friends, we have turned a sad corner. While our culture of violence has spawned a willingness, perhaps even an eagerness to use violence for solutions, the deeper issue is that we have turned our backs on the social contract of “one another together.”
In my History class, when I teach about the formation of our country, one key aspect that I explain to the students is the concept of the “social contract.” Thomas Hobbes 
first wrote about this, and after him, other key political theorists like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed suit. Put briefly, it is the idea that within the fabric of a civic entity, the citizens within understand, at least at a subconscious level, that we are in this thing together. Hence, we need one another to make the entity survive. Moreover, since we want the civic entity to survive well (since no one would wish to voluntarily become a resident in a city-state, state or nation that you actually wanted to NOT thrive), we realize that each of us needs to obey or follow the rules that we collectively create.
While Hobbes and Locke came down on opposites sides of how best to formulate government to protect the social contract, based on their respective views on human nature, they both understood that everyone needed to comprehend and support the social contract. The idea of the social contract was something that England spread throughout the world wherever her influence went, taking deeper roots in some places than others. Europe gained only a loose idea of it post-French Revolution, but still the notion was there. However, nations like Australia, Canada and the USA eagerly took the theory and made it bedrock of the nation.
I have explained this idea of the social contract to my students with this illustration. In most areas of our country, perhaps almost all, go there on any day around 3 AM and watch streets with stop signs. Or go at 3 PM to lonely streets in random neighborhoods, again watching stop signs. People stop their car. Not a soul in sight, especially no police, and yet people stop. Why? We stop for the subconscious reason of the social contract. I stop because I want you to stop. I will obey the law because I want you to obey the law. I realize, again even if only on a subconscious level, that I NEED you to obey, NEED you to stop your car even if no one is around. Since I NEED you to do it, then I know that I NEED to do it as well. As a counter example, go to many other places in the world and watch how they drive, how they approach stop signs. Whether in Italy, Greece or Haiti, I’ve seen evidence through how they drive, that at least on some level, their grasp or agreement with the social contract is weak, perhaps even non-existent. It is the idea of the social contract that allows me to walk through the mall and not have to constantly be reaching for a gun as I approach a stranger. This notion is what gives me the confidence to take food from a restaurant without first having my own taste-tester, looking for poison. On and on, in a thousand different examples of human interaction, the social contract reminds me that within this civic entity, we each will choose to obey the laws and mores of society in order that each of us survives and thrives.
However, now in 2015, it is abundantly clear that the USA seems to be heading going the way of other nations where you can’t approach the stranger without some concern, where you can’t drive assuming the rules of the road will be obeyed. You can see our sad change in our collective approach to authority. Police officers are currently under assault nationally, and so far our national leaders have done little, said little, about it. Obviously this football referee is another example. However, it is not simply there. Talk to any school teacher in the K12 system and ask them about their experience with parents after giving a poor report on the child. And yes, in some places, watch what happens on the roads, how we interact with one another.
OK…maybe we aren’t fully around the corner yet. Maybe there’s hope still as many recoil in disgust at the actions of the football players. But we won’t turn this around simply by punishing those two boys…rather, we need to remind ourselves that we need one another. I tell my students often that evidence is strong that those who work in a community of learning, studying together, building allies, do the best in classes. Go study the history of Jamestown or of the Pilgrims…the entire founding of the English colonies—unlike those from Spain or France—was centered around the social contract. We need one another.
You may not like the rules of your professor or your boss. At times, you may fly the pirate flag and ignore some of those rules (I do too). But in the end, authority is for our good. The rules of the society help us navigate safely from birth to death. We give up the social contract at our peril, entering a far more tenuous society that becomes vicious and cruel. Today, let us remind ourselves that our own thriving comes as we work together to live well….not to bring harm to each other.
Let’s not turn this sad corner.