[Wikipedia-l] Social contract

Wed Nov 13 05:44:09 UTC 2002

I just read the Wikipedia social contract article and I think it describes our 
current situation to a tee. I have copied the WikiText here in case en.wiki 
is not reachable.

'''Social contract''' is a phrase used in [[sociology]] to denote an agreement 
within a group or community regarding the rights and responsibility of the 
group and its members to each other. All members within a society are assumed 
to agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within 
the society. 

Most social contracts are informal and many are not well understood. In very 
dynamic or mobile societies the local [[consensus]] is often rapidly shifting 
as people move in and out of groups. Conflict often arises out different 
understandings of the local aggregate expectations as well as disagreement 
regarding appropriate rules of behavior and interaction. This can be very 
stressful for group members until new informal agreements have been 
informally negotiated between interacting members of the group, community, or 
society. 

The term "social contract" was coined by [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]], in his 
influential 1762 treatise The Social Contract. 