cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6541859
Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
You're speaking to two separate issues here. Seems like you're on the same page regarding tolerance, so I'll practice some more of that today and see if I can explain the concept of a social contract in layman's terms. Presuming that you're not trolling here.
In essence, the 'social contract' is a mutual agreement between individuals and their respective systems of government that states, "I will allow some of my personal sovereign rights to be curtailed by you in exchange for peace and security". These curtailed rights are absolute freedoms, e.g. the freedom to kill anyone or steal from your neighbor - rights which everyone has but in practice few people use because most people prefer peace and to be left alone.
The social contract is what gives governments the right to rule - because governments are supposed to protect their citizens against the 1% of people in any given society that want to break laws for their own benefit. This obviously is where things start to break down when put into practice. Hopefully you can see how it's supposed to work and why it's essential for modern society. It's a give and take.
If you don't like the social contract in your area, then you vote with your feet if you can. Go somewhere else where they won't care if you dump your night soil into the river, or that won't give you problems if you decide to rob your neighbor. Places like that are usually pretty rough though.
First, see my comments here where I learn a little bit and explain why I still don’t like the idea. But you’ll probably get the TL;DR from this reply.
I enjoy trolling sometimes (mostly shitposting), but I’m not trolling here.
This is just called law isn’t it? I can understand that the idea of a social contract may have existed prior to the idea of “law”, but if that’s the case I am curious why the idea of ‘social contract’ is even brought up, if we can discuss it in the context of law.
This gave me pause and I needed to re-read it a bit. Just to make sure we’re on the same page, is this describing a group of people selling the idea of protection (from death or theft) for the fee of being governed (and being punished if they kill or steal)? Again, not trolling, just trying to understand who the players are in this social contract, and trying to understand the period (which would have to had been in a maybe hypothetical period before conquests, or maybe there’s just no ‘selling’ / consent and the ‘social contract’ is entered into by way of knights and swords and the threat of death if you don’t comply).
I think most people don’t want to kill / steal because it’s socially disadvantageous to do so. Cooperation that happens from communities, but also from fear of how communities may retaliate if you go after one of their own. That sounds closer to ‘social contract’ but I’d argue it’s less of a contract and more of a fact of life which can be observed in other species.
This is where I think it’s important to make the distinction of exactly what a social contract is, because at this point it sounds like anything between:
But again, this sounds like law, governance and in some cases, depending on the discussion topic, taxation.
This sounds like “If you don’t like it, you can leave”. And it sounds like law, and governance.
If that’s the case, we know the ‘social contract’ is legal, but is it moral? Does the ‘social contract’ benefit society? And most importantly what happens when one social contract explicitly states that the other social contracts cannot exist?
He needs to ‘work’ on his being autistic? Like he needs to tone down this autistic diagnosis you just performed in order for you to accept him?