Comic Strips

We're simply never going to codify the social contract. Not only is it incredibly complex and situational, it's also constantly changing - something that's acceptable today might very well be seen as unacceptable in just a few years. The contract isn't - nor should it be - pinned down; it's just made up of any given community's current feelings of what's acceptable and what's not. People's feelings toward social interactions shift far too quickly for bureaucracy to keep up. It's disappointing that it means some people will constantly be playing catch-up if they're not able to easily and inherently understand the current contract, but even if we wrote out some "rules" that people were meant to follow, they wouldn't.

That's the thing about the current social contract - people only generally follow the rules now because they make inherent sense that comes naturally to them, which is why we have the problem of people not following them if they personally feel like they don't make sense. However, if we tried to force it, all we'd get is even fewer people following the contract - unless you wanted to put actual laws in place to punish those who don't, but then you're getting into some shady governmental practices. It's generally better to let society itself deal with those ne'er-do-wells, shunning them into either compliance or exile, like this comic is helping to do.

Our current social contract isn't great, but I don't honestly believe there is a better way of getting 8 billion people to functionally interact with one another.