Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher (The Social Contract)
A social contract, according to politically correct inclinations, is an unofficial agreement shared by everyone in a society in which they give up some freedom for security and protection. Meaning, security and protection are not free. Neither are you free to choose your own version of security and protection.
Rousseau got it right. Every freedom is relative, never absolute unless you rely on the law of nature, and when you do, the survival of the fittest conduct is frowned upon like it’s a major sin. Damned if you did, and damned if you did not, as the Americans say.
If it’s unofficial and everyone supposedly accepted it, where does it say, for instance, in specific, unambiguous and unequivocal language in the Malaysian Federal Constitution (FC) that everyone has the power, authority, and guarantee to rely on the social contract for their ultimate security and protection without restrictions? Article 160 (Interpretation) FC could have easily included the definition of a “social contract”, but it did not for reasons best known to the Reid Commission.
The Indian economist and political scientist Kautilya, in his seminal Arthasastra, 4th century BC, about the time of the Macedonian Alexander’s visit to the Indus Valley, said that “people suffering from anarchy first elected Manu (first man or the progenitor of humanity) to be their king and allotted one-sixth of the grains grown and one-tenth of merchandise as sovereign dues.
Fed by his payment, kings took upon themselves the responsibility of maintaining the safety and security of their subjects. “Manu-facturing” a sense of responsibility, or “manu-fractured” depending on the government you vote for.
Confucius (551-479 BC) believed that to restore order, societies had to encourage certain virtues, such as loyalty, trustworthiness, and respecting your elders. He believed people were capable of attaining these and other virtues through education. Wisely, he did not trust the political leaders, but education, instead.
The Englishman Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) explained the social contract: the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons. If you are rational and free, you don’t have to be believe that everyone is equal. After all, belief can be manufactured. Knowledge is true power, not the kind you receive in educational institutions controlled by the state.
Rousseau (1712-1778) popularised the idea of the social contract, and supposedly, it is still applicable and operational today. Apparently. He set the timer, test, tone and tenor of the French and American Revolutions.
Islamic scholars in the 17th and 18th century recognised the social contract as embodying justice, obligation, mutuality, and interests. The Egyptian scholar Rifa’ah Rafi’ al-Tahtawi (d. 1873) and the Ottoman scholar Namik Kemal (d. 1888) prolifically wrote on this government-governance-governed symbiotic relationship with constant reference to the Holy Quran.
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions,” declared John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government. Locke reinvigorated all the jewels contained in all the Holy Scriptures beyond the constraints of religion and creed.
But, what the heck is the “social contract”? The history of political science and economics evidence the blatant fact that people in any society looked up to, revered and regarded “government” for their perpetual craving for security and protection – honest services – representing the parameters to prevent, thwart and disrupt external attacks and alien occupation of society’s borders.
Sadly, today, the attacks come from enemies within – the rot, and the rotting system of government that condones the rottenness of cronyism, corruption and grand-theft of the public trust. The Rukun Tetanga seems to be the only existing social contract for Malaysians.
The one fact that stands out is that the Malaysian criminal codes significantly represent the shoots supplied by the roots of the social contract. The Latin adage primum non nocere (first, do no harm) applies in our lives as a constant check and balance if only the government can apply it to itself. The net will be cast far and wide when the Rukun Tetanga becomes part of the supreme law of the land.
Let’s organise and not agonise. Remember the future.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
