A 21st Century Social Contract

Having recently read Rousseau's Discourse and Social Contract, I realised its relevance, maybe more than ever, to the world in which we inhabit today. I also noticed a key idea present, that Shakespeare also implicitly explores throughout Twelfth Night, and the relevance this bares to Rousseau's concept of the modern man. 

Shakespeare's play was seen as introducing a new idea of the complexity of the consciousness of the self, as he showed how social roles are deceptive and questioned the very nature of the human psyche and whether any true personality exists, or whether the true self is lost to an abundance of ever changing masks dependent on social context and situations. The reason I believe this to be relevant to Rousseau's thinking is through his description of the very essence of modern man, compared to that of a savage, and what this means for society and political arrangements of today. Rousseau believed the biggest distinction between the modern man and the savage was that of needs. He argues that needs are a key driving force behind modern society but that they have become perverted and flawed, putting modern man at a huge disadvantage, becoming a slave to his own desires. In man's primitive state, his natural desires are food, sex and rest. However, as society has 'developed', and become more corporate with the introduction of new 'supernatural gifts' (language, reason and sociability), this has created a development of more needs, that are not needs but become necessities, such as exotic food and entertainment. These 'needs' were initially pleasurable, but have now emerged into necessity that bind men together and shape their lives which has brought with it a perverse need to control men and make them slaves to others. As Marx argued in the Communist Manifesto, the creation of private property brought about a need for ownership, and Rousseau agrees that it inevitably brought with it a need for domination. Thus, unnecessary needs become corrupt and form the very foundations of modern society and the basis of inequality. 

This brings me back to the point about Shakespeare, and the idea of an ever changing 'self'. Rousseau stated that savage man can only 'be', in that he is not deceptive as he has no notion of deceit, and is thus true to himself and others. However modern man has two states; that of to 'be', and that of to 'appear', he thus becomes inauthentic and deceptive to himself and to others, with no real notion of who his true self is. This is arguably the result of socialisation, and the beginning of socialising which was not at first a necessity to savage man. This would make sense in the eyes of Shakespeare who showed how social contexts and stereotypical expectations shape and morph peoples personalities, leading them to a loss of consciousnesses of their true self, that can only be relinquished through returning to a state of nature. 

Rousseau's description of modern man as, 'nothing more than a deceiving and frivolous exterior, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness', emphasises his distaste for the corruption of the self he believed the introduction of political society was responsible for. In an age of material prosperity, mass media and consumer goods, it seems even more apt to consider modern day man to be enslaved to imaginary needs. Within this modern man, Rousseau sees, 'an animal less strong than some, less agile than others, but. all things considered, the most advantageously organised of them all'. Again, in a postmodern world, with an overwhelming array of messages and technology, this seems all the more significant, as we aim to resort back to a state of simplicity almost to regain some form of freedom from the world of material goods that now dominates and controls the very basis of society and in turn our lives. Rousseau sums this up appropriately; 'discontented with your present state...you might perhaps wish to go backwards; and this sentiment must serve to your earliest fore-bearers, a criticism of your contemporaries and the dread of those who will have the misfortune to live after you'.

I guess you're probably wondering what the use of this argument is, and why I wish to state how doomed the very essence of mankind is, and the answer for this I do not have. Depressingly, I will instead state that Rousseau believed that in practice, real freedom is actually impossible in a world with property where domination and inequality become inevitable. The kind of freedom Rousseau was arguing for, though, was more than this. It was a kind of psychological freedom, a freedom that is increasingly lacking in today's world as time society speeds up and moves past postmodernism into an increasingly fragmented world. Its allusiveness can be seen in the increase in suicides in under 24's, the huge drug crisis in teens who wish to 'fill a void' or escape for an hour or two, and this freedom is a freedom from the need. A freedom from the very essence of our society, which capitalism and public relations have built its very foundations upon. Rousseau argued that modern man is not free partly because others dominate and enslave him, but also because he enslaves himself within his own needs. He argued that as long as man relies upon others, or upon their opinions, he can never be free. This is completely juxtaposed with the primitive man, who was free from these constraints and who lived a life of solitude. He makes clear, that this kind of primitive solitude will never be possible in the modern world. It becomes increasingly apparent then, that a need for a radically different society is needed in order to see a change and to break away from the lascivious nature of our current society. Whether this can be done I am doubtful, however, forever the pessimist I will leave it up to you to decide. 

I will leave you with a quote by Rousseau I believe summarises this argument impeccably, and I find to be very important, especially in a postmodern world;

'Everyone began to look at everyone else and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price...this was the first step towards inequality and vice; from these first preferences arose vanity and contempt on one hand, shame and envy on the other; and the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.'