The Social Contract: Not Worth The Paper It's Written On

The other day I got into a debate with this character who tried to defend his position by talking about the "social contract." You ever hear of this? I will save you a trip to Wikipedia and explain it Reader's Digest condensed-style. The social contract is some fruity abstract concept that came out of the the so-called "Enlightenment." When you hear someone talk about the social contract, it is a sure sign that they are some ivory tower intellectual that does not live in the real world. What it is, is supposedly we have all agreed to hand our own individual sovereignty over to a governing body in exchange for mutual benefits we could not achieve on our own. (With of course, the governing body usually getting the lion's share of the "mutual benefits.") Know what the problem with the social contract is?

I never signed it.

Did you? Did anybody?

Now I realize this seems like a pretty glib argument at first glance, but take it a step further. I also never signed the U.S. Constitution that is the literal foundation of the government I am supposedly bound to. There's some kind of "tacit approval" that I supposedly give just by existing on the land that I exist on, but I explicitly deny any such tacit approval. My position is extremely simple: I am not beholden to the laws of man. I am beholden to my own conscience and common sense and that's it. Armed people are real. Cages are real. If I flout the laws in too direct and obvious a fashion, armed people will put me in a cage. That is all real. If I go too far armed people will kill me, and death is also real. (Actually, of course, death is an illusion of this frame of existence. I was never born and I will never die. But that's besides the point.) But the laws the armed people say they are enforcing are not real. Get it? Now, common sense tells me that I want to avoid having armed people imprison or murder me. My conscience tells me that I don't want to do anything to other people that I would not have done to me. So, despite my bold pronouncements as a self-proclaimed outlaw, I am actually at worst a pretty harmless person. Harmless as the dove, you might say.

Wait, I take it back. Besides my conscience and common sense I am also beholden to the physical laws of the universe, but my hunch is that this is only because I am at a low level of consciousness. I suspect that for highly advanced consciousness the laws of physics are about as flexible as the laws of man are. Again, that is neither here nor there.

The point is, your individual sovereignty is derived directly from your connection to God and no body of people can take it from you. What you choose to do with it, whether to hold on to it or to give it up, is entirely up to you.

Next time: Remember when they made Doritos in Mountain Dew flavor? What the heck was that about?