Society has become significantly dysfunctional. People are unhappy with the performance of other portions of society. People want better government. Governments want better citizens. People want better businesses. Businesses want better employees. People want more peace in the world. People want a better environment. Although a significant portion of social interaction (inter-personal, local, regional, national, and international) is determined by laws and regulations, much of the interaction is in the form of unwritten (and frequently unexpressed and merely assumed) social compacts. many of the problems and dissatisfactions that we have today are a result of the haphazard patchwork of social compacts that have evolved over the centuries and that no longer meet our needs.
A social compact is a formal or informal 'compact' or agreement between two or more parties that governs the responsibilities, obligations, and rights of the parties and determines how the parties expect to interact. Social compacts are frequently very informal and not well-balanced.
I would add a special case to the concept of social compacts which is the relationship of an individual to themselves. In other words, how a person sees themselves, separate from their relation to others, organizations, the world, and the environment. Although this is a degenerate case of a social compact, it is the starting point and foundation on which the success or failure of larger social compacts is built.
I would suggest the following categories or levels of social compact.
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What is needed is that over the next 25 years we need to re-examine all levels of social compact and rework all of them so that we have a social system that the vast majority of people can believe in and feel comfortable with.
We need social compacts that enable people to:
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Updated: January 30, 2006 08:35:09 PM -0500
Copyright © 2002 John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology