But social contract 1 needs some form of social contract 2 to survive.
Lets take the first example you gave.
For a given group of people what they can do to others without social repurcussion varies, and it varies in relation to the understandings of the greater polity they live in.
Anglo-Saxons (like most Germanic people) had no legal problem with someone killing someone else out of hand, so long as the killer paid the price for the loss (with lesser costs if the damage wasn't fatal).
But if they killed someone in secret, hiding that they had done it, that was murder, and if discovered the murderer was an outlaw, and there was no price to be paid for killing him.
In Iceland it was rude, but not wrong, to kill a man's slave because one was angered with him.
In the South it was perfectly in keeping with the social contract (both of them) to abuse blacks for being, "uppity." If they go too uppity one could arrange to have them lynched. The greater social contract of the Nation was, nominally, against it.
It happens that at least once the larger social contract led to the Supreme Court taking initial jurisdiction of a criminal case (the only time it has ever done so) because they ordered a stay, pending appeal, of a conviction for rape.
Without the greater contract, things like lynching, and other demonizations of "the other" have nothing, other than the brute force of people acting in concert, to prevent it.
Look at the lifestyles in the high valley of New Guinea, where warfare was endemic, and no one dared travel outside the bounds of the land controlled by thier tribe, and perhaps the lands of friendly neighbors. To cross the whole valley was inconceivable.
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Date: 2006-01-17 10:22 pm (UTC)Lets take the first example you gave.
For a given group of people what they can do to others without social repurcussion varies, and it varies in relation to the understandings of the greater polity they live in.
Anglo-Saxons (like most Germanic people) had no legal problem with someone killing someone else out of hand, so long as the killer paid the price for the loss (with lesser costs if the damage wasn't fatal).
But if they killed someone in secret, hiding that they had done it, that was murder, and if discovered the murderer was an outlaw, and there was no price to be paid for killing him.
In Iceland it was rude, but not wrong, to kill a man's slave because one was angered with him.
In the South it was perfectly in keeping with the social contract (both of them) to abuse blacks for being, "uppity." If they go too uppity one could arrange to have them lynched. The greater social contract of the Nation was, nominally, against it.
It happens that at least once the larger social contract led to the Supreme Court taking initial jurisdiction of a criminal case (the only time it has ever done so) because they ordered a stay, pending appeal, of a conviction for rape.
Without the greater contract, things like lynching, and other demonizations of "the other" have nothing, other than the brute force of people acting in concert, to prevent it.
Look at the lifestyles in the high valley of New Guinea, where warfare was endemic, and no one dared travel outside the bounds of the land controlled by thier tribe, and perhaps the lands of friendly neighbors. To cross the whole valley was inconceivable.
TK