SPECIAL NOTES:
1. The reader will only be able to understand the purpose and meaning of this annotation and its relationship to the Natural Social Contract (NSC), if s/he has first read the Introduction section of the NSC.
2. All usages of the words I and me, without quotes, within these annotations refer to Paul Antonik Wakfer, the author of the NSC and of these annotations.
The reader should note that, although I have defined all the technical terms of the NSC beyond the most basic only for Freemen and their Social InterRelationships, within these annotations themselves those same terms are often applied to humans in general. This is necessary in order to be able to compare the operation of the Freeman Society with other human Societies. I think this usage will not lead to any confusion, since, with respect to the Freeman Society, those humans who are not Freemen have no Social standing at all (in the sense of Entitlements and Responsibilities under the NSC). Therefore, it should always be clear when I am exclusively discussing the Freeman Society and when I am discussing other Societies in order to compare them to the Freeman Society. Additionally note that throughout these annotations, pronouns encompassing all genders and sexes are used, "s/he" for "she or he" and "hir" for "his, him or her", "it" being reserved for Existents that are neither Freemen nor non-Freemen (humans who are not Freemen). This is done for the purpose of accuracy and completeness and in order to obviate the need to make statements and explanations using all gender and sex combinations. It is not done for the purpose of acquiescence to any feminist demands of current Society. Because these gender encompassing pronouns are currently little used and novel to most members of current Society, they are not being used in the NSC itself, but only in the annotations.
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Social InterAction |
1) In order to be consistent with hir nature, a human must have the optimal increase of hir Lifetime Happiness as hir ultimate goal.1 However, merely having such a purpose is not by itself sufficient to cause the spontaneous creation of the Social System necessary for its realization. Instead, it is necessary to discover and clearly describe a self-organized and self-ordered Social System that will optimally enable and promote only those InterActions that facilitate the achievement of this ultimate purpose by Freemen and at the same time will provide and promote disincentives with respect to those InterActions that operate to decrease the likelihood of such achievement. While it is true that a human could simply "shrug"2 and escape (ie. run away) to a secret self-sustaining farm or independent island community to live out hir life alone or with a few other very close friends, devoid of any potential moral conflicts of Society (although once a human starts InterActing with any other human, such InterPersonal Connections must necessarily arise), we, the initiators of the Self-Sovereign Individual Project (Paul and Kitty Antonik Wakfer), think that this is little different from the defeatist attitude and the denial of the primary fact of one's nature (to strive to optimally increase one's Lifetime Happiness), to which so many liberty loving idealists eventually fall prey.3 Not only do we know that if we adopted such acts and attitudes this would greatly reduce our daily Happiness to an intolerable level because of the reduction of Available Actions that such acts and attitudes would produce and the pessimism and despair that would be inherent in them, but contrary to this result, we are convinced that it is possible to greatly increase the number and scope of Available Actions and the consequent potential for Lifetime Happiness, and we are determined to do so. In short, we think that a Society of Self-Sovereign Individuals who are using methods of Social InterAction that are radically different from current Societies, but who are intentionally cooperating to vastly increase the number and type of their Available Actions in ways that would be impossible by any one or even a few of them, can not only be achieved, but will lead to the development of technology that will vastly increase human lifespan. Such a development will not only directly gain for such Freemen the potential for greatly increased Lifetime Happiness, but because such an increase of human lifespan will finally allow the full meaning and import of longest-range, widest-viewing, (ie. rational) self-interest to be realized, we are convinced that it will be mutually supportive of a Society of maximal Liberty. |
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Social Meta-Needs form |
2) The goal we seek, then, is a naturally ordered and stabilized Society of Self-Sovereign Individuals who are minimally Constrained and maximally Free to increase their Lifetime Happiness, which necessarily includes being minimally UnRestitutably Harmed. The fact of the enormous Benefits that can be gained only from specialization and division of labor shows that humans can only optimally increase their Lifetime Happiness by cooperating within a Social System (which has been the lifestyle of human evolutionary ancestors for many millions of years4). However, because of the vast changes in the numbers and density of humans, in the frequency of contact between dissimilar cultures and languages, and in the enormous technological capabilities of humans to mold their environment and to Harm one another, it is clear that cooperative methods that worked in the past small isolated tribal eras no longer function effectively. Thus, in order to accomplish an optimally cooperative Society, a new Social framework that promotes the development and stabilizes the continuation of such optimal cooperation must be discovered and clearly defined. I have chosen the phrase Social Meta-Needs to describe this framework of human InterRelationships because: a) it is needed in order to optimally increase Lifetime Happiness; b) it is only necessary for humans who are Relating to one another (ie. it is Social); and c) it is outside, above and prior to (ie. it is Meta) any possibility of using such Social Relationships to enhance the satisfaction of any direct human Happiness requirements.5 In the sense that it relies on the nature of man, the basis of this framework is not new at all but has always been the implicit purpose of the human individual. It is only because humans have never logically implemented adequate means to optimally achieve that purpose, that it is necessary: a) to bring this understanding of the purpose of the individual's life and hir Relationship to others fully to the forefront of focused consideration, and b) to seriously examine its best implementation with respect to modern technological conditions and its attainment with respect to current Social conditions (the latter being the goal of the entire Self-Sovereign Individual Project). Although our proposal would create a Social System in which Freemen would be entirely free to provide goods and services of all kinds (including those currently monopolized by governments), we are convinced that it is insufficient to simply eliminate governments everywhere (even if that could be done) and have people InterAct using only the Guidelines of current libertarian thought, as some anarchist libertarians appear to think. Without a more complete framework of self ordering mechanisms to help guide people's Evaluations of Objects and of Choice Estimations about Available Actions, we are convinced that the result would be prolonged chaos (and likely a reversion to an even worse form of statism), as most critics of anarchist ideas contend (but often for the wrong reasons). The major reason for this contention is that without adequate free market ordering and stabilizing institutions in all areas, or even any such institutions in some areas (public services, protection, police, courts, law standards, defense, etc), the size and complexity to which civilization has grown is far too great for such institutions to emerge naturally and spontaneously in the time scale needed to prevent chaos upon the immediate withdrawal of such government-imposed ordering services. That is why Social chaos and the welcomed restoration of order in critical areas by a strongman, even at the cost of much reduction of Liberty in other areas, would almost inevitably happen. We are convinced that such a reversion can only be prevented if a Social System free of government tyranny is gradually achieved, since only such gradualism without violence will be conducive to the development of market institutions to provide the full stabilizing order required. The Natural Social Contract should be viewed as the practical implementation of the theory of Social Meta-Needs, which forms the philosophical basis for it. A rigorous presentation of that theory is contained within the essay: "Social Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Interaction". As such the Natural Social Contract should be viewed as a replacement for all constitutions, bills of rights, legislative bodies, laws, regulations, government officials, agencies, institutions and court systems, with all additional services arising naturally from the marketplace of InterActing Freemen, once humans have matured sufficiently to understand and adopt it. |
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Minimally Restrictive |
3) It is also our (recall that the "we" and "our" used here refers to Paul and Kitty Antonik Wakfer) earnest hope that by providing such a minimally Constraining compossible (consistently, mutually sustainable) framework it will be possible to unite all those individuals desiring maximal Freedom behind one strategic practical approach, and to confound all the critics at the same time. The market anarchist cannot logically object because the framework that we propose places no Constraints on the production of competing market services of protection, police, defense, court and law standards agencies. The minimal governmentalist cannot logically object because there is a single overriding set of rules and procedures to which all Self-Sovereign Individuals must adhere as a result of them having Executed the NSC - a kind of minimal government, if you will, but one which, in fact, has none of the characteristics of a government (institutionalized monopoly and legalized Constraint), because it is simply a Valid Contract that every individual is free to Execute, Terminate or override to a certain extent within other Valid Contracts, effectively creating SubSocieties. Finally, the Ayn Rand Objectivist should be happy because the purpose and the basis of Social Meta-Needs and its implementation is rational self-interest carried to its widest-viewed, longest-range logical conclusions. Thus, it is our sincere hope that all individuals in the various branches of the liberty movement will seriously examine these documents and our plan for achieving a Society that adheres to them. We furthermore appeal to all such individuals to give us their questions, comments, criticisms and suggestions for improvement so that we and they may together build something with which all are satisfied and which will eventually achieve all our common personal goals for greatly increased and enhanced Freedom. We are convinced that if this can be done, there will be a time in the not too distant future when people will look back and realize that most of those working for more Liberty prior to this new collaboration were actually far too limited in their ideas about the extent of the advances in human Social InterAction needed and the enlargement of each individual's Available Actions which could actually be attained. |
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All of Existence |
4) The most important guiding principle to an understanding of the Reality of human nature and, in particular, for understanding how the NSC consistently supports human nature is the fact of the fundamental individuality of each human being. For an individual, all of Existence separates itself into two sets of Existents: the I and the non-I. Although, these sets cannot be sufficiently Well-Defined to call them Categories, the essential6 distinction between them is the significant difference of the level of intimacy of both input (sensation) and output (control) - ie. the significantly more contact that an individual human has with the Information content and Control of hir body and hir mind (hir I, also defined within the NSC as hir Person) than s/he has with respect to anything external to hir (hir Non-I). This difference is so basic and so important that any science of human conduct will be flawed unless it takes this empirical fact of human nature into account (actually that is also the nature of any but the simplest lifeforms). While there are variants of this idea, called Methodological Individualism, that have been used in the social sciences, I think that my presentation is a much stronger and more scientific description of it than can be found in either historical or modern writings, partly because my description is based on the solid evidence of the Reality of human nature, some of which has only become apparent in recent years. Furthermore, I am convinced that this fact of Reality and its implications are fundamental to any effective theory of human conduct. That an individual also has more intimacy of both hir sensations and more Control over hir Person than is possible for any other Existent to have with respect to that Person is another fact of Reality intimately related to this same observation of human nature which I have called a human's Self-Mastery over hirself (which again is true for any lifeform above a certain complexity). For more explanation of and scientific support for these fundamental facts of human nature see the essays "Collectivism in Language: Its Effects on Valid Reasoning" and "Social Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Human Interaction". This separation of the I and the Non-I does not deny the degree of empathy which one human can have for another7 nor the importance of this quality in intimate human Relationships. On a personal note, over the 6 years that I and Kitty have been together virtually 24 hours a day every day, we have become extremely close and empathetic. We have tried every way that we can think of to communicate with each other and fully understand one another's thoughts and feelings. We both dearly wish that we could get inside each other's mind to think and feel with the other. Yet in spite of all our sincerest best efforts, we realize that at the present time, and with the present level of understanding of and access to the human mind, an essential aspect of our Relationship is that we lack any direct Connection to each other's thoughts and feelings. At best, we can simply empathically visualize and imagine what the other is feeling and thinking, but even this best possible effort still falls far short of what we both earnestly desire and what would be necessary to be effectively one. Since most Relationships are far less intimate, sincere and totally trusting than ours, and are often quite shallow in the vital knowledge each has of the other party in the Relationship, the gap between the amount of Information that can be conveyed by means of their sensory interfaces and that which is within their minds is even more enormous and separates them in a fundamentally irresolvable manner. There are two kinds of ways in which the lack of realization of the fundamental nature of human separation from one another can lead to flawed thinking and thus be harmful to human Relationships. The first is prejudice - the automatic mistrust of the character and intentions of another person merely because s/he appears to be different in some manner. The second is unearned trust - the automatic trust of the character and intentions of another person merely because some minor characteristic makes hir appear to be "just like me". Instead when starting a new Relationship, it is most profitable to assume the best of intentions, but never commit oneself very far until one gets to know the person well enough to be sure of hir essential integrity. If the new person shows any lack of integrity or desperate need for your friendship, then it is likely that a Relationship with hir will not be worth the cost and you should seek others instead. Above all, before you begin to seek others, increase your own abilities to look after your needs without any requirement for others. Only when you have increased your self-esteem to the point where you can truthfully say: "I am enough"8 in a purely personal sense, are you then ready to seek out others for mutual Benefit without desperate need on your side, and thus, to gain the enormous Value-for-Value Exchange to mutual Benefit9 that can accrue from a Social lifestyle. |
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Each human Responsible |
5) After the fact of the inherent and essential unknowability of one human by another, the next most important implication of the fundamental separation of each human from the rest of Reality and the rest of Reality from hir is the essential Social Need to assign to each human the authorship of hir Actions and their effects as Events. On the one hand (positive), this means that all Benefits accruing to a human from hir Actions are hirs to gain, to enjoy and to be Rewarded with. On the other hand (negative), it also means that with respect to all Harm that is done to others in which s/he is essentially Involved (of which s/he is the Effective Cause), the goal of optimally increasing hir own Lifetime Happiness requires that s/he Restitute the Harmed person for hir reduction of Lifetime Happiness and any other Connected individuals who present valid Claims for such Harm to that person which has also caused them Harm. (It is only in the case where one human is the completely Constrained instrument of another human, that any Harm that occurs cannot be assigned to the Constrained human.) Thus, for example, as opposed to most current legal systems which define the occurrence of tort10 only in the case of intent or negligence, the NSC Requires full Restitution to Actual Victims by those Freemen who have been the Effective Cause of Responsible Harm (their Actual Violators) even in the case of pure accident. The major reason for this Requirement is that the Social Meta-Needs of each Freeman are such that hir Lifetime Happiness should always be restored whenever that is compossible with the similar needs of other UnInvolved Freemen. In practice, this means that any Harm to a Freeman due to hir own Action or that of an Existent that is not a Freeman is purely hir own responsibility for the simple reason that there is no compossible manner to obtain any restoration of hir Lifetime Happiness from anyone else. A secondary reason for this Requirement is the inherent lack of clarity in any definition or judgment of what constitutes an accident and the clear fact that most Events that are called accidents are preventable in one manner or another. Freemen are Responsible Agents who are not mere pawns at the whim of Reality. And the method of most importance for helping them learn to be even more effective at Controlling themselves and their Environment is to Contractually Require them (by making it a Requirement of the NSC) to Restitute any Harmed Freemen for all Responsible Harm done and to Socially Preference them to Reward for all Benefit received and accepted. For an illustration of the Personal and Social need for all humans to be accountable see the essay "The Rational Adult - Agent of hir Actions, Creator of hir Happiness" |
Purpose, Terminology and Internal Conventions
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Unique aspects to the Natural Social Contract format |
6) The NSC is novel for any agreement or Contract in that each copy of it is only Executed by one Freeman and because of that it must be completely symmetrical for all Parties with respect to Entitlements received and Responsibilities accepted. However, the nature of compossible Social Relationships and their place in Reality is such that each Freeman can only do such a thing for hirself. An additional novelty is that, while the NSC certainly does Stipulate Responsibilities, it does not, by the very act of Executing it, place the Executor in a position of subservience, obligation or indebtedness to any particular Party, nor does it decrease hir Available Actions any more than what is naturally implied by the Reality of optimal Social Relationships as derived from the Theory of Social Meta-Needs and as understood and accepted by every other Executor of the NSC. It is these particular Attributes of being "minimally restrictive compossible" that enables the NSC to be both unilaterally Executable and unilaterally upholdable without Harm to the Executor. |
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Definitions within the NSC are technical terms |
7) The technical terms defined in the NSC are not intended to duplicate the generally accepted vernacular meanings of the defined words, nor are they intended to be inclusive of all the situations that arise within the complex InterActions of humans. I have tried to make each definition as close as possible to one of the major vernacular meanings of the defined term or to what I am convinced would be a more consistent and useful definition, and it is hoped that the definitions that I have made are sufficiently broad to include most of what is encountered in normal adult human intercourse. However, because some of the ideas and concepts introduced in the NSC and its annotations are novel and I am convinced that many of the current meanings of words have led to grossly distorted thinking, it has been necessary to sometimes define a familiar word with a new meaning (even though the meaning is closely related to a current vernacular one). In the annotations (explanatory comments to each NSC definition and section), I also define and use additional terms that I think are necessary for full elucidation, but that I decided would unnecessarily burden the NSC itself. In the end, all choices of technical terms within the NSC and its annotations were a judgment call and are fully open to alteration. I have also tried as much as possible to place the more fundamental definitions first and to define the terms in an order such that the major terms used within a definition are defined prior to that definition. However, as is true for any axiomatic System, this is never fully possible. In the end, all sets of definitions have a circularity of structure wherein they end up consistently (hopefully) defining each other (all dictionaries are examples of just such necessary circularity). This "defining each other" is strengthened and aided by the Relationships of the terms to each other within the Stipulations (in fact, which statements are called definitions and which are called axioms is somewhat arbitrary in any axiomatic System). In cases where certain Stipulations needed to first be in place before the definition was understandable, I have even left the definition of a technical term until after those Stipulations. The first time reader is advised to simply think of the standard vernacular meaning of a term, if s/he encounters it before it is defined, until s/he comes upon its definition. However, if desired, the definition can be immediately examined, since all usages of technical terms are hyperlinked to their definitions. I think this method should generally suffice for understanding, but if it does not, and most certainly if any inconsistencies or ambiguities ultimately arise in the definitions, please advise me immediately. 8) This Natural Social Contract is intended to apply to Freemen (those who Execute it) in their Relationships with both other Freemen and all other Existents. It is intended and argued that all situations involving children, other dependent lifeforms and non-Freemen in general are fully handled by the definitions and Stipulations of the NSC and the concept of Social Preferencing which together form a complete implementation of the Theory of Social Meta-Needs. For more detail see the Annotation about non-Freemen. |
1. For a philosophical argument supporting this statement see the essay: "Social Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Human Interaction"
2. Refers to the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
3. For another excellent viewpoint see: "Economic Secession Won't Succeed" by Paul Birch and Gene Callahan. Note however that I don't agree with the authors' (perhaps unintentional) implication that tax evaders are dishonest.
4. For a recent book that makes a strong case that man evolutionary ancestors were not hunter/killers, but instead "peaceful, cooperative and social animals", see: Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators and Human Evolution by Robert W Sussman, PhD and Donna L Hart, PhD.
5. Meta-Needs are not Attributes of one's Happiness State, but are only tools and methods that facilitate the increase in the Values of such Attributes - for more details see the Annotation on Happiness, but only after he has read the NSC and its annotations up to that point.
6. In all my writings the word "essential" should be understood to mean: "that which is the very essence or most important fundamental aspect of something". There is no mind/body dichotomy in Reality. What is generally called the "mind" is nothing more nor less than the structure and the patterned organization of Representations of Information of the brain. The higher level Attributes of mind: feeling, reason, consciousness, volition, etc. are thus merely additional properties emerging from the complexity of the underlying material substrate, just as the Attribute of "chairness" emerges from the ordering of materials into a certain general form.
7. Scientific studies are beginning to elucidate a neurological basis for this important Attribute of human empathy for one another. For a recent example see: Grasping the Intentions of Others with One's Own Mirror Neuron System PLoS Biology, Volume 3 | Issue 3 | March 2005
8. A phrase for which I am indebted to Nathaniel Branden which I first heard while attending his Intensive Program in 1978; it is part of his numerous writings on self-esteem. The following quote was found in a personal online Journal (July 21, 1998), though unfortunately the individual does not give a direct source reference - "The feeling that 'I am enough' does not mean that I have nothing to learn, nothing further to achieve, and nowhere to grow to. It means that I accept myself, that I am not on trial in my own eyes, that I value and respect myself. This is not an act of indulgence but of courage."
9. Initially we thought that the concept of "value-for-value" as described on the page Supporting MoreLife and the Self-Sovereign Individual Project was not critical with respect to the implementation of Social Meta-Needs under the NSC. However, as this new version of the Contract was being written, it became clear that the way that value is defined needed major modification to be in accord with the fundamental subjectivism of human evaluation, and further that all forms of value transfer needed to be considered in the NSC for it to be complete.
10. For a legal definition of "tort" see Duhaime's Law Dictionary.
