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Do you ever despair at the apparent lack of regard for the "social contract" by so many? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In this case, I'm referring to the notion that we all make minor sacrifices in our daily interactions in service of a "greater good" for everyone.

"Following the rules" would be a simplified version of what I'm talking about, I suppose. But also keeping an awareness/attitude about "How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment? "Common courtesy", "situational awareness", etc...

I don't know that it's a "new" phenomenon by any means, I just seem to have an increasing (subjective) awareness of it's decline of late.

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[–] astral_avocado 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For example, many people consider homeless or unemployed people barely anything more than “parasites” or “leeches” because they supposedly don’t uphold their part in the social contract

Just gonna hit back on this and say most people probably consider the total utter degeneracy and petty/violent crimes they witness the local homeless population commiting as them not upholding the social contract. Here in my city they're shitting on a busy sidewalk in broad daylight, or blatantly stealing packages or openly assaulting women. Endlessly harassing people on our public transit and making it a nightmare to use.

I made that sound bad, I'm sure there's plenty that likely aren't acting this way. I'm sure I'm only seeing the worst of the worst. Their lives have undoubtedly been rough and I can only imagine what happened to them as a child to lead them to where they are as an adult. They're regularly looked down upon and we gutted our mental health institutions long ago. Heroin and fentanyl are omnipresent.

But to imply that most people view them as not upholding the contract because they don't have a job is probably incorrect. We're at a time where empathy is at its highest concerning systemic/collective issues. But if we're not careful this also leads us to ignore and excuse away individuals who are blatantly in the wrong and have the least empathy towards others because we've blinded ourselves to be unable to see the trees in the forest. Just because your life sucks doesn't mean it's okay for you to abuse others to make yourself feel better.