Social Contract

Dictionary.com's definition of the word contract is:

"an agreement between two or more parties for the doing or not doing of something specified."

A contract is a signed agreement that essentially "can't be broken," (meaning breaking of the contract leads to severe consequences such as disloyalty or revenge). The purpose of a contract is to have some truce, compromise or deal that is saved on paper. For example, one place we see contracts all the time is in business. People are offered to work for a certain task, usually for a set amount of money or other benefits based on the amount of time and success of their work.

A social contract however, is different because it is not necessarily official or written and signed on paper. A social contract is the agreements that people have in every day life that leads to the way society forms. One example of a social contract is in the mostly unspoken social hierarchy. Based on people's personalities, appearances, abilities, gender, race, age, professions, smartness, confidence, success, income, and other defining properties, society tends to put a rank on individuals compared to the people around them. Different people have different social contracts, and people who are "ranked higher" in the social hierarchy, which is quite vague, usually tend to not have quite as many social contracts as other people. In fact, part of the social contract for many is about having respect for the people that seem to be "above" themselves in the hierarchy. The concept of it doesn't quite make complete sense, but basically social contracts can be any values that people think it is necessary to follow. Depending on location, family background, culture, government, and many other things, social contracts differ between people.