Social Contract as Faustian Bargain

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First I must praise the editing of my overly long email. It was an excellent job. I had a lot of thoughts going around and needed to just commit them to an email.

One benefit was that it got me to start thinking of another political philosophy concept – that of the social contract in regards to Westworld. This was further enhanced by Danny H email on the Telegraph and your responses.

What we are being told by Joy and Nolan is that Earth has had a number of ecological and technological disasters in the 21st century. The poor elephants ??

This led to Incite being invited to reorder the world. Although they were opportunistic in exploiting their harvesting of data, we invited them in (like vampires to our homes?) to form this new social contract. And as I suggested in my previous email, humans are quite adaptable to incorporating technology into their existence. So perhaps despite the grumbling from those disadvantaged by this social contract, the majority remain content and protective of this ordering of society? As Roger argued during this week’s Telegraph, it is hard to kick against social norming.

This comes back to Gene’s observation after episode one that it’s not a bad trade off occurring if everyone is fed, have homes etc. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is being met at the lower tiers for everyone. Okay the elite are getting all their needs met but there must be a sizeable middle class who are comfortable in order to make this work. This shouldn’t be a binary of elites v the rest because it wouldn’t work and Rehoboam would understand that.

However the regret of agreeing the Faustian Bargain is an interesting question for our story. We have given up our souls (free will) for a scripted narrative and material comfort. Yet apart from discontents like Caleb, there hasn’t been established that there’s a groundswell of regret. So our protagonists and antagonists feel like they are operating against a blank canvas on which we project our own prejudices.

For me, the closest political philosopher to Rehoboam social contract is Rousseau who argued that we needed an impartial logical leadership to temper the emotional decision making of people. Rousseau’s idea reminded me of Spock from Star Trek. Rehoboam also provides pressure valves such as RICO to release those emotional responses. It’s all for the ‘greater good’.

The question I have is whether the majority are content with the narrative of their lives? Even the majority of RICO users could easily be comfortable thinking that they are sticking it to the Rehobo.

And here’s where I have gotten to wondering about the interplay of narrative with free will/sentience but that’s for another email.

I guess what I am looking for in episodes 4 and 5 is some kind of context about the world beyond the limited sketches we have had so far. I need to have some idea of what sort of agency Delores represents so that I can have more of a stake in the story. Mystery boxes and philosophical discussion can only take you so far.

I am going to end this email with a joke/story that I am reminded of while writing this. George Best was a wonderful British football player in the 60s and 70s. He played the game like he was Rudolf Nureyev dancing with a group of six year olds. But he was seduced by bright lights and partying at the height of his physical powers. The joke was that someone burst into his hotel room where George was there in bed with a Miss World contestant, champagne bottles, drugs etc and asked “George! Where did it all go wrong?”.

Take care Shat family

John Lish

p.s. this was meant to be shorter…

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