Society

The relationship between people and society is symbiotic; each party depends on the other to properly function. The people need society for the sole purpose of organization; they need a system which creates order from the chaos that is a human life. Society provides a structure upon which people can rely with great certainty. Society was there yesterday, it is there today, and it will be there tomorrow. It is also necessary for humans to interact with each other, and these interactions are regulated and stimulated by society. We obviously need to get most, if not all, of our food from others. We usually buy the food using a currency created by society from stores, a societal establishment. Our dependence on order, structure, and permanence explain our strong reliance on society.

On the other hand, society relies on people for a very simple reason: it consists of people. Something cannot exist without the major component of which it consists. For example, water cannot exist without hydrogen molecules since water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. The structure, society, depends on the building blocks, people, to exist.

This symbiotic relationship results in a give and take relationship known as the social contract. The people adhere to society’s rules as long as these rules are reasonable, but the social contract fails when the rules become unreasonable and unpleasant. However, the laws must be unjust to a point at which most of the people agree that they are not fair. It must require a large majority to overturn this social contract. For instance, during the reign of Louis XVI in France, the peasants, approximately 97% of the population, overthrew the monarchy and replaced it with their own form of government. In this case, the people decided that the law created by their society and government and society were not sufficient, so they did not obey the rules.