A Social Contract with Humans and Nature Center Stage

A small number of the world population, 1 %, is getting richer while an increasing number, the 99 %, are getting poorer. This is by now an undisputed fact. Behind this scenario, we have major societal trends since the 1970s; globalisation, flexibilisation of working life standards, the introduction of neoliberal economic policies, as well as the introduction of digital technologies. These changes have, in a variety of ways, adversely affected the playing field among different sectors and groups in society. To this should be added the longstanding trend of depleting natural resources, which should urgently be reversed to secure continued existence on Mother Earth. The present neoliberal policies are destroying the conditions for democracy Arran Gare says, illustrating it with the situation in the USA. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1% of Americans increased their wealth by $21 trillion, from $8.4 trillion to $29.5 trillion, while the bottom 50% lost $900 billion, from owning $0.7 trillion to being indebted by $0.2 trillion. As to the global ecological crisis, Gare asserts that those analyzing the root causes fail to address questions of political philosophy for finding a way out, and equally so, the failure of ethical and political philosophers to effectively engage with the deep assumptions, power structures and dynamics that actually operate in the current world‐order. Gare contends that this marginalization of political philosophy, for whatever reason, has made it impossible to mobilize humanity to overcome this crisis of civilization. (Arran Gare, Rethinking Political Philosophy through Ecology and Ecopoiesis, 2023). These developments require a profound change of policies = a new social contract. With Leonidas A. Papakonstantinidis’ Political win-win-win model, we will explore pitfalls and obstacles as well as means of striving toward a consensus, which a new social contract requires. The win-win-win model offers strategic potential by combining different research fields such as game theory and behavioral science, the choice problem, the decision making problem, the ultimate game etc. It addresses the challenges of blending empathy and conflict to move the playing field toward an equilibrium. In addition, contemporary perceptions are enriched by drawing upon thinkers who in the past have addressed related problems, mainly Thomas Paine, Aristotle, and Plato.