The ∇ social contract

In the ***∇ social contract** on voluntary isolation*, each individual undertakes to break off all physical social contacts. It serves as the basis for all forms of government that emerged from the Operation ∇. The aim is to set the human reproductive factor to zero. According to scientific forecasts, around 2100 the earth will be free of people. Even if the reproduction rate is not completely controllable, the no longer practicing all medical professions will radically reduce the recently huge increase in life expectancy of people, which means that it can be assumed that those born around 2023 will have an average life expectancy from the end of the 19th century. Compared to the previous forms of society and government in western civilizations around 2020, the following three basic rules apply:

1. Everyone renounces all rights that he / she has
2. Nobody can ask for anything anymore
3. The common will becomes the norm of all action

### Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a source of inspiration

The contract is based on the main work of the Geneva philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau *"On the social contract or principles of constitutional law"* (1762). A large part of the observations are taken from the main work of the same name and adopted in the social contract of 2025, although there are also decisive differences.

#### Similarities

The social contract is characterized above all by the fact that the people who conclude it voluntarily renounce certain rights in order to win over others.

Instead of instinct, the individual lets justice rule his actions and thus lends himself a morality that he was previously lacking.

This act of association contains an obligation both of the individual to the community and of the community to the individual. This type of community, this public figure, which arises through the union of all, was called "polis" in Greek antiquity; we call it "republic".

“Nature” is enthroned above all of them as an authority that pronounces its punishment through natural disasters and diseases over people.

The citizen of such a state is at the same time subject to the state as well as - in his capacity as sovereign - the state itself. He is thus a contractual partner to himself can work with others without working for oneself at the same time. Here this construction meets the natural nature of the human being, because it is only natural that everyone wants to agree to a state that is just as useful to himself as to others.

#### Differences

∇ contradicts Rousseau's thesis that there is no state of war between humans and nature. Thus the purity of the child proclaimed by Rousseau is questioned. Although it is still society that restricts the child's urge for freedom through barriers and prohibitions and thus spoils them, ∇ assumes that people are unable to return to a peaceful natural state as long as they are with others People is connected, which takes the thesis of the human being as a social being to absurdity.

As with Rousseau, ∇ sees the family as a natural society, but at the same time as a prototype of a sick society in which the human difference emerges as if under a magnifying glass to implement the common will.

The biosphere appears above the sovereign as the sole authority to be preserved, with which man, however, from the beginning of his existence is in a permanent state of war and tries to establish a state of rulers and rulers. This disturbs the balance of the biosphere, which must be preserved. In the end, man as a citizen can only bow to the sovereign by abolishing himself.

#### Man as an isolated individual

The human being as a modern subject is constituted by an absolute claim to individuality, which automatically turns out to be hostile to other subjects, above all to the closest relatives. A peaceful coexistence of more than one person is therefore not possible, which explains the concept of domestic isolation within so-called living cells (apartments and rooms that the respective citizen has already lived in). Although the people still form a community within their neighborhood, they occur except at festive events or in exceptional cases such as caring for a person in need of care or the funeral of deceased people.

Instead, every citizen pledges themselves to spend the rest of their life alone and to deal only with themself and the history of their living space.

#### Antinatalism

Emerging from the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, ∇ advocates the extinction of humanity through childlessness. Arthur Schopenhauer and the writers Philip Larkin and Philippe Annaba found influences in the ∇ Manifesto. The writer and ∇ co-founder Verena Brunschweiger is one of the most widely read authors in the ∇ republics with Rousseau, her novel *Feuerherz*, written in 2023, soon became part of the canon in self-study for ∇ citizens.