I love what your wrote here. It seems that through the social contract, we came to the understanding that we can't live in isolation, we need and depend on one another, and when we do this well, we can not only benefit, we can thrive. It seems like, our culture, as you mentioned, had struggled for much of its existence in living in this way. It was broadly speaking very hierarchal and truly benefited the few to the detriment of many. As you mentioned diseases where normal, as people lived in dirty unhealthy conditions living close together with little care for their welfare. When things significantly changed with the Social Contract, we began to see the potential of living as community. I would also say that indigenous communities, that were small in scale, lived generally speaking, in community based systems that were egalitarian in nature, with no concepts of ownership. They also were able to live with nature as they had a deep connection and reverence to the ecological system in which they lived. It gives me hope that maybe it is not the human being that is flawed, but maybe it is our cultural mythos that is dysfunctional.