I often find myself in the middle of debates about such topics like legalising drugs, economy, death penalty, abortion or same sex marriage and countless other heavily society connected arguments.

It is impossible to achieve an agreement in any of those discussions or any other for that matter, if the people involved in that discussion do not agree on the answer to other more basic questions. We are constantly worried about matters like abortion but this is a very developed concept. Metaphorically I would say that we insist on arguing about the materials we should use to build a roof, the colour, the when and really try to figure it out but completely ignoring the fact that there are no walls. So all these economic systems, social systems, legislations, etc fall flat on the ground because we never laid the pillars of our concepts. 

I want to put all these discussions a side and accept the fact that it won’t be us who find a solution for them. It could be us however who gave the first step. For this reason we should first ask ourselves: What does society owe to the individual and what does the individual owe to society? Where are the limits? Is an individual allowed to choose what is going to do as a job? Is an individual allowed to decide where he/she wants to live?  Does an individual own his/her life? If so to what extent? 

Society is composed of individuals, these individuals have their own feelings, experiences, thoughts and wishes, not everybody can fully comprehend for example the circumstances of a man who wants to end his life. However in this example society may argue that this decision is irrational or due to a psychological problem and not allow this man to carry on his wish. Is this acceptable? 

Individuals are born in society, they haven’t chosen to be part of it but they are brought up receiving information about the rules, what they are allowed and not allowed to do in all sort of circumstances at all sort of levels. Could we as a society accept an individual who wants to live in a city but does not want to be part of society? Why do we believe that we own the world, that a piece of land belongs to us? If no higher power has openly told us “Here, this is yours” but we have taken it instead, what gives us the right to tell anybody where can they and cannot go? So if we were to accept such individual to live amongst us, how could that work? How could an individual not be part of society? Would this individual have to recognise our set of rules? If so, all of them? Would society be expected to protect the individual? 

The Basic Debate is finding an answer to that initial premise, What does society owe to the individual and what does the individual owe to society?