Premodern Moral Order vs. Modern Moral Order

Taylor's assertion of premodern moral order as having a "Law of the people" questions the meaning of the word "people." Does this entail the common man and the "elite" and if so, is this definition all in the eye of the beholder? Human beings have rarely, if ever, lived in harmony with or treated each other as true as equals. Even within close-knit groups, there is "organized hierarchy" as Taylor put it that changes the social order and importance of its "people." The moral order comes next and soon societies form external institutions to enforce the law of the land. This occurs in exponential ways in a dystopic setting, where government is allowed to run amuck and take a fine toothcomb to individual privacy. The surveillance aspect of many dystopia novels insists that control over a population can be obtained through law, order and discipline. This notion is often a catalyst of religious fervor, whether the piety is based in God or government or often both. This desperate rationalization is all too common in the "public sphere," and "private spheres" that Taylor describes. The question remains of what is good for individual versus what is good for the whole. "Personal independence was not just a moral ideal for individual lives; it also related to the agent of society (150)." This persists in pre-modern and post-modern civilizations and seems to reveal a primal struggle within mankind.