I have a small problem, I read too much Mark
twain.
While I was reading the
'Universal Declaration of Human Rights', I recalled a quote from Twain's
notebook (written down below) that started off a brainstorm of questions that I
want another opinion on.
Rights are a rather
touchy subject. I personally believe that human rights should exist. There
should be a 'baseline' of good in which all peoples of all cultures, races, and
etc. should respect. Not only should they exist, but they should also be enforced,
e.g. what is the point of a law if nobody follows it? However, I also believe
that Human Rights are inherently selfish (albeit a good selfish) and stems from
a rather sanctimonious mindset.
These are the questions I
have regarding rights.
-Do rights truly exist?
-What do rights stem from
and why are they 'inalienable'?
- If rights do exist,
then why should we stop at defining 'rights' at humanity? Why not extend these
rights or an equivalent set of rights to animals or other life in general?
Note the below quote:
"Man has not a
single right which is the product of anything but might. Not a single right is
indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses
not a single permanent right."
- Mark Twain's Notebook
- Mark Twain's Notebook
-If rights can be
abolished, then what is their use? I understand that in the short run they can
do some 'good', but if they can be abolished in the long run, then what is
their point?
My answers to the above questions:
-Rights do not truly exist as they have no foundation to rest on. Just because one is human doesn't entail them with any special qualities or rights.
Note: I am not saying that rights shouldn't exist.
-Rights are not inalienable. Any human at any time can oppress another human being, nothing will stop them short of might, force, or fear.
Note: I am not saying that rights should not be inalienable.
-If rights do not truly exist, then we shouldn't create rights for other living creatures or beings.
-The only 'point' to rights is to do some amount of 'good' in the world. I do not know their point in the long run.
Your opnions?
Edit: I have never blogged before and for some reason can't get the background of the letters to match the same color of this page. I apologize.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that there really is nothing "natural" or inalienable about rights. I think rights are a piece of the social contract that all societies and nations form explicitly or implicitly. Rights are certain freedoms members of a society choose to allow each other in the general hope of striking a balance between security and happiness. Happiness in this case being the extent to which one is able to do whatever one wants whenever one wants.
ReplyDeleteThus I believe the purpose of rights in the long run is that they assure a general level of enjoyment of life by individuals in that society. Any state or society whose members never experience happiness will not last long. Thus by ensuring individual enjoyment of life rights increase the longevity of a society.
However, we as humans tend toward wishing to acquire complete individual liberty for ourselves while wishing others behave completely predictably. So I disagree that rights are selfish, by accepting that other people have the freedom to do things we may not want them to do we are giving something up in return for the fact that we can do things that might upset other people. Our expectation of having certain rights guaranteed to us at birth is less a product of sanctimonious mindset and more a product of culture. Any culture we are born into affords us some rights (again explicitly or implicitly), and our tendency to assume our position is "normal" means growing up we assume that the rights we have are the rights that should naturally be present.
When we see other cultures operating successfully with greater rights is when we tend to demand more for ourselves. Without multicultural exposure we are unlikely to think things should be better than how they how. Arendt describes this with her example of the colonization of America showing to Europe that mass poverty was not an inevitable part of modern society.
The interconnectedness of cultures by the middle of the 20th century, through writing, technology, and war (specifically the 2nd World War) was the impetus to declare that
there were certain rights that should be guaranteed by all societies and respected from one society to another. While it was declared that these universal human rights should be respected because they were natural, the cultural backdrop indicates the desire to keep every society's population content enough so that no one society would become a danger to another. So, as members of individual societies granted each other rights to ensure the general health of their society and nation, so too did nations come together to afford each other, and each others members, rights to ensure the general health of the world.
Hi Matt,
ReplyDeletePre-note: I was messing around with HTML formatting and stuff earlier which was my deleted comment. Not sure how that stuff works on blogspot either.
I wanted to wait a few more days while I processed your post but it seems like we are required to contribute today (syllabus said differently..?) but here goes!
You ask some interesting questions, but I believe that the repercussions of and response to your questions are more important. We can ask big questions like "Do rights truly exist?" but these sorts of questions are almost too removed from the human experience. Humans define truth by our own realities.
For example, your response to the big questions is no, but that you do not believe that rights shouldn't exist. I believe that this is possible more important to the topic at hand. Many could agree with your assertion that rights do not exist, but we make and experience them every day. In this process, we are defining our realities and integrating rights into our daily experience. As a result, many of the rights stem from a cultural influence, as Richard brought up.
I believe we should be asking the questions that stem from yours. I am probably biased because of the cultural anthropology class that I took last semester, but instead of broadening the question outside of the human realm, maybe we should focus on the more tangible aspects of your questions. For example, can rights experienced by one culture forced onto another culture?
I think that Richard brought up some great ideas in relation to this. The spread of rights may be a big cause in some of the big revolutions in the past few years. For example, the Egyptian Revolution was focused on what the Egyptians considered violations of human rights compared to other places in the world, including police brutality, a lack of free elections, and censorship of speech (noted in the preamble of the Declaration of Human Rights).
Another main question related to this branch of that is “Do fundamental freedoms/rights exist?” Do I have the right to enforce the freedom in speech in Egypt as an American?
The world has struggled and will continue to struggle with these questions sense the notion of civil rights and freedom was introduced. I am looking forward to seeing how rights and revolutions connect (if freedom, justice etc. are the goals of revolution) at a deeper level in the course of the semester.