Subject:
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Re: Is space property?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 1 Jan 2001 02:28:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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309 times
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Christopher Weeks wrote in message ...
>
> I've been thinking about this. I have at various times thought that rights
> are: A) immutable truths based on the nature of our humanity, B) make • believe,
> C) legal constructs saying what we can do, and D) fuzzy terms that we all • seem
> to use differently. But through all of those modes of thought, I still
> continued to use the word the way we all do in day to day conversation.
As an atheist, here is my take on human rights:
Rights are, as far as I can tell, a human social construct, a "base-level"
set of behavioural rules that originate from particular human mental traits
such as empathy, conscience and "sense of fairness". Other social animals
have similar sets of rules that I would consider "rights" (of and only
within that species) in everything but name.
A human right is, at the personal level, completely subjective. What you and
I feel is "appropriate/correct/" human behaviour can (and does!) differ, and
differences will occur for each specific human being. However, humans share
particular common mental traits, and thus come to agreement on particular
rights, some rights are agreed on more widely than others. A human right is
nothing more than a rule, and it doesn't apply where it isn't accepted.
After all, why would it?
>
> We have the right to own stuff. We have a right to life. We have the • right to
> defend our life. We have the right to be happy.
The "right to own stuff" is by no means universal - it's more a hallmark of
modern Western culture, if anything. This touches on the discussion we were
having about taxation, and essentially the reason I declined to continue. I
feel differently about ownership than you apparently do; I feel that a human
being has the right to gain access to (but not necessarily "own") whatever
they need to live in normal health and minimal comfort, and NO MORE. You
(apparently) feel that a human has a right to "mark as theirs" whatever they
have "earned".
I find this latter concept particularly unsatisying because "earning"
involves a wildly variable amount of effort for an even more wildly variable
amount of reward. When is something _fairly_ earned? Is a welfare cheque
fairly earned by walking to the welfare office? How "fair" earnings are is
crucial, but can really only be judged relatively. But what do we compare
them to?
Should I compare the paunchy, corn-fed Middle American with a nuclear
family, two cars, a big house in the 'burbs and enough disposable income to
amass a considerable Lego collection, complaining about the government
talking from him what is effectively luxury wealth, when there are two
billion other human beings in the world who work four times harder than him,
for a bowl of rice a day? That troubles my sense of fairness a great deal -
and it would explain why, when I heard people protesting/whinging about
paying tax, I felt tempted to tell them to "get stuffed".
Do we need to "own" things (such as the land we live on) to lead happy,
healthy lives? The short answer is no. So why would we have a human right to
something that we technically don't need?
"you'll work harder with a gun in your back, for a bowl of rice a day..." -
Jello Biafra, 'Holiday In Cambodia'
Cheers,
Paul
LUGNET member 164
http://www.geocities.com/doctorshnub/
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Is space property?
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| (...) I do find it unsettling that the majority of humanity doesn't live under the same conditions I do, but I don't see a clean way to get from where we are now, to a utopia where everyone has a "fair" allotment of "stuff" (life necessities, goods, (...) (24 years ago, 2-Jan-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Is space property?
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| (...) and (...) will (...) I've been thinking about this. I have at various times thought that rights are: A) immutable truths based on the nature of our humanity, B) make believe, C) legal constructs saying what we can do, and D) fuzzy terms that (...) (24 years ago, 1-Jan-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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