Basic Questions: "Rights"

E-mail out, on something profoundly simple and simply profound:

> The comment about "well, they're not like
> internal organs that you can actually measure
> as being present" got me thinking - what
> proves the existence of such rights? I
> mean, it's obvious how a world where
> humans DO have such rights, or where we
> act as though we do, is far more civilized
> and liveable than one without. But what
> exactly requires their existence, other than
> our own desires?

Our survival among other human beings. That's what.

This turns on the fact that our minds are our unique and exclusive mode and method of our survival. Look: we don't have wings, or dominating natural weapons like claws or fangs or poisons, or enormous speed and agility. We're not like other animals, equipped in such ways for survival. Because of what we are, we have to think our way through the world. We have to identify by a process of reason the values that sustain and further our lives. There are, however, two crucial aspects of this on which are founded the entire domain of politics -- which is nothing more or less than the study of how to treat each other in social contexts:

1) Reason is not autonomic. It doesn't work except by a deliberately self-initiated process.

2) It is not infallible. It can and does fail, sometimes.

Neither of these two things relieves us of the responsibility to think at all times to the best of our ability.

Here's the thing: some people are sometimes better at it than others. However, it is precisely because the implications and consequences of success or failure are uniquely personal to each individual that each individual must be left free to make up his or her own mind about to conduct his or her own life.

That moral sanction to exercise full authority (with commensurate responsibility) over one's own life in a social context including other human beings -- that thing is what's called a "right". Nobody who is forcibly constrained by someone else's judgement can be said to be able to conduct his own life. That violates the nature of the entity that we're talking about: the one that doesn't have wings, speed, claws, etc., but only a mind.

Please keep in mind that this is a bi-lateral concept running to and from all human beings to all others: "full authority over one's own life" does not imply a moral sanction to dispose of others' lives, because -- by their nature -- they have the very same requirement for survival and flourishing.

That's why we require rights. It is because of what we are. There is nothing more or less to it.

(later, a hand up in class...)

> Clear up something for me... Are you
> arguing this proves the pre-existance
> of rights, or that someone with the
> ability to think has granted us the
> rights... or at least the conditions of
> suvival?

Neither.

It's like two plus two: nobody can "prove" that to anyone who won't integrate the concept, himself, after having had it pointed out to him. In that aspect, the "proof" only exists as the integrity of the concept. It cannot be "proved" to someone like Erb or Henke.

And: the integrity of the concept exists quite apart from anyone else's approval. Just like 2+2=4.

> I ask, because it seems to me that
> inherent in the question of whether
> not rights actually exist is the
> question of their creation, and who
> did the creating.

That's a cosmological question. Essentially, you're asking a question like, "Where did the universe come from?" The matter of rights does not require any such speculation. To a rational person, the starting point on this is: "Existence exists." Nobody seriously asks, "Well, who made it so that two plus two equals four, or that things fall down instead of up, or that birds gotta fly? Hmm?" There is a good reason why no one asks questions like that, and it's because that's just the way the universe is laid out. It's the way it is. That, right there, is The Whole Rule of The Game. "Ready, set, go!" We're talking about the nature of things, to begin with, and then because of all of the given facts of that -- whether they fell out of the sky or got burped up out of the primeval glow of whatever you wannafuck -- many of those crucial facts line up in a distinct heirarchy of fact (the way things are) and truth (the fact that we can know the way things are) to arrive at the nature of an entity -- having a nature of its own just like everything else in the universe must have a nature, an identity, of its own -- this entity being a human being, as I thumbnailed at the top of the class.

^^^ Up there. Go read it again.

The thing. This human thing. It must be individually free to apply its mode and method of existence on its own in the way, the whole way, and nothing but the way that it naturally exists in the extant order of the universe.

Is. Any. Of. This. Getting. Bloody. Through. To. You, you obstinate dimwit motherfucker?

What am I going to do with you? This is not the first time I have painted the picture for you (and innumerable others while you sat there and watched me drag 'em around by their fucking eyeballs). Now, I never liked you, but I will do this again and again for you with all the love in my stone-black evil selfish insensitive greedy hate-speeching arrogant self-centered evil egotistical (not to mention "egoist") heart. For you. All day long. If that's what it takes. If you would only even try to add two plus two just the way it is, and then get out of my sight in peace.

> ...because, as you are no doubt aware, I
> think the concept of rights to be a cultural
> one.

Please.

I'm fuckin' beggin' ya, over here.