Human Rights

what does lain think about the properties of a "human right"? i was discussing with my boyfriend and thought i'd bring the question here. we said that the rights of one person must not interfere with the rights of others. we also assumed self-ownership, that you have the right to yourself and the products of your labor and whatever else is an extension of yourself (this does not include children because they are separate from you). so, everything that takes away someones self-ownership is not a right. except "human rights" are such a broad concept.... surely there's different definitions out there, with different properties assigned to them?

"Human rights" do not exist. There are only laws enforced by governments to either protect their cattle or "rights" they want to enforce on cattle of other governments to either influence other governments or get more cattle in their countries. Governments don't care about you. You have no rights just on basis of your own existance. Humanity doesn't owe you anything by virtue of your existance. The best example of this being true is that any government can and has and will easily break your "rights" if it means it will profit from that. "Do to others what you want to be done onto you" is a good virtuous guideline, but it isn't a right. And if it's ever put into a law just know that law is enforced by someone that can break their own laws. You don't have a right to anything.

>>4595 WOW THERE EDGY, i see the point you are trying to make, but you need to think about it in more concrete terms. >>4594 One of the things that needs to be considered is what you mean by the term "right". rights and laws are two different things. from a point of moral relativism, you need to consider these as opposite ends of a continuum. although in some cases they can be seen as black and white, there are many cases where it becomes as you said a human construct. society has agreed upon taboos and ethics. these are the basis for many laws concerning "freedoms" and "rights." these are the things that people cannot have taken away from them unless agreed upon by society. there are also laws to enforce these communal agreements. the case for these would be punishment bases laws. those made to prevent r deter behavior. in a sense, these are the laws that get corrupted most often. because laws are made to deter behaviors that would otherwise be virtually harmless. on the one hand, you have laws that establish things like life in prison for murderers these would follow the idea of restricting the community given "rights" of one because of his infringement on another on the other hand, you have laws like restricting the freedom of someone for smoking marijuana. which follows the idea of deterring an action that while having no specific or direct effect on the community has been misrepresented because of corporate interests (i.e. the cotton industry way back when) as far as the "human rights" that OP speaks of, one could roughly consider "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to be something socially agreed upon, and generally morally acceptable by society. However, when one takes into account non-human factors, these are all irrelevant. one may have the "right" to live, but to a bear or a tornado, the concept means nothing. thus, it is only a social construct that derives meaning form being part of a community. in fact, such rights can even be irrelevant between human groups when one takes into account dehumanizing factors such as propaganda and groupthink. this would be the case where ultranationalism or xenophobia can supersede the communities views of universal "freedoms" or "rights". because as an absolute, giving everyone freedom to live as he or she wishes would be to accept that some people have views that are not in line with yours, but have no direct effect on your life. these things could typically be represented in the united states as your "first amendment rights" which guarantees the ability for people to worship, discuss, and associate with whomever they so choose this concludes my rant. I hope it will generate more words

>>4595 laws are not rights; they're just guidelines. government-enforced rights do not always make a consistent system. for example, the united states. the people have the right to self-ownership. the people also have the federal income tax, which is basically congress saying they can tax people's paychecks. of course, the congress's "right" to tax people directly interferes with the people's right to own the money they made. therefore, either the congress does not have the right to tax people, or the people do not have the right to self-ownership. the system is flawed. humans are flawed. i mean, you're not wrong. a system where nobody has rights technically remains consistent; people's rights cannot contradict other rights because there are no rights to begin with. this can exist (and probably does, who knows?).

I have the right over my own property, and that is all. I care not if that infringes on others since they are not me. "rights" are enforced over a society, but who is anyone to say what I may or may not do? What "right" gives on person permission to declare power over another? If such a right exists, then it can only be enforced through oppression and therefore I reject that concept. M'property

>>4621 >I have the right over my own property, and that is all. What is one's own property isn't simply a function of one's own subjectivity, however, but what is recognized by others as both "property" ("air," for example, isn't typically) and being "your property."

>>4625 And, just to add, some idea of what "property" even means, and that isn't only my own idea but one that is constantly in dialogue with others' ideas and remains close to that definition for the sake of communication. If a word were to become entirely separate, it would be absolutely meaningless to others by itself. The word would bear no relation to its typical meaning and function as only a collection of sounds signifying this new, invented meaning. As for the OP, I wouldn't really agree. A right does delimit another individual's right to commit some action. A right guaranteeing absolute freedom of speech limits my ability in turn to respond with violence to that speech. The idea of "interference" with that right only comes into being with the idea of the right itself; one can't possibly interfere with a nonexistent right. Like property, self-ownership can also be problematic: what do we mean by "me," "myself," and "products of labor." The labor theory of value would, for example, say that I'm being alienated of true self-ownership through the taking of the surplus value of my labor by capitalists. This is at odds with the idea of "self-ownership" people commonly accept in neoclassical economics, but it isn't at odds with the meaning of self-ownership per se. Also, why wouldn't my children be an extension of myself? They were long imagined to be something like this (which is why you find in Plato's Laws, for example, such severe punishment of violence and malfeasance generally toward parents, as well as in the Old Testament). We might say that this involves the recognition of the child as an independent self-consciousness with desires of his or her own and no necessary filial duty (overriding independence and separate desires), but that's my point: what is a "product" and what we regard as proceeding from our labor or ourselves and what is this "myself" have all been agreed upon prior to "self-ownership" being the basis for any right. No right can by itself be established based on either standard without words whose current meanings allow for the existence of those same standards within their semantic range.

"Human Rights" are in short, a spook. The premise of "Rights" in general, as a concept, is flawed. There can be no right without might. Fundamentally, one's rights extend as far as one is able to enforce their will onto things and people. That is the one and only right, to enact your will on the world, or not, to whatever extent is within your power. Really, "right" is a misnomer, as your ability to enforce your will on the world, internal and external, is a function primarily of your desire, thirst, hunger, will, whatever. None of the above necessarily qualify as "right" but the concepts of "right" and "wrong" are merely repackaging of the more traditional "good" and "evil" binary system. One need not be restricted by such trivialities. Will is non binary, the self is continuous, and while we certainly are not anything close to true "gods" (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent) the bounds of our power extend far beyond what all existing binary moral systems would prescribe. Much less the prescriptions of legal, social or political forces. States, religions, governments, societies, nations, ect. ave existed for a long time. But the individual has existed before, and will exist far after the day all the above collections fail to function, or otherwise are annihilated by whatever eventual demise awaits them.

(((human rights)))