Synthetic Rights
In Shakespeare’s time, the opposite of natural was super-natural. It was a distinction between the mortal realm and the spiritual, and humans and everything made by humans fell, therefore, with the natural. Today we are more secular and less superstitious. We also surround ourselves with material things, man-made things, so that things that come from nature outside of man are actually rather rare, at least in much of the West. And so the use of the word changed: now the opposite of natural is man-made, or artificial. Previously, if you actually wanted to find something not natural, you had to go to a witch. Today, if you want to find something that is natural, you probably have to go to a special store.
Around the same time as the semantic shift in the meaning of natural, the rhetoric of humanism also changed. Human rights were previously referred to by philosophers (for human rights were at that time, and perhaps still are, primarily in the domain of philosophers) as natural rights. The name was changed, rightly, because the idea of natural rights (as the word is now understood) is somewhat limiting. It is pretty clear that nature does not consider anything to have the right to live out the day, much less to do so with dignity. Our natural rights would be exhausted by a short list: you have the right to struggle, to feel pain, and to die. Everything else you have to earn, or be lucky.
In this light, you can see that the semantic shift from natural rights to human rights is important: it recognizes that the notion of rights is entirely artificial, foreign to the natural realm. Maybe we should go further, and call them synthetic rights.
Of course, that is not really how the word human is being used in human rights. The word does not denote their source, as the term natural rights attempted to, but denotes the target of the rights. Rightly, it stresses their universality among homo sapiens sapiens. The notion is that all humans should enjoy them.
But not all humans in practice enjoy them. Hardly any humans enjoy them all, in fact. Well, that’s a ludicrous complaint anyway, since it’s not clear what “them all” would be. The most frequently sited enumeration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a political document that merely included everything Eleanor Roosevelt could shame leaders of the capitalist West, the communist East, and the impoverished and generally totalitarian Rest to grudgingly agree to. That’s not exactly a comprehensive or necessarily accurate methodology for establishing the basic principles of human dignity.
So we struggle on for human rights, waiving an ad hoc manifesto from another era to rally the masses and shame our leaders. Amazingly, this is the most effective means of promoting human dignity that we have ever found.
But, of course, it is an artificial process. And it can only make limited progress until we have fully conquered nature. That is, after all, what escaping hunger, disease, and violence is: escaping the less appealing aspects of the natural world. Even as environmentalists, with good reason, work to alert us that our current artificial way of life is unsustainable, it is clear that we must build up more artifice if we are going to see everyone’s human rights fulfilled. This doesn’t necessarily require more pollution and degradation, and I believe we can find a better way. But until we have more infrastructure, the human rights to potable water and a basic education will never be fulfilled. Moreover, as long as people are too poor to take care of themselves, their rights will be infringed upon. And making people less poor means getting them decent-paying jobs, and that means creating more jobs, and that requires more enterprises.
The concept of human rights is one of the most beautiful ideas we as a species have ever had. It is a great ideal to work towards. But they aren’t natural, and therefore can not be taken for granted. They will not be guaranteed by some higher force. In fact, we shouldn’t speak of human rights as if they already exist. They won’t exist until we bring them about, through further economic development worldwide. Human rights are a human invention, a modern invention as well, and we have a lot of work to do to secure them for everyone.
Around the same time as the semantic shift in the meaning of natural, the rhetoric of humanism also changed. Human rights were previously referred to by philosophers (for human rights were at that time, and perhaps still are, primarily in the domain of philosophers) as natural rights. The name was changed, rightly, because the idea of natural rights (as the word is now understood) is somewhat limiting. It is pretty clear that nature does not consider anything to have the right to live out the day, much less to do so with dignity. Our natural rights would be exhausted by a short list: you have the right to struggle, to feel pain, and to die. Everything else you have to earn, or be lucky.
In this light, you can see that the semantic shift from natural rights to human rights is important: it recognizes that the notion of rights is entirely artificial, foreign to the natural realm. Maybe we should go further, and call them synthetic rights.
Of course, that is not really how the word human is being used in human rights. The word does not denote their source, as the term natural rights attempted to, but denotes the target of the rights. Rightly, it stresses their universality among homo sapiens sapiens. The notion is that all humans should enjoy them.
But not all humans in practice enjoy them. Hardly any humans enjoy them all, in fact. Well, that’s a ludicrous complaint anyway, since it’s not clear what “them all” would be. The most frequently sited enumeration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a political document that merely included everything Eleanor Roosevelt could shame leaders of the capitalist West, the communist East, and the impoverished and generally totalitarian Rest to grudgingly agree to. That’s not exactly a comprehensive or necessarily accurate methodology for establishing the basic principles of human dignity.
So we struggle on for human rights, waiving an ad hoc manifesto from another era to rally the masses and shame our leaders. Amazingly, this is the most effective means of promoting human dignity that we have ever found.
But, of course, it is an artificial process. And it can only make limited progress until we have fully conquered nature. That is, after all, what escaping hunger, disease, and violence is: escaping the less appealing aspects of the natural world. Even as environmentalists, with good reason, work to alert us that our current artificial way of life is unsustainable, it is clear that we must build up more artifice if we are going to see everyone’s human rights fulfilled. This doesn’t necessarily require more pollution and degradation, and I believe we can find a better way. But until we have more infrastructure, the human rights to potable water and a basic education will never be fulfilled. Moreover, as long as people are too poor to take care of themselves, their rights will be infringed upon. And making people less poor means getting them decent-paying jobs, and that means creating more jobs, and that requires more enterprises.
The concept of human rights is one of the most beautiful ideas we as a species have ever had. It is a great ideal to work towards. But they aren’t natural, and therefore can not be taken for granted. They will not be guaranteed by some higher force. In fact, we shouldn’t speak of human rights as if they already exist. They won’t exist until we bring them about, through further economic development worldwide. Human rights are a human invention, a modern invention as well, and we have a lot of work to do to secure them for everyone.
2 Comments:
I have to disagree with you a little on this one, though it's all beautifully expressed. Human rights and natural rights could be the same thing -- the right to love, to create, to express our spiritual nature. You're right about the suffering of those who have not enough resources, but the nature we need to overcome to insure human rights is human nature. Our own unawareness as a species that what we think and what we believe in, what we give our emotional and mental energy to, manifests in physical form in our lives. And in the lives of others. If we want to create a world where the physical and emotional needs of everyone is met, we need to start with our very own thoughts and feelings and ability to imagine such a world. Because what you can imagine can come into being, and nothing that can't be imagined by someone will ever exist in physical form. We need agreement on this as a species, that the Universe is made of energy, is abundant by its nature, and that human beings don't have to suffer just because they take on physical form. This fundamental shift in our human nature from negative to positive will enable us to make all the outer changes necessary. Our habits of thought and belief and feeling have created the world as it is, and only we can change it -- starting from the inside, because that's how things manifest.
I have to disagree with you a little on this one, though it's all beautifully expressed. Human rights and natural rights could be the same thing -- the right to love, to create, to express our spiritual nature. You're right about the suffering of those who have not enough resources, but the nature we need to overcome to insure human rights is human nature. Our own unawareness as a species that what we think and what we believe in, what we give our emotional and mental energy to, manifests in physical form in our lives. And in the lives of others. If we want to create a world where the physical and emotional needs of everyone is met, we need to start with our very own thoughts and feelings and ability to imagine such a world. Because what you can imagine can come into being, and nothing that can't be imagined by someone will ever exist in physical form. We need agreement on this as a species, that the Universe is made of energy, is abundant by its nature, and that human beings don't have to suffer just because they take on physical form. This fundamental shift in our human nature from negative to positive will enable us to make all the outer changes necessary. Our habits of thought and belief and feeling have created the world as it is, and only we can change it -- starting from the inside, because that's how things manifest.
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