On Rights

I am not a fan of collective group rights when that group is smaller than humanity. I think that demarcation of people into groups causes so many problems, so much more harm than good. A problem of self-determination arises, and my simple answer would be that all people have the right to choose their own system of governance, regardless of whether or not they belong to a group. The formation of a group based on this desire would necessarily follow, but I would not claim that I have the right to have my own club for blonde people because we are all blonde and all like Chinese food and all think Jim Carey is hilarious. If an established government were systematically oppressing people of that certain category, then I would say it is the right of every individual to be free of that oppression.

Proponents of cultural rights would say that what is a human right and what is moral would fall into a category of cultural relativism—no universal standards. I believe this is horseshit. In her book Sex and Social Justice, Martha Nussbaum makes a brilliant assessment of this problem. Paraphrasing will surely do her no justice, so I’m going to quote the whole darn thing.

"On the one hand, it seems impossible to deny that traditions perpetrate injustice against women in many fundamental ways, touching on some of the most central elements of a human being's quality of life--health, education, political liberty and participation, employment, self-respect, and life itself. On the other hand, hasty judgments that a tradition in some distant part of the world is morally retrograde are familiar legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and are correctly regarded with suspicion by sensitive thinkers in the contemporary world. To say that a practice endorsed by tradition is bad is to risk erring by imposing one's own way on others who surely have their own ideas of what is right and good. To say that a practice is all right wherever local tradition endorses it as right and good is to risk erring by withholding critical judgment where real evil and real oppression are surely present. To avoid the whole issue because the matter of proper judgment is so fiendishly difficult is tempting, but perhaps the worst option of all. It suggests all too clearly the sort of moral collapse depicted by Dante, when he describes the crowd of souls who mill around in the vestibule of hell, dragging their banner now one way now another, never willing to set it down and take a definite stand on any moral or political question. Such people, Dante implies, are the most despicable of all: they can't even get into hell because they have not been willing to stand for anything in life, one way or another. To express the spirit of this chapter very succinctly, it is better to risk being consigned by critics to the “hell” reserved for alleged Westernizers and imperialists—however unjustified such a criticism would in fact be—than to stand around in the vestibule waiting for a time when everyone will like what we are going to say. And what we are going to say is: that there are universal obligations to protect human functioning and its dignity, and that the dignity of women is equal to that of men. If this involves assault on many local traditions, both Western and non-Western, so much the better, because any tradition that denies these things is unjust."

Sweet Jesus that was amazing. I cried the first time I read that. That is how I feel. I don’t think there can be a reconciling of the two. I think that if there is a cultural tradition that violates a human right (or many human rights), it is an unjust practice and needs to be annihilated. The existence of group rights stems from the violation of individual rights. Sarah and I were talking about this today, and while a group whose rights are being systematically violated needs to call attention to its plight, I do not think that group has the right to violate individual rights because it has some sort of group right. The only real group that exists is humanity—the rest are pseudo-groups, claiming intrinsic value where none exists.

Anarchy and the true self-determination of pure socialism and communal governance: I could write a whole essay here.

Religion needs to be wiped out. There, I said it. Bertrand Russell, a brilliant man, once said: "It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age, but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door. This dragon is religion." I believe this is so very true. Religion is a debilitating disease that cripples the human mind and causes so much damage to humanity in comparison to the minor services it offers. People bank their entire existence on lies created to maintain the status quo, to keep the oppressed under the foot of the oppressor, to squelch opposition and to stifle human growth. Look at the places around the world where religion reigns supreme—more often than not they are where the most horrific human rights violations occur, and often in the very name of religion. Consider the wars waged over whose god is the right god, or whose version of the same god’s laws is the right version. It’s sickening.

Religion, like race and sexuality, is just one more way for people to delineate, to separate people into groups that are “different,” who are “unlike me” and therefore I can be emotionally numb to their suffering. I can firebomb their homes, I can rape their children, I can pump their mothers full of shrapnel, I can hack their fathers with machetes, I can piss on their bullet-riddled and blood-shod bodies, because they aren’t like me. They belong to that religion, they are non-believers, they are the anti-Christ, they are the Great Satan, they are the infidels, they are going to hell, they are a member of that sect, they don’t follow my Pope, they are a member of a different group, to which I do not belong and can rightfully combat to defend what is mine, what I believe, who I am, the group to which I belong.

However, people seem to forget that we are human first, religious second. We are human first, ethnic second. We are human first, nationals second. We are human first, women second. People forget. They don’t see that overlying tie that binds us all together, and lose sight of the forest for the trees. It is this group-concept that causes so much destruction in our human history. Nationality, religion, race, ethnicity, all are group-concepts that cause so much suffering and strife. Whatever happened to the forest? I still see it. I just wish everyone else did, too.