BALANCING HUMAN RIGHTS WITH HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY.

 

Who is responsible for honoring the right to be human? And what exactly does being human entail? 

These big questions are avoided by most human beings whenever possible. Human beings in positions of power dislike examining these ideas the most. They prefer sweeping generalizations to garner votes. 

Does being truly human require a certain amount of socialization into humankind? Does being human refer to a biological group with defining DNA? Or does being human refer to a behavioral measure? 

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Philosophers live in these intellectual rabbit holes. We all know that most professional philosophers come from a social or economic class of people who have the means to pursue a relatively useless education. Lucky them. To be able to spend a life torturing oneself in pursuit of a definition of humanness must be a luxury, but I am glad it is not my fate. 

Most of us have had to work to live what we consider a human life with human responsibilities. Our understanding of being human is fairly concrete. We focus on healthy activities of daily living with our nutrition, hygiene and exercise. We live openly in our social environment by interacting with others cooperatively whenever possible. We maintain the cleanliness and orderliness of our homes, whether owned or leased. Those of us with children teach them to imitate these behaviors as best we can.

I suppose I am saying that being human from my worker's perspective entails being conscious and deliberate in my behaviors toward myself and others. In other words, my humanness is not simply comprised of a biological accident. My humanness is measurable by the extent to which I act responsibly toward myself and others. 

My mind has always weighed my rights against my own responsible actions toward myself and society. I have my parents and extended family to thank for that conditioning. 

These times are quite puzzling. The most outlandish and ill-behaved people in media and on the streets seem to be the most demanding of their human right to be intrusive and obnoxious. They lay out their own psychological malfunctioning at the feet of society to be honored, feared or respected. They demand. They cry "foul" when they are appropriately denied worship. 

Their behavior is not appropriately human, as I understand the concept of humanness. And, frankly, I believe the current trend of lowering the bar of what constitutes appropriate, or functional, human social behavior to accommodate the dysfunctional is a mistake. 

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Here's my take on examples of how human rights are currently conceptualized. 

Gay marriage has been described by many in Western societies as a human right. At the same time, it has been bound to the concepts of long term human emotional commitment, human reproduction and human maturity. The fact is that none of these has anything to do with marriage as a social institution today. They have been part of the homosexual experience throughout time without gay marriage being codified. 

I would argue that codifying homosexual relationships with the tag of "marriage", an economic, political and social tool for heterosexuals, diminishes the amazingly human accomplishments of homosexuals throughout human history. Homosexuals found and maintained love and commitment, despite relentless persecution. They also contributed to human civilization. 

Homosexuals who survived and functioned in human society earned the right to be considered human by behaving responsibly within their social context. Heterosexual standards of marriage and reproduction had nothing to do with it. At best, heterosexual marriage was a useful disguise for homosexuals to avoid torture or death. At its worst, it entailed a loveless union between two unsuited sexual partners. 

Living openly as homosexuals without these heterosexual models to survive and prosper was a key element of Gay Liberation in The West of the 1970's. Gay Liberation is a process of owning and defending our human right to be ourselves without heterosexual approval. The HIV pandemic was perhaps a government-backed response to that assertion of our freedom to be human and homosexual. Gay marriage has not restored a decimated homosexual subculture in Western Civilization. It has simply encouraged the isolation of homosexual couples into a heterosexual-style life without that gay subculture.

Transgenderism has recently been deemed a human right in some societies. Once again, coping with an individual psychological dissonance within a binary social context is not new. It is as ancient as humanity itself. However, today's codifying the human right of being transgender while implying a treatment of chemical and surgical castration is acceptable adjustment is at odds with what I see as human. Those who would castrate unformed children chemically or surgically are monsters, not humans. 

Antifa followers, some associated Black-Lives-Matter activists and some Trump supporters have been asserting their human right to violently express their emotional and psychological distress over what they perceive as social, economic and political injustice. Violently expressing emotional and psychological distress in mobs does not define oneself as human. Feral dogs pack together when they are psychologically and physiologically distressed and revert to their wolf nature to get what they need to survive. They are not human. They are mindless predators.

This is federal and state tax time in the U.S.. Taxes in a civilized society pay for just about everything that keeps us humans evolving ... from clean water to passable roads to flush toilets. Taxes should pay for a  basic humanizing education for all children in a civilized society. Our media are flooded by commercials for companies that enable tax cheats. Our education systems and infrastructure systems are below standard. Cause and effect. Should humanness be defined by selfishly withholding economic support from human society? 

This last example is a clear illustration of the failure of human systems to provide human rights without the humans in that system taking up human responsibility to ensure those rights. 

As a species we have allowed those in power to force us to surrender basic freedoms under the threat of infection by an apparently weaponized virus. We have conformed to the extent of wearing things over our faces and masking our identities in public. We have conformed by staying far apart from fellow humans. We have allowed children to go without civilizing social education. We have chosen to believe a false narrative that our survival as a species was threatened by a virus, not very unlike all viruses before it. 

Has our denial of responsibility to take a normal social risk of remaining human at the highest standard of independence and freedom within a functioning society made us less human? I fear it may well have done just that. I live in the hope that the balance between human rights and human responsibility will be restored in all areas of society. The power to restore that balance rests in the hearts and minds of human beings who have not forgotten, and will not abandon, the higher ideals our societies once chose  over money, fear and conformity.