henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:16 am
promethean75 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 12:31 amwell actually that's what I'm aksing you. where's the beef and what are these mysterious 'rights'?
Every man, no matter when or where, knows he is his own. No man, no matter when or where, believes he is meant to be property or a commodity. A man may resign himself to servitude when it appears there are no other options, but he never accepts it. With all the variety in cultures, in societies, in manners of governance, in convention, with all the insurmountable differences between men and groups of men, it's striking the one intuition all men share, no exceptions, is this deep-in-the-bones sense I am mine.
It seem to me that every creature within the natural world *believes* something similar. If a creature, let's say a prairie dog, did not have this sense of sovereignty, which is the same as self-protection, he would have no ambition, no drive, to preserve himself. But within the natural system there is no animal that has any sort of *right to himself*. Take as an example the huge prairie dog colonies that once existed on the Great Plains. Some were enormous and they supported an entire ecological system and those predators that fed off of them.
The prairie dog, naturally, *believed* in his sovereignty, his independent *right* to exist, but the real truth is that a greater power ruled over him. He had no choice in the matter. He was forced to sacrifice himself so that an entire system could exist and flourish. That prairie dog therefore was the *property* of the natural system, not of himself, and he was most certainly a *commodity*. His very flesh was needed for the others in the system to exist.
My view is that HQ realizes all of this. That is, that no living being in fact has any *right* to himself. But this knowledge, this realization, is intolerable to him. So he seems to concoct an enormous defense, which is simply a romanticized assertion that "Every man, no matter when or where, knows he is his own" which is then elaborated sentimentally. The core is that it is sentimental, not 'rational'.
And his *right* must be defended with a shotgun.
It is only and exclusively within a human community and social system where *rights* are defined. True, all human cultures define them and there are surely
similarities between different cultures (thus ethical systems can be compared). But these systems of definitions of rights are uniquely human. Though there might be evidence of proto-ethical systems among chimpanzees and apes.
That a given (high-spirited) man *never accepts* the fact that he is a servant, in one way or another, in one degree or another, to a larger community, and this larger community is subservient to laws and rules that we normally term *our human condition* or the *condition* of existence, does nothing at all to alter the facts. Other men, in other situations, certainly accept *the way things are* and in truth participate in the 'agreement' that defines types and levels of servitude. In fact our social system, our civilization(s), are just such systems.
There is simply no man that does not exist within some level of *system*. From the most crude (when man was a hunter-gatherer in a small tribe of isolated humans) to the most sophisticated. And there is no man who can genuinely say "I am my own".
So the fact remains that even in an ideal society where social systems have been devised that allow a given man a relative degree of security of his self, his family, and his belongings the
declaration of sovereignty is a comforting illusion. The social system of laws and regulations, with the real possibility of enforcement of those who violate legals rights, provides and secures those rights. But in no sense does the surrounding natural world. In fact the surrounding world not only does not care but the term *care* has no meaning: it simply does. So a tornado can wipe out the most ideal society. Or drought and famine. Or an asteroid.
Now, a comment or two about Harry's position.
First, I live in a terribly unequal and categorically unfair society. So every day I witness the terrible result when a culture has been established according to what I can call *unfair principles*. I can walk just a mile or two from where I live and step into communities of such poverty and disadvantage which Harry (and I assume most who write here) could not conceive of and possibly have no (or very little) direct experience of.
He is a member of a society grounded in civilized principles. (These originated in an imperialistic society but that, of course, is another issue altogether.) There now, men really do have *rights* and there really is an enforcement system which, when compared to the lack of one here, makes it seem astonishing and ideal. But those rights are defined by those who comprise that society. They are granted by the social system and defended by the same system. But they in no sense (that I can see) can be thought of as 'naturally given'. They only exist within that community of persons, within a governed system, and by the general consent of those who comprise and *believe in* the system.
One could say, but it would be a romantic declaration, that "God has granted rights". Or, as I have often tried to assert, that the notion of rights exists 'metaphysically' and has to be first understood, then captured and defined, and then enforced within human culture. The first picture is 'crude' and immature in my view. There is no 'god' who ever intervenes at any moment to protect the *rights* of any human creature. Only a human creature could conceive of such rights and defend them (or not, as the case may be). The second picture, though it will be dismissed by people like Dubious (who represents a particular stance which is anti-metaphysical), seems to me more mature. And I equate Harry's idealistic position with that of a realization of and an insistence on obeisance and conformity to 'higher principles' that are conceived of by human beings.
There is
one core thing that Immanuel Can wants to assert when he speak of god and what god will do to those who do not, or will not, obey. He wishes to assert that there is no other place or process where our values originated
except in the Hebrew context. He asserts that *god along gave them* and, ultimately, that god will enforce his laws. Not here of course, but there in a terrible after-world. (Though there is of course the eschatological view that the Earth, now imperfect and 'ruined', will at a future point be restored when the Prince of Peace has returned).
He will not give up the notion of ultimate and eternal punishment for those who disobey, or who do not profess a request for forgiveness for all they have ever done and who then are absolved completely for their *evil* actions, because he feels that to do so would weaken one of the main pillars on which the system is built.
But the fact genuinely seems to be that, even when a given religious system (Christianity for example) does collapse that what does remain is what
can be conceived of and believed in as 'metaphysical' to this cruel natural world in which we live.
