Quote:
Originally Posted by scrapper
This is a most interesting comment, the answer of course is quite simple, my interpretation is that your rights are a direct result and a product of the society in which you chose to live.
If of course you do not have a choice of the society in which you live you are being denied a human right as defined by the United nations.
Maybe you can enlighten us with an answer to your own question where do you think human rights originate, I would be interested in your answer, fact is you ask this question to 100 people you may get 100 answers....and guess what...... none of them will be wrong it's simply the individals interpretation. A person that lives in Iran will have a different response than one who lives in North Korea and the person who lives in Brazil will have a diferent INTERPRETATION than the other two. You have to determine on what standard you are measuring the responses.
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Interesting indeed. I suspected that you felt that humans rights originated and were granted by "others" aka government. Of course you are wrong.
A humans right to life for example is self evident. That you would suggest that my right to protect my own life is dependent on permission from the government and exists at their whim is non-sensical. It goes completely against nature.
Certain unalienable rights are inherent and are given. Read the declaration of independence for example. or many other discussions on the topic.
http://www.unalienable.com/
Using your argument, a population could decide for example that if 5 people needed the organs of one healthy person to live, that it would be acceptable to use the organs of the healthy person to make the other 5 healthy. The rights of that person are superceded by the maximum benefit of society as a whole.
There are those of course that share your argument...Karl Marx for example:
"Of recent origin is the Economic Theory of Rights and it finds its inspiration in the teaching of Karl Marx. It rejects the concept of natural and inalienable rights as also various other theories enunciated from time to time as an explanation of the nature of rights.
Marx’s thesis is simple and to a certain extent convincing too. He regards the State as a coercive agency to uphold the particular type of social organisation and law is a tool of the State that perpetuates and safeguards the interests of the dominant group in the society." fr
http://www.shareyouressays.com/89061...f-rights-essay
Soviet concept of human rights was different from conceptions prevalent in the West. According to Western legal theory, "it is the individual who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be asserted against the government", whereas Soviet law declared that state is the source of human rights. Therefore, Soviet legal system regarded law as an arm of politics and courts as agencies of the government. Extensive extra-judiciary powers were given to the Soviet secret police agencies. The regime abolished Western rule of law, civil liberties, protection of law and guarantees of property. According to Vladimir Lenin, the purpose of socialist courts was "not to eliminate terror ... but to substantiate it and legitimize in principle".[ fr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights
Human rights, (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness) are rights every human is born with. They are unalienable in that they cannot be bartered away, or traded. Men form governments for the purpose of protecting these rights, not for the purpose of deriving them.
"Genuine politics cannot risk a step without first having demonstrated its fidelity to morality, and even though politics may justly be called a difficult art, its combination with morality is no art at all; for morality slices in two the knot which others flounder in the face of once they fall into squabbling. Human rights must be kept whole, no matter what that may cost the powers that be. In this case there must be no compromise, no median worked out between pragmatically oriented rights (between rights and utilitarianism)–all politics must bend its knee before human rights, and only in this fashion may politics ever aspire to reach the stage where it will illuminate humanity." Immanuel Kant
If you cannot now see where your line of thinking would take society, I would suggest further study on the matter.