Human Rights and Responsibilities - a 21st Century Reappraisal
This is a synopsis of my on-line birthday presentation to the Holos-Earth Project on human rights and responsibilities on 26th July. We referred to the predictions of James Lovelock, whose birthdate I share, on the future of humanity and AI. He passed away on the same day. We commemorate this author of Gaia theory.
?21st century brutality
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine I was shocked at reports of rape, torture, abductions - brutality against innocent civilians in Ukraine. See this article for reflections on the Ukraine tragedy”
How could this be happening in the heart of so-called Western civilisation. Yes, I’ve been painfully aware of human rights abuses in Syria, Myanmar, and Egypt, but what did it say about so-called western civilised standards and the sacredness of human rights?
So I read up on the matter, sensing at this time a need to redefine human?rights and responsibilities. What I offer comes with no claims to any expertise or specialised knowledge on my part. All I claim is the awareness of a concerned global citizen.
5 conceptual frames
I saw that this issue could be inquired into through five contextual frames;
(i) The historical background, (ii) the economic order, (iii) the political order, (iv) the?technological context, and (v) the ecological context.
But on reflection I became convinced that the missing element is the philosophical /spiritual context.
I conclude that ultimately, unless we redefine human rights and responsibilities from a fundamentally transformed paradigm, in terms of humanity’s future, we are re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Humanity's test
The late Lawrence Bloom said:
“We are in the middle of an intelligence test for humanity. This prize for success is beyond our wildest dreams. But the penalty for failure is beyond our worst nightmares.”
Historic context:
Jan Christian Smuts drafted the Preamble to the UN Declaration of Human rights. He had seen and experienced more than his share of human suffering. Having fought the British in the Anglo Boer War he was aware of the suffering and death of thousands of women and children in the concentration camps as a consequence of the scorched earth policy. In the 1st and 2nd World Wars he was again shocked at the suffering of millions innocents. ?
So at the San Francisco conference 1944, convened to establish the United Nations Organisation he was a key participant in the Declaration of Human Rights.
But what was emerging was, for Smuts, too much of a legal document - what was needed was a document able to inspire the soul of humanity. Already back in 1899 he had written:
“...No law is thinkable without Personality, law being but the very faintest recognition of the harmonious form in?which Personality reveals it essence.”
Jan Christian Smuts - ‘Homo Suum’ (1899).
His concern with the Preamble was the rejection of his proposed notion of the ‘value of Personality’ (with a capital P). What was substituted was the ‘worth of the person’.?I’ll be addressing the significance of the difference.
Economic context:
There is so much we can say about human rights and economics - it is potentially a hugely challenging topic. One problem is that people are trapped in the very economic order that brought us to the current human challenges for their livelihoods. Exploitation of human resources with the intention of generation profits to shareholders has caused an enormous economic divide, and exploitation and misapplication of natural resources has come at enormous ecological cost.
See this article for reflection on the economic order and lessons from the Russian revolution: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/lessons-from-russian-revolution-claudius-van-wyk/
The prevailing economic order is perpetuated by an extractive materialistic paradigm. This measures success, not on the value of goods and services delivered to the market place, but by how much capital is being generated that can be accessed and accumulated by the few.?
Our challenge is how to envisage human rights and responsibilities that won’t be dependent on the perpetuation of the current paradigm. It's about envisaging livelihoods in an economic order that enriches human experience in a real creative exchange of value, and does not deplete or pollute that natural world. Rather is wants to emulate nature's abundant regenerative capacities.
It seems that the taken-for-granted violation the rights of others to a fair share of opportunity is a tragic expression of the need for power and control of human and natural resources. And that is a consequence of being trapped in a mechanistic and materialistic paradigm.
Rights
How then can we envisage economic rights? How can we fiercely protect the individual’s, and community’s freedom to exercise creativity. How do we ensure fair access to nature’s freely given bounties for all in a way that does not disrupt nature’s regenerative capacity?
Responsibilities
And what then are our individual and shared economic responsibilities? It surely asks that we seriously re-evaluate and change our participation in senseless and nature-destructive consumerism. And that must include a recommitment to fair trade. But then too it seems to ask for a commitment to localism - enabled by community and neighbourhood collaboration.
The political context?
What then of political human rights? The ideological divide around the issue of human rights seems to be characterised by an ideological divide. There are those nations who focus on what they claim is the need for state to control the population in order to preserve order. On the one hand there are those purporting to support liberal democracy and human freedoms. Autocratic nations like China and Russia stigmatise the West as being decadent. Meanwhile in the West human rights has now taken a sharper focus on the restitution of historic colonial wrongs, throwing neoliberalism, capitalism and racism into a common basket with imperialism. Included in the basket provocative gender-issue freedoms. These movements include critical race theory and the WOKE initiative. As a consequence of their claims some in West see WOKE and critical race theory as being politically?‘weaponised’.
Whose responsibility?
In the universally acknowledged enlightened and humanistic South African constitution the protection and implementation of human rights is a constitutional a state responsibility. Yet, whilst the population of South Africa experiences xenophobia, nepotism, and credible accusations of ‘reverse racism’, the government remains silent on human rights abuses in Russia and China.
The issue that arises then is finding the balance between the role of state in ensuring human rights, and that of society itself. What indeed are the responsibilities of individuals, families, neighbourhoods, and civil society, in ensuring respect for human rights?
See this article for reflections on the crucial role of personal responsibility: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/sovereign-individual-state-claudius-van-wyk/
And whilst there is growing awareness of human rights abuses globally, the hot abortion issue in the United States is seen as an example of the complexity of human rights issue - for example the right of the 'unborn' to life, and the right of the mother to determine her own future.?Then again right to carry firearms in the USA it yet another complex issue, contrasting the right to self-protection with the right to life of so many learners who have been gunned down in tragic school shootings.
The core issue then?is what ethos, what narrative, might be able to inform greater societal responsibility? How critical is the individual’s personal adoption and alignment with a comprehensible and actionable notion human rights framework to encourage exemplary behaviour?
Rights
How then do we re-envision human rights from a political perspective? Clearly it needs to continue to include freedom of association, freedom of expression, free access to credible information, and especially maximum freedom for the individual to exercise conscience. Against these criteria considering the deteriorating situation in Russia, South Africa' silence is deafening.
Responsibilities
Clearly conscience needs to be informed and supported by a clear sense of personal responsibilities. We must indeed become even more alert to fair play ( continued overt and covert racial and gender discrimination is indeed an issue) and we must constantly re-examine our own prejudices.
The technological context:?
We are being increasingly warned that we live in an insidiously encroaching surveillance society. even our economic development trajectory is being characterised as a surveillance economy. The question then relates to freedom of choice and conscience as the freedom to choose in own bests interests, and act according to conscience. But how does the powerful?AI enabled information managed 'echo-chamber effect' conducted by the mega-platform giants undermine that freedom?
See this article for reflections on our human future in an AI dominated world:
Then again, at a subtler level; if virtual reality is considered intrinsic to the future - a future world of remote experience through technology - how might the reduction of human physical connectedness abuse the deeper nature of being human. What happens to the right to enlivening association in togetherness - in the flesh?
In his book, ‘Novacene’ (2019) the late James Lovelock envisaged an AI driven world run by super-intelligent ‘cyborgs’ . He wrote:??
“I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life ... they will stand to us in much the same way as we ourselves, as a kingdom of animals, stand to plants.”
He continued:
“Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end ... the understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves.”
Hmmm - I wonder. Challenging me deeply is this question: 'What will become of human rights when supercomputers run our lives?' 'Will there be compassion, will there be tolerance for our learning by mistakes?'
And then again - what about the very real and pressing issues we face today that demand attention now - issues that surely cannot wait for the future cyborgs to resolve?
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Rights
Clearly when?thinking about human rights in the technological environment we must continue to focus on privacy, on the ownership of our own personal data. And we want to learn that we can access to alternative digital networks and so escape that manipulated echo chamber effect that can only undermine our capacity to make informed choices. Surely, we must have a right not to be forced into the digital world to simply continue making a living?
Responsibilities
Then too we do have responsibilities regarding technology. Such responsibilities concern our own families' engagement with technology? We have responsibilities to reach out in fellowship to ensure continued living human association and connection. And indeed responsibilities towards the education of our youth in healthier more human alternatives. ?
The ecological context:?
Of course the core issue remains that of how human rights are measured against our deep ecological and existential challenges. Our sense of human entitlement and responsibilities simply have to be informed by the ultimate ‘right’ of nature to continue to deliver her bounties for her self-perpetuation and to our real future.
Our rights have to be measured against climate change and environmental degradation. And our rights surely apply in a shared recognition of the complex eco-systemic need for vitality. So our right to share in the abundance of what nature provides has to be measured by the way that might enable or dis-enable natures regenerative capacities. And that includes our right to wholesome food not manipulated by industry.
See this article of reflections on how we think about ecological sustainability: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/confusion-sustainability-claudius-van-wyk/
I wonder if it's time that nature’s rights take precedence over our excessive focuses on so-called personal rights. For many serious thinkers these seem increasingly to be distracting of our attention from the core issues we should be addressing collectively.
Rights
So contemplating human rights in the framework of nature’s rights, surely we can contemplate a world in which all have fair access to her regenerative bounty. There is something obscene about big corporations, and the super-wealthy owning huge tracts of property and claiming ownership of all those resources - especially like underground water.
Responsibilities
Then too we surely have personal responsibilities. Managing our waste, ?reducing our contribution to wasteful and environmental degrading consumerism, avoiding the use of non-biodegradable products, participating in recycling, and encouraging localism. It's within our capacity to do something.
The philosophical context:
Ultimately it is our deep assumptions, or worldview, our beliefs and values, that will frame our attitude to human rights as they are reflected in those categories we visited. I will argue that the greatest requirement for the maintenance and respect of human rights is a shift from a worldview based in mechanistic materialism (people and the world as exploitable resource) to values-driven worldview recognising the organic interdependency of all elements of being. At the human level it's really about reapplying the notion of 'fraternite' (brotherhood) with 'liberte' (personal freedom) and 'egalite' (equality). The shift is from seeing the human being as a physical body with some conditioned behaviours, and awareness as an epiphenomenon of that, to something much deeper. We, from a creative evolutionary perspective are indeed significant in the cosmic scheme of things, we are agents of deeper unfolding cosmic potential.
See this article of reflections on where humanity finds itself today in the great creative evolution process: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/humanity-crucible-claudius-van-wyk/?trackingId=kbiXUmPE1liPUDS7a7E0ng%3D%3D
Imago Dei
The Western view of human rights was originally informed by the Christian view of ‘Imago Dei’ (in the image of god). I see that as referring to the creative evolutionary process itself. This view then can be contrasted with a rather pernicious view that humanity is not only insignificant, it is actually a parasitic pestilence on earth. Take this observation by the late Stephen Hawking:
"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.”
He uttered those disheartening words in an interview with Ken Campbell in the program ‘Reality on the Rocks’ in1995. But then again contrast that with this throwaway-line in his book, ‘A Brief history of Time’ (1988):
"If we do discover a theory of everything...it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would truly know the mind of God."?
How, I ask myself, can?this insignificant ‘chemical scum’ hold the potential for such a 'triumph of human reason' to discover that nature of the deepest dimensions of existence? There surely is a fundamental misfit in that thinking.
So for me the critical issue now is how we view humanity - what we believe about human potential - and it has fundamental implications on both human rights and human responsibilities.
Insignificant blue dot or miracle?
?Back in 2018 the satellite Voyager left our solar system. The cameras were turned back to take a final photograph of earth; a faint blue dot against the vast black sea of space. The common observation, like Hawking’s, was '...look at how small and insignificant we are.' This is simply wrong. It is surely our eyes, yes indeed augmented by technology, that is seeing the vastness of space, and it is also our eyes seeing the wonder of our living planet earth. Seeing this miracle in the cosmos that has enabled the evolutionary emergence of that that very quality of consciousness with which we saw and could contemplate the 'blue dot'. You see it is a dimensional shift of awareness of what being human is actually about - in the holistic view life enabled consciousness. Consciousness enabled self-awareness - with the capacity to embrace, in awareness and responsibility, the full conditions of existence intrinsic to our being. This is beyond Hawking's 'triumph of reason' - it is a triumph of emergence consciousness through nature's eyes, humanity.
Personality
And that brings us back to Jan Smuts’ notion of the value of Personality (with a capital P). This is compared to what was eventually adopted for the Preamble of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. His 'value of Personality' was modified to 'worth of the person'. Eleanor Roosevelt, commissioned to deliver the Declaration to the UN Assembly, somehow missed the point. Let's examine that distinction more closely.
Beyond 'performance' of the material self?
After studying the lives of particularly Goethe and Walt Whitman Jan Smuts tried to redefine the sacred emergence of Personality - not as some set of personal traits - but as a unique synthesis of the deep genetic heritage synthesised with the dynamical epigenetic current context. For example he wrote: ?
“In studying their personalities (Goethe and Whitman) I came to the concept of the whole; the personality underlying their lives and their work; (it) had its own laws of development and that could be followed from the beginning to the end of their works.”???‘Holism and Evolution’ (1926)
Cosmic function
For Smuts there was something far more significant in their unique qualities of the being, where the 'output' originated, than in the 'output' itself. Already back in 2010 he had contemplated:
“There is one ultimate Whole with ascertainable character, and human personality is the most highly developed form and function of this whole. Our human ideals of thought, conduct and faith follow from the nature of that Whole, and find in terms of that nature their true expression and explanation.” ‘An Enquiry into the Whole’ (1912)
For Smuts then the UN Declaration of Human Rights was to protect and nurture that emergent quality of Personality, of conscious humanity in its diversity serving as nature’s contribution, through our human awareness, to on-going creative cosmic evolution.
With that profound insight Smuts could declare: “The universe is individuating as the individual universalises”.
What can that mean? From a simplistic perspective we can consider us individuals as retinal cells in the eyes. Those cells are tuned to pick up very specific light signals. Those signals are conveyed via the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the brain where they are reassembled into the complex patterns that enable us to see the world. The more signals we can detect and respond to, the richer the image of the world.
So too we might consider human Personality. Each individual has the unique capacity to process information about the world determined by their complex genetic heritage, but informed and enabled by the prevailing dynamical epigenetic reality.??As Smuts said, '...with their own laws of development'. We are now not restricting the human person to the merely physical material environment - we are now looking at a psycho-spiritual paradigm. Jan Smuts put it to assembled scientists in 1931, that the evolution of 'mind' had enabled us to '...escape the dungeons and shackles of natural necessity' (instinct)’ so that we became free to create a psycho-spiritual home in which to dwell. We then view ourselves and our fellow human beings, including human rights and responsibilities, through that perspective.
Really?
How might we consider such a 'far-out' view now in 2022, against our current scientific perspective and facing the unprecedented challenges we do - is it fantasy?
I have been intrigued to discover this very recent and seemingly radical view by Stephan Harding - principle teacher of holistic science at Schumacher College in Devon. :
“...the Pauli-Jung conjecture ‘proposes’ that there is a layer of reality deeper than both mind and matter, both of which appear from this deeper layer as twin manifestations of an ancient teleological whole that is itself beyond time and space.” ?
Notice how the notion of some ‘ancient teleological whole’ correlates to Smuts’ statement of n ultimate whole. Harding continues:
"The Pauli-Jung conjecture brings meaning into the world of matter.?This is why synchronicity is foundational for the conjecture, since it involves the meaningful coincidence of events not at all connected through the standard channel of cause and effect. The fact that meaning is a foundational aspect of our everyday reality suggests that meaning itself is very much a quality of Jung’s ‘irrepresentable, transcendental factors’ of the deep underlying unity from which all opposites arise.”
'Gaia Alchemy: the Reuniting of Science, Psyche, and Soul’ (2022)
Notice how 'meaning' correlates to Smuts’ view that we create a meaning-making psycho-spiritual home?from which we respond to the manifest world and its activity.
'Intelligence' or 'wisdom'?
So it seems to me that rather than humanity facing Bloom’s intelligence test, we are looking at a wisdom test. Might our prevailing dimension of human experience be a classroom where we are about to sit for exams?
Graduation
Might the measures for graduation to a deeper quality of 'being' not be how angry we are at the status quo, or how proactively we are in 'fighting' it, but rather how compassionately we engage with life's striving, that includes us humans, in its on-going holistic evolutionary drive?
What Harding’s quote about synchronicity in the Pauli/Jung conjecture invites us to consider is whether compassionate sensitivity with the 'wholeness of being' might enable us to apprehend when to 'touch the magic creative chord' of cosmic evolution.
Spiritual perspective
Ultimately human rights and responsibilities must emerge from a transformed spiritual perspective - from a view of the sacredness of the entire evolutionary process that has spawned life, and mind, and us complex learning/experimenting human creatures. We are surely a key part of a deep process of creative cosmic evolution.
So we need a more compelling belief frame - actually we need a transformed religious narrative. The Rev. Howard Thurman seems to say it all:
“So if it be true that life in its structure is dynamic - is a process - in its most important aspect is unfinished, then I can exercise alternative - I can seek to understand what the creative process of life is and to participate in that - to cooperate with it.”?Rev. Howard Thurman 1899 - 1981
For me it seems that human rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. The ability to act in self-interest, but with an awakened conscience in respect of fellow humanity and the living world that sustains us, demands freedom. Freedom is the milieu that enables the cultivation and on-going development of Personality. And freedom, the ultimate human right, is under threat - and we, individually, are called to response.