Tuesday, December 4, 2007

No Rights?

The great arguement goes on about who has rights, and what has rights. Do humans have rights and animals don't? Shouldn't every living, breathing thing have rights? Well here is my absolute answer to all of these questions. What if none of us really have any rights at all? Isn't it a possibility, that humans only say they have rights so they can feel superior to other living objects and feel good about themselves; like they have purpose in their lives. When it comes down to moral rights, which are the basic foundations of legal rights, it is what humans perceive as good or bad. It is what humans perceive they can and can't do. Well there are no real set standards out there that say this is exactly what a right is, and this is how it came about. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, came for John Locke. Who was John Locke, before he made a few people happy, and thought that by giving people these rights, they would gain the utmost superiority in the living being world.
Human beings made up the rights they have, so can't we say animals make up the rights they have. No matter what though, because humans and animals are different, live differently, and survive differently their rights to each other are going to be different and never understood by the other. Whose to say that according to a wild animal, humans don't have the right to build large cities or suburbs in forests where animals are living. On the other hand, whose to say that according to humans, we have the right to kill animals for food or to cut down any tree we want to build houses. Humans will never understand animals, and if animals have a sense of understanding, they will never understand humans, without some sort of inner-species communication.
Just because we say we have rights, doesn't mean we do, I mean in the long run do we really have rights, or do we have rights, so we can have the things we want and desire?

2 comments:

John Stonebreaker said...

I think that we have created rights and know of rights because we have a formalized language and superior cognitive ability compare to non humans; however, I think that with this higher cognitive ability it should be obvious that some of these rights extend to non humans because of our feelings such as compassion, love for others and desire to help those in need.

Specific Relativity said...

I agree with that thesis. Our rights are primarily in relations to one another--certainly it is absurd to argue that we all have a right not to be killed by tsunamis and the like. Rights come into play when we interact, when we thoughtfully consider what actions should be taken to assure or at least seek peace and mutually happiness during a lifetime. Otherwise, rights are not natural or absolute at all--they're very much abstractions.