Dnarever wrote on Sep 21^st, 2023 at 9:04pm:


I was thinking the opposite to a left!

freediver wrote on Sep 21^st, 2023 at 1:13pm:

Democracy was limited in Greece and Rome. It went nearly extinct for a thousand years and slowly reappeared but is weakening again. Can that be a 'human right' that's 'inalienable' or is the 'right' a pretence?

chimera wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2023 at 6:50am:


What do you think inalienable means?

Frank wrote on Sep 21^st, 2023 at 6:13pm:



In traditional Greek and Roman thought, only the wealthy and powerful had rights in society. That’s how Nature intended it. But by the end of the fourth century, people like Basil and other Christian intellectuals were arguing that everyone has rights, including, and perhaps especially, the poor. That’s how God intended it.

The claim that all human beings have rights, regardless of birth, status, or creed, didn’t pop out of nowhere during the 18th-century Enlightenment. Its roots are biblical, and it was Christian thinkers from Basil onwards that shaped the Western concept of “human rights”.



https://www.publicchristianity.org/the-genesis-of-human-rights/

chimera wrote on Sep 21^st, 2023 at 8:27pm:


A woolly statement.

1. The UNUDHR speaks of "Universal Rights", and attempts to define them.

2. The UN was created to "save Mankind from the scourge of war", believing a condition of permanent international commerce/cooperation  is achievable, without recourse to war.

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A "right"  is NOT an "instinctive compulsion", though the individual's (unconscious) survival instincts are.

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The "will of the people" is a problematic concept; we know all people want to live and to be 'free', but beyond that, peoples' desires diverge.   

Elections infer government by 50% + 1.....meaning the "will" of the 49% is ignored. (Trump was/is  very angry about it...).

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Note: this statement refers to "everyone" having a 'right' to above-poverty paticiption (or "social security")  in the community, which is different to the "rights" that individuals might conceive of for themselves eg the right to follow the religious scripture  they choose.

But the latter can - and does - lead to conflict.   

[UNUDHR article 18 attempts to delineate the limits of religious freedom by noting the inadmissibility of violence in following a specific creed].

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Explained above for you.

Frank wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2023 at 9:34am:


Frank, I already disposed of your 'Rights emanate from Jesus Christ' theory. As graps would say, we can "safely" say Jesus was a man, because we can observe:

1. all men forever have been seeking "god".

2. men have turned mortals into gods at least until Roman times...as Josephus wryly observed; "if indeed he (Christ) was a man" ....


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An opinion?

(quick google)

A right for Aristotle is essentially a just claim that a person has against other members of the same community, and a natural right is a just claim based in nature

But as I said, nature ensures the survival of life in the aggregate, not the lives of individual creatures - by observation; there are no "individual Rights" in nature's jungle, "rights' (, more correctly, desires) are the creation of men's cortex brains seeking "fairness".    

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An unrealized "intention"? The poor are still dying prematurely....

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I think your rejection of the Buddha, Confucius and Aristotle, thinkers who predated Christ, is problematic.

Bias_2012 wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2023 at 11:53am:


In animals, from the survival instinct; and in humans, from that instinct plus awareness of motivation of self and others (based in the cortex brain). 

In the natural world, those desires** (of individuals) are in competition, and therefore cannot be "Inalienable". 

** or "rights" 

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Addressed in a previous post; the UN is concerned about UNIVERSAL RIGHTS (a human cortex-brain construct).

But as I said, the UN tripped over  the supposed  "freedom/right" of individual (nations)  to make war, versus the necessity for international law to ensure "freedom, justice and peace in the world". 

Hence the demand of the UNSC members for the veto, which crippled the UN's peace-keeping role from the start, voiding the "right" to life and liberty in practice (see Ukraine).