The Rights and Duties of Man

Nowadays, (1985), one hears and reads much about institutions that are concerned with the rights of man. The duties, like in the American Declaration, Geneva and Helsinki, are wisely kept out. Close scrutiny soon reveals the fact that little about fundamental ethics is demonstrable in these institutions. Most time these institutions favour the monstrous doctrine of the Summum Bonum, i.e. the good of all being the criterion for man's rights. This definition is mine and seems a necessity (31.4). It means the very possibility to violate any person's rights for a gain in those of others. When the majority votes for-, or gaines by-, this cannot be an excuse for harming any individual (prof. Lynch). Rights and duties, are related as Aristotle related the inner side and the outer side of a circle. The rights of one are the duties of others. They are indivisible. Talking solely about rights, is as much nonsense as speaking about nourishment without mentioning food. When one hears a statement from such an institution (of human rights) saying that everybody has the right to determine the number of his children, the contradiction with everything we know about our reality is so striking that the question is why this fundamental ignorance is tolerated any longer. First, the right to live and the right to die, is only and solely in the person himself, nowhere else. A not (yet) existing person therefore, has no rights and no duties, nor has a dead one. Parents have the right to start a new Earth-citizen only when there is a fair chance of him becoming a happy world citizen AND then only when the planetary population is decidedly below the maximum that Earth can bear (5 million). This parental right then, is shared by every citizen. The premeditated production of misery, by creating an individual that is chanceless from birth onwards, is crime. A planet that can hardly sustain (in happiness) a bare five million humans, but is overloaded with the thousandfold of this number (five billion), presses upon every would-be parent the cold realisation that the new individual will be in utter misery, will find an end, like we (1985), in the most horrible circumstances. The rights of the new individual clearly implies too, a thorough study and expertness in the bringing up of such an individual, amply PRIOR to its conception. This even, is not yet thought about. He has the right, the parents the duty, of starting him off with the merest chance of happiness. This shows another stupid, alleged right, namely to a freedom of speech, Mill's Paradox. An excellent eminence in mondial sociology like H.G. Wells even could not think ethically on a level fundamental enough to be somewhat final. He notes with some approval in his Outline, (there is an Outline and an Outlook) that the trade unions became appreciative of the value of education. They, therefore, founded schools and courses. It was beyond Wells (and many others), to realise that such schools simply have to teach the violation of human basic rights (and duties). They have to teach that a man under some contract to do certain work, a contract that he likes, has the duty to stop work when the union commands a strike (Summum Bonum principle again). Furthermore, they have to teach that, while an employer has the right to contract employees (often made into a duty for him), he has not the right to sack the employees at the spot when they break contract without clear force-majeur (51). In much of the serious literature, generally, very fundamental and basic thinking about the rights and duties of man, is lacking. It is the cause for group-consciousness, this clustering process that is the all-out cause for war and disaster, for torture and rape alike. One group insists upon some right, another group demanding a different right (employers, employees). All this, while it is obvious that rights and duties are precisely singular not manyfold or multiplicate, one set for each human. Common thought seldom penetrates into fundamental ethics, so that it becomes scientific and mondially applicable. Smoking, it is said, is bad for your health. A false conception of personal freedom now, deducts that one has the right to determine this risk for himself. Already, though, there is a slight uneasiness about this, and the rights of other people who share the same room and do not want to be smoked. Further, it goes not, and in 1985, in a large lecture hall, I encountered majority rule, hence smoking was allowed (tyranny of the majority). Perhaps an individual here or there, might hold that the illness and death by smoking comes at the cost of society, not on the individual whether he is insured or not (the premium is paid by others too, and is tuned to these risks), hence, smoking is no personal right but an anti-social act. The mondial aspect goes even further, although admitted, that suicide is in general desirable in our overcrowded situation. It is a true fact that smoking causes tobacco plantation where good food or forest could be growing. It is also true that it leads to mondially organised commerce, transport, sales organization, duties, packaging and advertisement industry, etc. (It is as with flowers. By buying them, you cause production, transport, preservation chemicals, and deny good soil to re-forestation or food-growth). Only the combined salaries of all customs personnel all over the world, solely concerned with im-, and ex-port, duties, banderolles, control and so forth would be ample to buy food for Africa. While the man in the street thinks that smoking is his own business as long as he does it outside, in the open, that it is only a person-destructive habit, the reality shows it to be socio-destructive not a personal right, apart from suggesting the habit to others. His hospitalisation is a burden of cost and effort on society, his need for tobacco makes for a costly social superfluids. Rights & Duties ought to be scientifically studied and discussed, put on paper and taught to every world-citizen nay, particularly children (52).

To this day I will confess, I dislike the restriction and distortion of knowledge as I dislike nothing else on earth. Wells, Outlook.