He was supported by Senator Bob Corker, who, speaking about the 45, argued that
"When his term is over, the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling, the debasement of our nation, will be what he will be remembered most for."
We suffer from exactly the same phenomenon in the UK under the Tories and, whilst it is not as extreme or blatant than the conduct of the 45, its legacy will be just as damaging. If a Tory's lips are moving they are lying. We have all come to accept that this is standard for the 45, but the Tories are just as bad. Why is this important?
As you all know I firmly reject the poisonous free marker doctrines of individualism. Humans are social animals, who, because of their interactive and interdependent environment, regulate their environment and their interactions. They do this in many ways, but the most usual is through the establishments of normative and value systems. Norms and values become institutionalised through the establishment of traditions, and such traditions are our everyday guidelines as to normal and acceptable behaviour for the order and stability essential for social life. Such guidelines are driven deep into our conscious and subconscious minds. They become part of our 'self' to the extent that we normally operate by them without even having to think about them. They are of course dynamic and subject to change and modification, but even that transpires in an evolutionary as opposed to a revolutionary manner.
Norms, values, and traditions define our fundamental human rights and our relationships with others, rights we have achieved by the fact of being human. They may be formalised by other humans in legal documents or constitutions, but they are not grants, or the gifts of enlightened rulers, nor are they bestowed by a deity and enshrined in religious writings. They stem from the obvious empirical fact that all human beings are born equal. All humans enter the world the same way and by the same method; there are no social distinctions, no rank nor privilege in the birth process. Once in the world, all human beings are in the same state of helplessness and totally dependent on other human beings for their survival. Without that support no human would last more than a few hours. That is an obvious and incontestable fact; it is almost the only fact that I would venture to call a truth. Humans are social beings; that is their nature. From the moment of their birth they are dependent on other humans and, as they grow and develop, they continue to be dependent on, learn from and interact with other humans. As a result, such interaction necessarily brings cooperation with each other, which comes naturally. Twenty people will overcome a mammoth in a hunt for food far more effectively than one or two. Because of their social nature humans divide their labour, they don’t all rush in and charge at the mammoth getting in each other’s way, they learn from other animals how to gang up on, and overcome, much larger prey. This means that they divide their labour, and the daily tasks of living and providing food and shelter, between each other. This process of dividing tasks and specialising in different factors of production raises everyone’s standard of living. This then brings an understanding of reciprocal need and the need for mutual respect and protection. Human evolution was accompanied by an evolution of insight (we call it common sense) into what we gain from mutual respect and cooperation and the dangers of conflict and destructive self-interest. Now, human beings are in conflict with each other all the time; if we disagree with each other about anything we are, by definition, in conflict with each other. However, not all conflict and self-interest is destructive, that is obvious; indeed human conflict in everyday life is a major factor driving meaningful social change, because humans regulate conflict, institutionalise it and devise regulatory methods for solving it, making conflict both positive and progressive when dealt with in that very human manner. But what is also obvious is that the self-interest encouraged by free market economic theory and its political bedfellow, right-wing libertarian ideology, most certainly is destructive and divisive. It is destructive of society and of its necessary structures, particularly when the governing elite engages in deregulating every obstacle to its success and attacks the structures designed to control destructive human activity.
Human beings are reflective creatures. They can reflect on their actions, thoughts, beliefs and experience. They can therefore learn and adapt; they can change and progress. If their hunt for the mammoth goes badly and they lose their lunch, or if the mammoth turns on them and inflicts injuries, they can reflect and adapt their hunting technique to ensure success on the next hunt. They learn from experience. The knowledge and learning they gain from their experience is empirical knowledge, the safest and surest way for humans to progress. Our mutual support of each other opens the way to the most basic right of all, the right to life. That right should be granted to us at birth by the human instinct to care for and nurture a newborn. As we are brought into the world and survive by the efforts of others, we then reciprocate and perform such services to other people to ensure the survival of our children and future generations. We have a right to life, because if that right was not honoured when we were born, then we would be the last generation of humanity and the human species would perish. We therefore have a duty as a human being to respect the right of everyone else to their life as well. As we enter into the world completely helpless and require constant care for our survival, we have a right to be nourished, clothed and sheltered. We have such rights because we continually grant them to each individual born; they are communal rights, species rights, human rights, and, as experience teaches us, necessary for the survival of the species. As a result, such equal rights belong to everyone who has ever lived or ever will live. With rights come responsibilities, and our greatest responsibility is to recognise and respect the rights of each other. We develop, through experience, the capacity to formulate and understand general principles that enable us to live and flourish in a communal manner because we understand the social nature of human existence. Each of us possesses such rights simply by our existence as a human being, and we have a duty to recognise and respect the rights of all others because they exist on the same equal basis that we do. From this beginning, other rights follow, such as the right to freedom and liberty, because without freedom and liberty the concept of rights becomes meaningless. Life must be meaningful, because if it is meaningless then it has no purpose. If we respect the right to life, but refuse the rights of freedom and liberty, refuse to give that life any meaning, then life will speedily descend into mere existence. A slave doesn’t live; he or she simply exists – for the benefit of other people.
Some people call such rights natural rights, but some thinkers have confused the debate on natural rights by identifying them with “God”, “the gods” or other metaphysical concepts. This implies that we do not have such rights by our human existence but by the gift of some supernatural entity to whom we must be eternally grateful, and we may forfeit them if some human representatives of a god decide we have offended the god’s principles. I will therefore simply refer to them as human rights or organic rights. As a result, no one, no group, no class, no elite, no government has the right to deny us our rights to life, freedom and liberty, and all have a duty to respect and honour them. Each of us has the human right to provide for ourselves, and to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves and our dependants. Should any human institution, such as a social class or a government, so order society as to prevent us exercising those rights, then they must make other provision. Political and civil rights are therefore a reflection and extension of our human rights, and, in the modern world, this has profound implications for welfare and the distribution of wealth.
All of the above is the target for the 45 and the Tories, that is their agenda, to deny us these rights, to divide us and set us against each other, by nationality, race, gender and of course by class. This was the basis of Thatcher's no such thing as society poison. Destroy our social selves, produce an amorphous group of atomised individuals. It will not happen, it cannot happen because it is antithetical to human nature. But the attempt will have profound and longlasting consequences. This is what too many people voted for whether they are aware of it or not. The rest of us, the civilised, must combat these trends as strenuously as possible. You have been warned.
I apologise for the length of this post. If you are interested in this type of debate, I have taken parts out of my book on human rights. Anyone who wishes a copy of this book please contact me on doktorkommirat@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you a free copy
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
No comments:
Post a Comment