Monday 8 July 2019

Post No. 1,368 - Humans, Humanity, and Human Rights - Chapter 1 (H)

This project commenced with a conceptual outline, published on Saturday 1st December, 2018, at: https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2018/12/humans-humanity-and-human-rights.html
I’ve decided I’ll post each chapter in its first, raw state, and you, Dear Reader, can see if my later research (probably long after I've finished this first version, in my retirement, should I be fortunate enough to actually get to retire) led to any change. (You can also think about the points I am making.) 
I've come up with an initial structure of the book (no guarantees it won't change), and will add the links to each chapter in the latest installment as they are published. Owing to the size of each chapter, I will have to publish this using the sub-chapters.

*****

Chapter One – Introduction to Concepts, and On Early Humans

H.  What perspective does modern human rights theory/understanding contribute?



Broadly speaking, a useful perspective for human rights is to consider them in terms of “generations”, which covers the “cluster” of related rights that tended to be focused on during the period of history that law developed to protect those rights. I’ve outlined those rights in the following, which is from Lesson 4 of the Introduction to Human Rights course [1] presented by the Universidad Diego Portales’ [2]  “MOOC Chile” team [3] [Ref. 7].
Before presenting those, the following important qualification from that course should be noted:
“Although this terminology of “generations” has a certain didactic quality, it may also suggest the rather dangerous notion of a hierarchy of human rights. The point is that these “generations” of rights are intertwined and it is not possible to establish a hierarchy among them. For instance, the right to life - a first generation right - needs the adequate protection of the right to health - a second generation right - and of the right to an unpolluted environment – a third generation right - to be really fulfilled.”
(Emphasis added by me)

First Generation Rights

“Civil and political rights, that is, rights that protect the intimate sphere of the individual, as does the right to life, to privacy, to security and the like. This first generation also comprises the right to participate in the political life of the community, including the election of representatives and running for public office.”

Second Generation Rights

“Economic, social and cultural rights, that is, rights that refer to material life conditions, including the rights to work, to health, to education and to social security.”
As the MOOC Chile course also states, this is when the State moves from the “hands off” requirements of the first generation of rights to being “expected to deliver”.

Third Generation Rights

“Rights of specific groups, such as women, children, disabled people or indigenous peoples, as well as rights of collective nature, such as the rights to peace, to development, and to a clean and sustainable environment.”
Now, please note my wording: “law developed to protect those rights”. Notwithstanding my vagueness earlier on this point, as far as I am concerned, the rights already existed, as a result of humans existing and thus human dignity concurrently existing – at least as an ideal: what was missing was awareness / acknowledgement, and – ideally – some form of legal or similarly authoritative protection or realisation of those rights.
To put that another way, when early human evolved, my opinion is that, morally (at the very least), they had an inherent right to what we term “human rights”, or to “human (or natural) dignity” – and acknowledge the argument that human’s inherent dignity is the source of human rights. Whatever the source, human rights existed.
But were they realised – did they, beyond having a right to them, actually “exist”, in the modern sense that the rights were acknowledged in some way, and could be enforced or a remedy (in the legal sense of the word [4] ) could obtained the breach of those rights?
Well, as this era predates the development of cities supported by agriculture and thus early forms of bureaucracy, and well and truly predates the concentration of political power that came with highly organised and politicised monarchies and Empires, I consider – particularly on the basis of my limited and completely indirect experience of gatherer-hunters - there is a good chance that first generation rights did exist.
People took part in decision making to some extent – it may have been participatory democracy, it may have been one of the other ancient Greek words, such as “noocracy” (“rule by the wise” [5] ) or geniocracy (governance by problem solving [6] ).
Remember, at this stage there was no store of wealth: the focus was on physical survival. Social status / power was based on what you could either demonstrate was of survival value, or what you could bluff others into allowing. The lack of complex social mechanisms meant most abuse of power would be against individuals or a few people (and that can be devastating as it is), with exclusion being probably the worst event.
There would have been social power dynamics, in my opinion, as those are known to exist in our genetic neighbours (see E. our genetic neighbours), and, given their slower rate of evolution, probably existed back then.
I’m also thinking particularly of the media report [7]  which included:
“those who rose to the top through bullying and aggression were likely to be brought undone, and the leaders who lasted notably had empathy.”
So inclusion would have been an aspect, but it would likely have been subservient to survival needs.
It is also very likely that social would have been significant, so choosing to go against the norm may have had consequences – including expulsion, in extreme cases, which would virtually be a death sentence in that era.
Nevertheless, I suspect that the pragmatic realities of survival would have inclined groups towards more cooperative and inclusive approaches (hark back to B. The benefits of human rights), even though the wisdom of elders was probably acknowledged, respected and (mostly) followed.
So: in my opinion, did first generation rights (of liberty) exist?
Partly, and only by chance.
To clarify that, consider how such rights can be lost. Some people may be so fearful or insecure or overwhelmed (including by valid cares of life) that they do not wish to take on such rights: that is a matter for the field of personal growth and development, which we will get to later. Such rights can also be taken from the person – which, over the last few millennia, has been done by organised groups, possibly with a forceful or charismatic leader. If we go back far enough, it was just the forceful or charismatic leader who had not yet built a group of sycophants / thugs.
Now, when a forceful personality starts arguing that you should do X, it can be hard to argue back that you shouldn’t if you don’t have the words to express the concepts (unless you are spectacularly cantankerous, contrary or stubborn - like me J ). Thus, as people inclined towards domination started working out how to acquire and use power, including violence, it was almost inevitable that we would start to crumble into a freedom-limited existence, until courageous intellectual warriors would show us how to fight properly for our (first generation) rights.
Now let’s consider second generation rights – economic, social and cultural rights. The pre-eminence of survival would, in my opinion, make economic rights a central consideration.
Social and cultural rights, however, would likely have been limited by the focus on social cohesion.
Thus, in my opinion, second generation rights would also have had only a partial existence in our ancestors’ lives.
So then we come to the “third generation” rights – the rights of specific groups, and rights to peace and a clean environment.
The issue of variety (e.g., race) didn’t exist then, and it is likely that modern gender stereotypes didn’t exist, that part of third generation rights was a bit moot. A clean environment existed because we did not have the potential to cause large scale pollution, and survival was a powerful driver to live in harmony with one’s surrounds (although that does not mean change did not occur – later, for instance, Australia’s indigenous peoples used fire to shape the environment).
So, as with the first and second generation rights, the third also existed only partially.
To illustrate that further, consider health.
Gatherer-hunters often lived well – better than many modern people would probably think, but were still vulnerable to seasons of want, had no real medical care to cater for disease, accident, or infirmity, and were vulnerable to predators – including, later on, two legged predators.
We haven’t always had the same quality and quantity of food globally – in today’s world some are overfed and many are underfed, and it would have been worse without the Green Revolution of the 1960s [8] . More generally, it was civilisation, a product of our observational skills, mental capacities (including communication and organisation), and adaptability, that, amongst its faults, also brought us intellectual and scientific developments that created the modern potential to fulfil the third generation rights in ways that never existed through our existence.
All we need to do is decide to make it so . . .
To put all the preceding another way, fulfilling human rights in those ancient times was hit and miss.
So let’s summarise al the preceding sub-chapters.

Posted by at