Dear Roger, Rog, Risky, Risque, Mirror Boy & co,
Here's my reply to the rest of your 9/3 16:15 -0500 posting (your problems
with 'dignity', 'duties' and 'responsibilities').
We were discussing values with which to judge the balance between stability
and versatility of a social pattern of values. You object to an basic
inalienable 'right to dignity' as a candidate for such values, but I don't
really understand your reasons for objecting.
First you seem to have problems with my religious conviction as a Quaker
that every human being has direct intimate access to divine guidance (also
formulated as 'that of God in everyone') and should be treated accordingly.
You ask:
'If your intellectual/aesthetic/direct experience/judgement contradicted
your religious upbringing, what would you do? How should children brought up
as devil worshippers or godless Nazis apply your reasoning?'
The first question translates for me as: 'If your religious experience
contradicts your religious upbringing, what would you do?' Follow my
religious experience, of course, maybe checking and double-checking it
first, if it is difficult to accept that my religious upbringing was wrong.
(BTW I was not brought up as a Quaker. My father is a retired minister in
the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. We hardly ever disagree however in
religious matters.) I would advice children brought up as devil worshippers
or Nazis to do the same: open themselves to direct divine guidance and not
follow blindly their upbringing.
I fail to see the relevance for my choice of a 'right to dignity' as a core
intellectual value. That choice is not based on my religious conviction. I
just pointed out that Quakers have come to a similar choice (valuing
treatment of people as sources of divine guidance).
Then you suggest that a better way of stating the issue is 'that individuals
are of immense potential value'. I agree about the potential value of
individuals of course, but that was not my issue. Just stating their immense
potential value doesn't give us a clue whether and when it is allowable to
claim more freedom for ourselves at a cost to them. The issue for me is how
we should treat them: as people who should have the possibility to uphold
their personal truth, integrity and identity. That is the miminum we should
not deprive any person of whatever the benefits in terms of stability or
versatility for society if we did.
This 'right to dignity' should be self-evident. I can give you no
(intellectual) foundation for it except that I (directly) experience it as
evident.
That people should be encouraged/liberated to realize their potential to add
value to themselves and others is not enough to me. They should be enabled
to uphold their intellectual values, their dignity, EVEN if these
intellectual values don't seem to be of direct value to either themselves or
others (because seen from the social and biological levels they don't have
direct value). The right to dignity is the right of the intellectual level
to go off on purposes of its own... Encouragement/liberation to realize
potential value can too easily degenerate into encouragement/liberation to
realize only social and biological value and disencouragement/hampering of
realizing intellectual values that are not serving their parent level any
more.
I don't agree with you that duties and responsibilities are only the
antithesis of freedom, to be used carefully and in moderation. They are the
(only) way to safeguard freedom (of others). The only way to have freedom
ourselves is when other people accept duties and responsibilities to grant
us that freedom (and the rights that constitute it, fill it in positively)!
It is on the intellectual level (and not on the social level) that zero-sum
games don't exist! 'My increase of freedom is decreasing your freedom; (my)
duties/responsibilities imply a decrease in (my) freedom.' is only true as
long as you suppose static social patterns of values. Once you allow for
(potential) migration of those social patterns of values toward DQ mediated
by intellectual quality, freedom and duties/responsibility don't cancel each
other out any more, but together create social progress.
As you wrote: ''rights ... are carefully crafted over social history to
maximize quality and minimize harm. Quality rights maximize freedom,
maximize versatility, maximize quality and minimize harm.'
Only I would substitute 'rights, duties and responsibilities' for merely
'rights'. This balancing act of migrating social patterns of values would
not be possible when everyone were only busy securing 'rights' for
themselves by wheedling them out of others.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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