Dear Sam, Elliot, Platt and others,
I agree with Sam and Elliot that 'human rights' cannot be equated with 'the
intellectual level'.
According to Pirsig 'human rights' have to do with a struggle between
'intellect' and 'society'. I prefer to see them as a corollary of struggle
within the intellectual level, between lower and higher quality intellectual
patterns of values. Social patterns of values (that are maintained by the
copying of habits and other patterns of behavior between generations) can
hardly struggle directly with intellectual patterns of values (that are
maintained by the copying of ideas and other patterns of consciousness
between individuals). 'Human rights', like 'duties', 'responsibilities' etc.
are ideas that are used as ammunition in the struggle between different
intellectual patterns of values to make out which of them has the highest
quality. Just call to mind the struggles of the now dominant Western
intellectual pattern of values with the intellectual pattern of values that
was dominant in the countries that call(ed) themselves 'communist' and with
the intellectual pattern of values of fundamentalist Muslims: they're about
individual rights (freedoms) versus collective rights (means of production
and subsistence) respectively about rights versus duties ('Islam' implies
submission to God).
Rights aren't absolute and can't be contained in a finite, more or less
'complete' list, Platt. They relate to an intellectual pattern of values.
Like intellectual patterns of values they must migrate toward Dynamic
Quality. This migrating is fuelled by these struggles between intellectual
patterns of values.
The individual rights which the Western intellectual pattern of values
stress are not more 'true' than the collective rights which a 'communist'
intellectual pattern of values stress, neither are the rights which both
stress more 'true' than the duties which fundamentalist Muslisms stress.
There is no objective 'reality' (shared between these intellectual patterns
of values) against which such 'truths' can be tested. There is no 'Bill of
Rights' that everyone agrees on nor a set of scientifically discernable
'rights' that are somehow biologically, genetically embedded in humanity
(and therefore 'unalienable').
The only test of the higher (intellectual) quality of one intellectual
pattern of values (and its set of rights, duties and/or responsibilities)
relative to that of another intellectual pattern of values is its stability
and versatility over time. My forecast is that for further intellectual
progress we need both individual rights, duties and responsibilities
(enabling individuals to free themselves from unconscious habits and
collective patterns of behavior and to create individual personalities) and
collective rights, duties and responsibilities (enabling societies to free
themselves from biological need and from other competing and oppressing
societies and to create intellectual patterns of values that can guide
them).
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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