Rights are a human construct. They don’t exist in nature.
When we fight to construct them, we must fight to keep them. In a representative democracy, our representatives are the ones who are supposed to fight for us. But when they fail, that responsibility falls back to the average, everyday, common person.
The struggle to keep our rights moreso has to do with getting people off the couch to stand up for what they believe in. In an apathetic society glued to their toys and treats, their bread and circuses, it’s that much easier for other humans with wishes to collect their own power to dismantle that of the majority.
Yeah but also human constructs are objectively real. When people say human construct in a way that relegates it lower than natural phenomenon, that is a condition of alienation. A building is a human construct, so is art, so is a computer, an industry, a society.
Rights are a social construct which are no less real than physically existing constructs. Money is a social construct, so is religion. In fact religion served the same function in feudal society that money does in capitalism.
Since all these things were created by humans, and humans are a part of nature, then human constructs are a part of nature. Rights develop as society develops, as we become more advanced. The right to healthcare didn’t exist before there was widely available doctors, hospitals and clinics to provide it, before modern medicine made it possible to heal many injuries and diseases. But now that the material basis for it exists, like any technology, it can be used to improve the lives of everyone or it can be used to oppress.
But both outcomes are the result of human activity.
I dig your conclusions, but I think that it becomes difficult to convince people when we ourselves are operating on a faulty basis. The reality of human alienation from nature is not an essential part of nature, it is the product of human activity. It took work to create it and it will take work to reverse it. Alienation is a condition of class rule.
But the real basis for it, which in our society is laws and culture underwritten by state violence, is not as permanent as the fact that it is the labor and time of all the workers that create what is actual. And if we want to change the conditions that alienate us from the rights and privileges that our labor creates, then we have to be able to reflect on reality as it is. We have to not just make mystified statements but really understand every step in the process of the logic that we will use to inform the actions needed for liberation.
Taking for granted our alienation as natural and not imposed, is a step in the logical process that informs our subjugation.
Rights are a human construct. They don’t exist in nature.
When we fight to construct them, we must fight to keep them. In a representative democracy, our representatives are the ones who are supposed to fight for us. But when they fail, that responsibility falls back to the average, everyday, common person.
The struggle to keep our rights moreso has to do with getting people off the couch to stand up for what they believe in. In an apathetic society glued to their toys and treats, their bread and circuses, it’s that much easier for other humans with wishes to collect their own power to dismantle that of the majority.
Yeah but also human constructs are objectively real. When people say human construct in a way that relegates it lower than natural phenomenon, that is a condition of alienation. A building is a human construct, so is art, so is a computer, an industry, a society.
Rights are a social construct which are no less real than physically existing constructs. Money is a social construct, so is religion. In fact religion served the same function in feudal society that money does in capitalism.
Since all these things were created by humans, and humans are a part of nature, then human constructs are a part of nature. Rights develop as society develops, as we become more advanced. The right to healthcare didn’t exist before there was widely available doctors, hospitals and clinics to provide it, before modern medicine made it possible to heal many injuries and diseases. But now that the material basis for it exists, like any technology, it can be used to improve the lives of everyone or it can be used to oppress.
But both outcomes are the result of human activity.
I dig your conclusions, but I think that it becomes difficult to convince people when we ourselves are operating on a faulty basis. The reality of human alienation from nature is not an essential part of nature, it is the product of human activity. It took work to create it and it will take work to reverse it. Alienation is a condition of class rule.
But the real basis for it, which in our society is laws and culture underwritten by state violence, is not as permanent as the fact that it is the labor and time of all the workers that create what is actual. And if we want to change the conditions that alienate us from the rights and privileges that our labor creates, then we have to be able to reflect on reality as it is. We have to not just make mystified statements but really understand every step in the process of the logic that we will use to inform the actions needed for liberation.
Taking for granted our alienation as natural and not imposed, is a step in the logical process that informs our subjugation.