Hi, H.
I remember that you brought this topic up a few years ago in one or two different threads. It was a pretty thought-provoking subject, one that kept me busy for a while trying to trace a path through the forest of individual rights, human rights, and respect for cultural diversity. It was pretty worthwhile in that it led me to a deeper understanding of my own beliefs; in fact, seeing this new thread has led me to think through some of these issues again, and I've come to a few new insights into what exactly it is that I believe. This is why it's taken me so long to respond to the OP -- I've been having some trouble getting my thoughts into words, and I've finally realized that there are so many different aspects of this one topic and I was trying to respond to it all at once. I finally realized that if I'm going to play, I'll have to be less ambitious and write posts concerning one small aspect at a time.
The first thing that I think needs to be said is that I, as I've said before in other threads, am a moral relativist. What I mean by this is that I do not believe that a single objective moral standard exists in reality waiting to be discovered by (or explained to) humanity. Morality, by definition, is doing right as opposed to doing wrong, and I cannot figure out how to get a coherent definition that is consistent with most of our intuitive ideas of right and wrong except to define right and wrong according to the subjective perceptions of the person who is doing the judging. Ultimately, that is how a person is going to judge the rightness and wrongness of any course of action -- it is going to be an expression of his inner moral feelings.
And so I agree with your statement (or at least with how I interpret what you are saying) that the idea of human rights is basically a subjective set of standards that are not
a priori the correct standards, the best standards, or the only possible standards. As you say, our current concept of human rights is a product of what we can call Western Civilization, an expression of the consensus of what we in the West feel is either part of the foundation of our ethical system or perhaps part of the results of what we value in the West (and, by the way, adopted by many other people in other parts of the world as well).
That said, it is now an integral part of the moral conscience of many of us in the West. And we cannot help but be influenced in how we are going to behave and react, even to information we receive even from other countries.
And what can we do? We can only try to do "right" and hope we can avoid doing "wrong". But what is "right" and what is "wrong"? "Right" and "wrong" make no sense except in terms of the emotional, visceral feelings of the individual. As such, the "right" course of action is going to depend on the individual based on her upbringing, her education, her cultural values, as well as the idiosyncracies that she will add to the mix as an individual. In the end, her behavior is going to be determined by her values, and how strongly her conscience compels her to act. How will she be able to do otherwise?
So, are the individual rights of a particular person more important than the cultural values in the society in which she lives? Important enough to warrant interfering with that culture? If the abuses committed against that person arouses feelings of outrage within me, how can I avoid acting? Or is it important to respect the integrity of that particular culture, even when individuals are suffering unnecessarily (according to my beliefs)? Again, if I feel outraged at by those who self-righteously promote their beliefs over those of a culture they don't understand, how can I refrain from acting on this?
This is the nature of ethics. "Rightness" and "wrongness" are not absolutes - they can only be judged by the subjective values of the individual considering the question.
This isn't to say that morality and ethics cannot by discussed rationally, or that morality is beyond reasoned discourse. If you feel strongly about a topic, then you certainly have the right to try to convince others of your position -- in fact, if you feel that you are "right", what else can you do? It is perfectly fair that we try to convince others of our positions -- we have to live together, of course, and we are going to have to decide on the policies to be followed by our governments and the organizations to which we belong.
There are ways to argue for one's ethical position. One can attempt to investigate the foundations of the other person's moral framework and attempt to show that there is an inconsistency. Or one can attempt to find out if there is some common ideas of what an ideal society and an ideal world would look like, and then try to show how the other person's beliefs would be counter-productive to that -- even if that other person's moral beliefs remain intact, one might at least be able to convince her of the practicality of a different course of action.
This is a bit long-winded for something that I think that we both understand. However, there is always that danger in a discussion such as this one that one give the impression that one believes that one's moral standards are some sort of absolute standards, the only correct standards that everyone should adopt. There is also the danger that if one isn't careful, one can forget and come to believe that one's standards are the correct standards that everyone else should adopt -- that, too, is the nature of moral feelings -- they certainly feel real to the person who has them.
Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. --
Rick Perlstein
™ Version 4.2
