Milan Kundera's Immortality is filled with thought provoking statements about the nature of humanity and our quest for immortality. However there is one particular excerpt I wish to share with you all, that seems to very aptly capture one aspect of human society today. Pay particular attention to the last 2 lines.
"And so, thanks to Solzhenitsyn, human rights once again found their place in the vocabulary of our times; I don't know a single politician who doesn't mention ten times a day 'the fight for human rights' or 'violations of human rights'. But because people in the West are not threatened by concentration camps and are free to say and write what they want, the more the fight for human rights gains popularity, the more it loses any concrete content, becoming a kind of universal stance of everyone towards everything, a kind of energy that turns all human desires into rights. The world has become man's right and everything in it has become a right..."
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This is a really thought-provoking passage and definitely casts a new light, for me, on the usage of "human rights". I had never before considered that in labeling something, it may be easier to dismiss, to remain passive about, though we may condone it with gritted teeth.
Labeling things can provide a means of rallying people around a cause, but it seems critical that action not be lost. Action is the critical part.
ya... additionally, i think it points to how its become almost fashionable to claim that anything is a human right. as society becomes more individualistic, we have come to believe that we have a right to anything, almost... So many things that aren't even rights, but just selfish desires, get labeled as rights...
Good point. I noted that as I read it and then focused on the labeling, but both are important arguments.
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