Whyte Horse wrote:
steamboat28 wrote:
ren wrote:
Living is actually a right. You were born and therefore have a right to live.
Complete non-sense. The vast majority of things that were born are now dead. And those that haven't died yet, will do so very shortly. So it's more like "You were born and therefore have a right to die".
It could be interpreted in any of the following ways:
- You were born, and therefore have a right to everything necessary to sustain that life for its natural duration, however long that may be
- You were born, and therefore have a right not to have your life terminated prematurely through the actions of another human being
- You were born, and therefore you have a right to die in a manner consistent with your choosing, knowing that it is ultimately an inevitability.
One time I asked a lawyer what makes a law... he answered it has to be in writing. Next I asked him what makes a right and he said it must be written too. So then I asked him how we came up with rights and laws before they were written down, and he didn't know. Keep in mind this was a bar-certified lawyer with a degree and all that.
I keep having this same discussion over and over with Americans mostly. People seem to think rights are granted by government, or rights don't exist, or they're a legal fiction, etc. Then there's the default anwer that rights are given by God. Well, rights are self-evident. We have all kinds of rights but we only put certain ones in the constitution(and then amended it 17 times) for clarity. The right to poo is not something the government wants to take away so we don't see it enumerated in any declaration.
The entire concept of privileges, entitlements, and "you gotta earn that" is rife with classism. The biggest proponents of this ideology are people who have never worked a day in their life and they're just covering up their own sense of entitlement by blaming others.
A lawyer with no interest in jurisprudence. What has this world come to.
It could be interpreted in any of the following ways:
You were born, and therefore have a right to everything necessary to sustain that life for its natural duration, however long that may be
You were born, and therefore have a right not to have your life terminated prematurely through the actions of another human being
You were born, and therefore you have a right to die in a manner consistent with your choosing, knowing that it is ultimately an inevitability.
It's not really meant to be interpreted. You somewhat came to exist, you therefore will somewhat die because that's how things go. The argument is that if you do not get to die (ever), you do not have the same rights as all other life forms...
Although, the real interesting bit in what whyte said isn't "right", but "born". When you are born are you really a new life form? Or are you simply an extension of an existing lifeform which has developed a new ego. (as in, you are not a new lifeform but you are a new ego).
I thought about this a few years ago when I cut some branches off a tree in my neighbours' garden. I planted them alongside the canal, without fertilizers and whatnot. They are growing healthily. I couldn't come to say that those branches were new trees. They are the same tree, but a part of the tree that has developed a new ego.
