The concept of universal human rights is relatively recent and wouldn’t have been accepted in most cultures in most of history, but it’s well ingrained today as part of what it means within western liberal societies, and we’ve grown up with universal human rights largely accepted as fact. But there is a continuous debate and argument about how these play out in the reality of life.
I noted in my homily on Philippians 2, that in society today we’ve changed the focus on being on others to being focussed on ourselves, and that this is a major problem within society.
One of the reasons for having the verses from Philippians 2:3-4 on the front page of this blog, and for that chapter being the first homily uploaded, is that this passage is profound in its teaching on servant leadership, and specifically in relation to this topic of ‘rights’.
It seems to me that to help get this balance better in society we would be well served by having alongside the Human Rights Commission an equally powerful Human Responsibilities Commission.
This isn’t to deny the importance of human rights, and the benefits which we’ve gained in society through having these enshrined in law. But the problem we’ve created in doing this is in a one-sided way is that we now have a mindset and attitude such that each person in society is now extremely quick to trot out the line ‘but my rights…’, and hardly ever do we hear someone say, ‘this is my responsibility’.
An analogy that comes to mind is that of a tug-of-war contest. When we all stand on our rights then
essentially what follows is a tussle over whose rights trumps others in a contested situation. This isn’t the healthiest way to resolve delicate matters. More helpful would be to consider not what ‘rights’ are at stake in a given situation, but also what responsibilities are at play. And to have such responsibilities codified and legislated such that they too become ingrained in the collective mindset.
There is no shortage of controversial and highly politicised topics that could be raised in this context. Whether we think about topics such as asylum, transgenderism in sport, abortion etc, it is clear that having a defined body of legislation which also considers ‘responsibilities’ would be helpful.
Our politicians, courts and social structures need to be empowered with the tools to raise the issues of responsibilities with equal seriousness and authority as they consider each person’s rights. And hopefully in addition to this creating a better balance in our societal structures, it will also help change the mindset amongst each of us, such that instead of immediately thinking ‘what are my rights’, we’ll also be equally quick to consider ‘what are my responsibilities?’ is any given situation.