Natural vs. Human rights

Ack! for the love of Pete!

I self-banned at my favorite shit-shooting forum because it was taking up too much of my time and I wanted to force myself to stay away: but my silly neurons and dendrites will have none of it, so here I am viewing a thread about 'natural rights', and so far not a single contributor to the thread has recognized the distinction between natural right and human right. Before I continue, YES! the concept of a 'right' is man-made, and nature does not traffic in 'rights'. Rights, like language, like currency, like modes of musical composition, are the inventions of conscious, thinking, reasoning beings, and are not inherent in, nor intrinsic to, nature. This we know, but since certain people seem to suffer from amnesia every single time the subject of rights comes up, we are forced to reiterate and remind everyone of this fact from the start, in the hope that some tiny seed of this fundamental truth might take hold and find root in the rich and balmy soil of the brains of our potential interlocutors.

Now, a natural right to exist is that which every living entity possesses, and by this we mean only that all such entities are given leave to sustain and promote their existence by whatever means necessary; by 'whatever means necessary' we mean just that: a natural right to exist is the right to kill and eat other entities, to seek, exploit, and horde resources, to act, in whatever way an entity can, to survive. There is no question of privilege or entitlement, no penalty or punishment, no moral quandaries, no ethical responsibilities or considerations whatsoever. Might makes right, in nature. The laws that govern the overwhelming majority of unreasoning, living organisms in the cosmos are force and happenstance.

So much for the definition of 'natural rights'. Now we come to the definition of human rights. These rights are also called civil rights, individual rights, etc. Man, as an intelligent, rational, reasoning being, is not provided by nature with certain instincts particular to most other animal species: he has no inherent, automatic knowledge pertaining to how he must act in order to survive. He has drives, urges, and predilections, but these are not instincts, as many incorrectly assume. A bird knows how to make a nest by virtue of instinct; a man may well desire shelter and dryness and warmth, but he is not provided with the knowledge of how to build a house, an igloo, or a tepee. He must learn this knowledge for himself, and such information is remembered and passed down, rather than being encoded and inherited genetically.

That being the case, as man began to become civilized he reasoned that since he is not endowed with certain animal instincts he must be allowed to abide by the governance of his own mind, he must be at liberty to learn and to seek out the means for his survival, and to pursue whatever course he chooses that seems adequate to ensure that those means be attained; however, this right which man grants to himself, by virtue of inter-subjective, voluntary, social cooperation and agreement, carries with it a necessary negative aspect, which is that he may do only that which is rational and reasonable to sustain his own life, and not any action whatsoever, as it is with his natural right, which, it needs to be stressed, he still possesses, with respect to his dealings with lower animals who operate solely in the realm of natural right. Natural rights, or, the laws of nature, do not have this negative aspect. That is the distinction between the two terms, right there. If an individual wishes to possess the right to his life and to the pursuit of happiness, he is obligated to understand and obey the restraint which the negative aspect of that right imposes upon him, which is, that he may not interfere with nor violate the right of any individual to possess and to benefit from that very same right which he himself wishes to possess.

And so it goes, yadda yadda, etcetera, and so forth. Why can't people get this straight?

7/25/2011