What would be the reasonable compromise between one caveman's right to
kill and other's not to be killed?
Perhaps "kill whoever you want on Sunday, otherwise no killing"
On 7/20/2020 7:29 PM, Forrest Christian (List Account) wrote:
Since this doesn't really reply to anyone's specific points, I figured
I'd just post this separately in the thread.
I've recently realized that pretty much all of the conflicts we see
are where two sides 'rights' come in conflict with each other.
Back before there were rules, I'm sure there was one group that
thought killing other humans was just fine and it was their right.
Another group just wanted to live their lives without being worried
about being killed by other humans, and it was their right to do so.
When those groups came in conflict their 'rights' didn't match so a
rule had to be made - in this case, 'the right to live is more
important than the right to kill others'. So we now have laws
against murdering others.
What I think people miss is that 'rights' are really nothing but a
construction of societal norms and laws built up over years. You
have the right to not be killed (life). But it could have just as
easily been "you have a right to kill anything you want, including
other humans". Of course, I have a feeling that a society with that
as a right might not have a long lifecycle...
As time has progressed, more and more things have moved into the realm
of 'rights'. Right to free speech, right to peacefully assemble, and
so on.
In our current situation, there seem to be several 'rights' being
fought over right now. Whether my desire to not wear a mask is more
important than the desire of society to reduce the transmission of a
virus. Whether the color of your skin should determine if you are
more or less likely to be shot or abused by a police officer in some
areas. And on and on and on.
If you look at the civil rights movement, a lot of the protests
(peaceful or violent) came about where 'rights' were in conflict.
For example, the rights of black people to be non-segregated vs the
rights of the white people to not want black people to share their
facilities/businesses. At some point, there is going to be conflict
and disagreement. In an ideal society, one would hope that you could
come to an agreement that both sides would at least be equally unhappy
about without resorting to protests and civil disobedience. But when
you're the party who's perceived rights are being trampled on, it's
kinda hard to get the people who are doing the trampling to listen,
since you'd end up trampling on their rights if things changed. In
this circumstance, often some sort of protest or refusal to go along
with the societal norms is unfortunately needed to bring the topic up
to the light. Thus you saw the lunch counter sit-ins and the freedom
riders and similar.
The ignition for a lot of the current events seems to be the George
Floyd death. This is obviously a conflict between the perceived
rights the police officers believed they had, and the right of a black
man to not be killed at the hands of those officers. And obviously,
this has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There are a
lot of these types of conflicts going on right now... one doesn't have
to look very far to find some.
I think to bring this back to another point of this discussion made by
others, it seems like a lot of this country has lost the ability to
stop and listen to both sides to understand what 'right' it is that
the other side thinks is more important than your right you're not
happy with being curtailed. And to come to some sort of reasonable
agreement.
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