Everyone
today, is very clued up on their human rights, they demand that life live up to
their expectations and when it doesn't, they start shouting about 'violations'
of their 'human rights' and can quote verbatim from the section,
sub-section, paragraph and line of the Human Rights Act.
We’ve
come a long way from the days of Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft when
‘rights’ were nothing more than a middle-class aspiration, and while there is
much that I agree with in their writings, overall, I don't actually believe in
human rights. I don't believe that there are natural rights or God given
rights, as a matter of fact, I don't believe we have the right to anything. The
only rights we have are those we have awarded ourselves and when we award
ourselves rights then, we are morally obligated to award those same rights to
everyone, equally. We consider the Human Rights Act a sign of our evolution into a more
civilised society and a demonstration of our moral and intellectual superiority.
And like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the more we get, the more we want.
We
are quick to demand our rights, however, we are not as vocal when it comes to
our responsibilities and are often quite happy to run away from or ignore them. The
concentration on rights without the same consideration of responsibility leads
to a skewed perspective and causes an imbalance within society.
Within
the Human Rights Act, we have the Right to Life, the Right to Respect for Private
and Family Life and the Right to Freedom of Religion and Belief but no
responsibility to provide a counter-balance to them.
I
do not believe in a ‘right to life’, life is not a right, it is a gift which we
are very lucky to have, so alongside a 'Right to Life', I would put a
responsibility - the responsibility to take care of and respect that life.
Alongside
the Right to Respect for Private and Family Life - I would add the responsibility
to ensure that a private and family life does not compel any member of that
family to share in your belief system, if they choose not to, and also, that
your behaviour as a family does not impact negatively on the community outside
your family.
On
the Right to Freedom of Religion and Belief - I would add the responsibility to
ensure you do not force or impose your religion or beliefs on anyone else.
Religion should be a private matter between the individual and whatever God
they believe in.
Why
do we believe that we have more rights than any other living organism on this
planet? The demand for rights comes from the belief that we are 'special', more
special than everything else on earth because we sit at the top of the food
chain. This idea originally came from the book of Genesis, where God gave man
dominion over the earth (which of course was written by man and has more than a
bit of self-serving bias in it) and was adopted by religious institutions. From
that, we were led to believe that the universe was created for us and we were,
literally, the centre of that universe with everything revolving around
us.
In
the psychological development of a human being, this is known as the egocentric
stage, or egocentrism, and was first identified by the psychologist, Jean
Piaget. This stage of development, usually occurs between the ages of 4 - 7,
although, it can persist into adulthood for some (believe me; I deal with them
all the time!). It is characterised by a lack of awareness of
different points of view - something which was very evident in the Brexit
debate and which you can see any day in Parliament (and is actually the modus
operandi in Stormont!!). It is a stage of development where a child/person
is self-absorbed and still has to learn that things are not always from their
point of view or perspective. When it persists into adulthood, it can be
identified in people through their 'egocentric shortcomings' which include:
'The
False-Consensus Effect - where people overestimate the extent to which
their preferences are shared by others; (as evidenced by the ‘remain’ side
in Brexit)
The Curse-of-Knowledge Effect - where experts in
a particular domain fail to take into account the level of knowledge of
laypeople with whom they are communicating; (or egosplaining, as I call it)
The Illusion of Transparency - where people
exaggerate the degree to which their internal emotional states (such as anxiety
during public speaking) are evident to others;
The Spotlight Effect - where people
overestimate the degree to, which aspects of their appearance and actions are
noticed by others.'
Or,
in other words, it's all me, me, me, me, ME!!!
The
universe is approximately 14 billion years old, earth is approximately 4.5
billion, man or a man-like creature is estimated to have been around from
somewhere between 2 - 7 million years and your life, if you are lucky, will
average 70 years. The life of a human being, in proportion to the life of
the universe, is nothing more than the blink of an eye. You are a dust mote
sitting on a quite beautiful rock which revolves around a glowing hot rock, in
a universe whose size is beyond our knowledge and comprehension and, of which, we
know very little. We don't even really know the basics - we know that there is
a gravitational force in the universe but we have no idea what it is, or how it
works, all we know is how it behaves.
Our
tendency to egocentrism, often means that we lose our perspective on life and
our place in the world. Our egos delude us into overestimating our importance
and our knowledge and it can be a shock to the system to confront this reality
and realise that, at the end of the day, we still don’t really know that much, we
really don't matter very much either and if we disappeared tomorrow, the world
will still keep turning and life will still go on.
Within
the 'climate' hysteria that has gripped most of the mainstream media; the
delusions of the ego are predominant. Like Brexit, no real debate is
allowed and the stream of propaganda continues, as those who are still in
their egocentric phase refuse to consider any opinion but theirs, or consider
that they could be deceived.
I
can understand and sympathise, if people only get their information from the mainstream media and
believe that they are being told the truth.
There is a generation who were brought up to believe in the integrity of
institutions like the BBC and NASA, to name but a few, and find it hard to
comprehend that they are being lied to on such a grand scale, and believe me
that scale is huge. I mean, I believed in it too until someone pointed out the
truth to me, and it isn’t nice to have to admit that you were taken for a fool.
I was a real ‘greenie’ and was quite happy to pay £3 for a light bulb, I used to
pay 60p for. But, that’s life, it wasn’t the first time I’ve been fooled but it
will most certainly be the last, I hope!
A
few months ago, I tried to debate with a couple of people I know on 'climate
change', both have quite large egos and one of them was flying to the US to
protest with Extinction Rebellion (ironic or what?). But they completely
refused to even consider any alternative viewpoint or read any of the
literature I recommended. They chose wilful ignorance over scientific truth
because it fed into their egos.
Coincidentally,
I took my mother to mass on Sunday and one of the readings was from Genesis, it
was the passage where Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent into eating from
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is one of my favourite passages from the Bible because there is so
much you can take from it and is probably one of the earliest writings on
humans and consciousness. So, I spent most of mass reading and re-reading
this passage. There were several interesting things I took from it. One of the
things I noticed about it was that, in this passage, God lied. Now, in all the
years of being taught religion at school, no one ever pointed that out or
questioned it. The serpent asks Eve if God has told them not to eat from
any of the trees, and Eve tells him yes, that God has said 'you must not eat
it....under pain of death'. This is the lie which the serpent reveals. He tells
her she won't die and that if she eats from it, her 'eyes will be opened and
you will be like gods, knowing good and evil'. So, with consciousness, we
become the god of our own lives, we have the knowledge of good and evil and can
then make a choice.
The
lack of curiosity and desire for truth and knowledge from the ‘climate change
believers’, because it is about ‘belief’ and not scientific truth, shows that
some of us prefer to live in ignorance, which is doubly disappointing in an age
when so much knowledge is, literally, at our fingertips. Carl Sagan once remarked,
'knowledge is preferable to ignorance, better by far to embrace the hard truth
than a reassuring fable' and was a great advocate for scientific truth over
superstition and myth.
I wonder what he would say now or how he would
fare in the present day when science is being destroyed by lies and propaganda; when even the Nobel Institute has lost their integrity and real scientists are
dismissed and silenced, in favour of an uneducated teenager, who is being
cruelly set-up by her parents and paymasters. Would he too be side-lined and
silenced? Where lies the responsibility for truth now, is it with us to demand it as a right?
In
searching for truth, I can only be grateful for the internet, for providing a
gateway to truth and a different perspective. I dread to think how we would
fare without it at the present time and the only advice I can leave you with
are the words of another advocate for scientific truth, Benjamin Franklin:
"Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you
see"
By
the way, if you still believe you are the centre of the universe, or even if
you don’t, because Carl Sagan is always worth listening to, follow the link and
enjoy –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIANk7zQ05w)
https://www.britannica.com/science/egocentrism
