Friday, February 3, 2012

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What do YOU think Human Rights are? Are they important? When introducing this topic many of my students asked, "Why should I care about human rights?" How would YOU answer that question?

19 comments:

  1. It is a difficult question. I listened to the below listed blog the other day and it was a lucid exploration of what can be called a human right.

    http://www.philosophynow.org/podcasts/The_Philosophy_of_Human_Rights

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    1. This conversation does a good job of highlighting complexities associated with the topic. Each article in the declaration deserves its own in depth exploration and clarification. Together though they represent criteria by which those fundamental, undeniable elements that allow us to retain our humanity can be evaluated. Legality vs. Morality. A voice for those who have none? Checks and balances to hold those in power accountable? Progress.

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  2. I always think of human rights from a personal perspective. If this was happening to your or your family would you want someone in the world to help you? People living in a world where their human rights are violated may even think they would help someone in their situation if they could, but is it really true? Does human nature dictate a certain amount of selfishness? Do most humans lack such basic compassion for one another that their computers, cell phones, and personal problems are more valuable than human life?

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    1. You don't know what you've got... until it's gone right? Here you highlight the fact that we really don't know how we would act if the shoe was on the other foot. As 7% of the world population, we consume roughly 25% of the resource. If dividing the resource meant giving up not only cheap goods, but certain goods all together, would we be as willing to speak up against the injustice? Is that why we focus so much on everything but suffering and it's causes? How do we develop an awareness and compassion that leads us to rise above that baser part of our nature to become the change we want to see? What if we don't care? Are there direct consequences for not caring?

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    2. When considering humans on a scale that the notion of human rights requires--when you have to regard the rest of the world population as morally relevant--we can in no way trust our nature, base or otherwise. Even our best moral instincts are overwhelmed by thinking about 6 billion other agents, all of whom make some demand on my action in terms of a right. It is impossible to have compassion for such an unimaginably large number of people.

      Therefore, any consideration of human rights must necessarily be abstract and guided by our reason.

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  3. Some of our students reason that if the population were "culled" that controls could then be put in place which would keep those who might not be in the best conditions for procreation from bringing more suffering into the world. They also postulate that voluntary sterilization programs be set in place. Do we sacrifice conceptual dignity for the sake of reason, because the number of people suffering is beyond comprehension? The problem is big... but not that big. Fundamentals win the game. People are people, and reason is necessary to navigate the complexities, but the bottom line is still what it is.

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  4. I think that when it comes to some things, it is almost impossible for human rights to be implemented. Be it religion, culture, whatever, some people just can't accept they have rights and they are almost more happy ignorant and without them than knowing and realizing they are being wronged. Think red pill blue pill.

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    1. You bring up a great point. Human beings are VERY resilient, and can readily adapt to harsh conditions. Once they grow use to the situation people can become comfortable in their slumber, while embracing the oppressive conditions they are forced to live in as the norm. Once a norm is established, some people even become resistant to any suggestion of change, regardless of their situation. Red, or blue? Remember to use your MIGHT/MAY here: it may be impossible for human rights to be implimented. Now that you know, what are you going to do about it?

      "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." Morpheus

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  5. In my opinion, I think that human rights will always be violated in one form or another. There is no way, given the way humans as we are now can co-exist with one another without the violation of human rights occurring.
    As we are now, the human race is expanding at such an unprecedented rate that within the next, say, 40 years the earths capacity for maintaining us humans will reach its limit. Once that limit is reached violence on a scale unseen before by man will crop up everywhere. Neighbors fighting, friends fighting, family fighting. All for resources that will be going more and more obsolete. This violence will lead to gang monarchies being formed all over the place and excessive force being used by the government. This will lead to possible cannibalism and a war between citizens and government.
    One of the most simple answers to the situation that could be implemented as soon as tomorrow would be to control population growth by giving certain people the right to breed and taking that right from others. Now as you can tell, this answer is frowned upon by human rights advocates around the world, because, once it is implemented the same tragedy of WWII would occur (eugenics). So, with this in mind we are given several more options.
    Another option is LOWERING medical attention on the older of our species, for if that does indeed happen, the greatest irony in life as a human (The prolonging of human life is actually shortening the lives of our race, along with other races. Also it is lowering the quality of the lives of those living.) would begin to come to an end. But, this alas is also another form of human rights violation. So we must think of another option.
    The third and final option that I can think of that I doubt would infringe on human rights is the expanding of our territory as humans. This territory I am speaking of is earth. If we humans can manage to expand to other planets or moons in our galaxy, then the capacity for our race would be expanded as well. Unfortunately, once we begin to do this and we advance our technology, WE will become the invading alien army. If we were to run into any foreign life forms that had intelligence on a level to ours or above our own. There will most certainly be violence that occurs. But that is has a small possibility of occurring before humans evolve, or advance in shape or form (due to time and space travel), so when it does occur, the race of "HUMAN" may no longer exist. Another thing to point out is that space travel and planetary colonization will not begin to occur in the next 40 years.
    So, in a short summary I have said my opinion on human rights. I do believe that some can be erased (racial discrimination for instance) but that will take many years given the way humans have behaved in the past, years we can't afford to spend. I do not believe human rights can be solved as easily as setting a plan of action into place. If human rights are ever completely solved that will be a time when the actual species of human has disappeared. As long as people have free thoughts, differences, and the will to reproduce, human rights will only be a goal that is sought after but never found.
    Again this is only a brief summary of my opinion on human rights (Only addressing problems presented by population). So it may be completely off and answers may have already been found.

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    1. I agree. Human Rights will always be violated. Everyone does bad things sometimes. Some do bad things all the time. The only way to have no human rights violations would be if everyone was perfect, which is impossible. Without the struggles of man life would have no purpose; there would be no challenges and life would be pointless without things like human rights violations.

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  6. the intire idea of human rights are that anyone and everyone are created equal. but we always seem to forgt we drafted the Universal Bill of Human Rights when we view matters such as gay marriage, equal pay for all, equal job oppurtunities, and many other issues that the american government faces.

    but lets go past the the U.S. and move on to the world. lets focus on the middle east, the governmentit most all of the countries in the middle east are based on islam. this i could be fine with if it didnt include stoning gays, not allowing women to drive, etc.

    in north korea thousand sare killed for speaking out against there country. the rest are fed lies trough prison bars. and are kept left out from the rest of the world. north korea is a retched place where children are put into sex slavery and people are killed daily.

    that is why i think we should stop the human rights infringementssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

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  7. Dont forget who you represent Young Justice. Keep it real on the grammatical tip as well... Where do we go from here? Do we throw our hands up and look away? What will Young Justice do to help forward the cause of justice? We know the problems. Now let's propose solutions.

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  8. I think that we need to solve the problem of human rights. But, I think that we can't go into the other extreme as well. I think that the Patriot Acts and other things issued by our government are necessary. If a man is proven to be a terrorist and it is also proved that he knows about another attack, the government should be able to torture him to stop an attack on our country.

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    1. I agree with you except for the part about the torturing. I think if someone is convicted of being a terrorist, the government should take them into custody and keep them in a federal prison, even though that takes OUR money to keep him there. I personally don't agree with torturing people and I think that it in itself is a human rights violation. I think that if you are trying to abolish human rights it isn't a very smart idea to commit one yourself. Besides the torturing being a human rights violation that I don't agree with, I completely agree wit your viewpoint!

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    2. It is an opinion whether or not purposeful torture is a violation. So if a man who is evil, killed millions knowingly is captured. We should let another city blow up just because "he has his rights." No, he's lucky we would stop torturing him after we got his information

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    3. I don't think that we should let another city blow up, it's just that if you are trying to get rid of human right violations, commiting another human right is probably one of the worst things that you could do. I think torturing is one of the worst things that you could do to a person, but if it is the only thing left to get information out of a suspected terrorist, then I think there would be an exception even though I still wouldn't agree with it like most of the United States would. I think what I'm trying to say is that if torturing the person is absolutely the only thing left to do, AND it would benefit all of the people of the world, it would be okay. I just have a conscience and I know that if I tortured someone to stop human rights violations while commiting one myself, I would probably feel guilty for the rest of my life.

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  10. Human rights are not set in stone. Human rights are simply the unbreakable foundations upon which a person bases their beliefs, that must remain solid justifications for all of their other beliefs to make sense. "Human rights" can never really be determined of enforced, since it a what a person finds "humane" varies purely on personal moral/religious beliefs.

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  11. Mamie here. Not gonna' be as intelligent as everyone else, just going to state my opinion. You should care about human rights... because your a human. It's not as though Jewish people ever thought they would be violated in the ways of human rights as they were by Hitler, but it happened. NO ONE is immune to human rights violations, even if you live in some, big, "safe", bubble called America. So you have to pretend like you are going to be violated any day. That's why you should care.

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