this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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I don't necessarily have anything against human rights, but which rights, and for whom? Who decides, and then who enforces those rights? Rights are kind of meaningless without enforcement, and for that you need a state. In that regard, the rights that exist and are enforced, and for whom, depends primarily on who controls the state. That's fine if the people who control the state share your ideas about which rights get priority, but it sucks if you and the state disagree.
Edit: I think this video essay explains it much better.
What human rights do you disagree with?
I didn't say that I disagreed with anything, but I wouldn't consider myself the biggest supporter of gun rights, for an example.
Guns are not a human right.
Well, I think some people would disagree. But, that's my point. YOU think there are certain human rights that should be enforced, at least for certain people, but in order to do that, you need to be in a position of power to enforce those rights. There are people here in the US where I live that are in positions of power to enforce gun rights, and so gun rights exist.
Those people are idiots. Anyone who thinks guns are a human right is just confused because "right to bear arms" also has the word "right" in it.
I'm not the person you were originally discussing human rights with, but usually people who dedicate their education to ethics are the ones who write up a list of human rights.
And that list changes as we progress and develop new technologies.
For example The World Human Rights Commission reaches out to governments worldwide to get all countries as close to protecting humans rights as they can.
Unfortunately some countries choose to ignore them and continue harming people anyway for whatever reasons they want, if any at all. But that doesn't mean there aren't any qualified people in the world to answer that question. There are quite a few people like that working on them as we speak.
I think it's great that academics and intellectuals are trying to come up with educated and informed human rights recommendations, but that's all they are: recommendations. Like you said yourself, their recommendations are often ignored. That's because there is an inherent power dynamic to human rights. Rights must necessarily be given by the powerful to the less powerful, and only when and if the powerful decide it is in their interests to give them. Many times, it takes prolonged, organized, often violent rebellion to convince the powerful that it is in their interest to grant rights to the people.
That fair, I don't disagree with anything you're saying. Unfortunately that is what it takes to establish human rights in some places.
I just wanted to share that there are people working very hard to create an ethical framework that can is be implemented if and when a country is ready to adapt it.
If you don’t know by now then I doubt you have anything productive to say on the matter.
Regardless: It is a term most often used when a piece of media acknowledges the existence of someone who isn’t a straight, white, able-bodied male. A woman main character? A gay character? A black person? Someone with even a little autism who we aren’t just calling “quirky” but actually admitting it this time? And if a transperson is within a mile of the thing there are far too many people who will shit their pants in rage. The opposite of woke is all the effort to force the destruction of media that does these things. It’s the effort to ban books, deny people care, and to simply just treat different people as people. The “anti-woke” are mad that those different from them have the gall to exist.
You can try to ramble it away as some deep philosophical connundrum but it’s just not that complicated.
All I'm saying is: if you really feel strongly about defending and enforcing the human rights of the historically marginalized groups you've mentioned, you will need to fight very, very hard to acquire and accrue as much power as possible to do it. It will probably require a fairly significant, prolonged, organized, possibly violent movement.