[Lancaster] Twitter

[Richard Robinson]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 01:05:54PM +0000, andy baxter wrote:
> Ken Hough wrote:
> >
> > It seems to me that in the real world there are no 'rights' to anything. By 
> > general consent and the odd war or two, we eventually manage to agree to 
> > grant our selves certain PRIVILEGES which may be and often are withdrawn.
> >
> > Fact: There are no rights in this world.
> >   
> I agree that rights don't exist in the abstract - there's no absolute
> reference to which you can look to find out what our rights are or
> should be. They exist because at certain times people as a whole have
> decided amongst themselves that the governing powers of the time (be it
> feudal landlords or the modern state) were abusing their position at the
> cost of the majority in society. I think you have to understand rights
> in this context, so in a way I agree with your statement that 'there are
> no rights in this world'
> 
> But I really don't like the way you're substituting privileges for
> rights.

I agree. It's phrased as though 'we' work for a right, and then some
external, anonymous, indisputable authority withdraws them. Which I can't
see. They are, I would argue, withdrawn by exactly the same processes by
which they are established. ie, they can be fought against as well as for.

I'm also puzzled as to how 'it seems to me' in one para. becomes 'Fact:' in
the next, with no intervening proof ? <insert really irritating smiley here>


> > ants where individuals always act for the benefit of a colony. With notable 
> > exceptions such as Ghandi, we are driven by self interest.
> >   
> I think we all have strands of both selfishness and altruism in us -
> it's not just a few heroic individuals who behave altruistically. The
> thing is to try to look at what kind of situations, and what kind of
> cultural context, encourage one over the other.
>
> > We are not an altruistic species! Major advances in human endeavours are 
> > driven by the possibility of personal gains. Unless we were to be genetically 
> > re-engineered, this is unlikely to change for a very long time.
> >
> > Yes, I know advances are sometimes initiated by farsighted persons, but 
> > development is invariably driven by the possibility for commercial, 
> > political, or military gains. Such enterprises might well benefit a 
> > community, or perhaps even a majority.
> >   
> If it were just an enlightened few who change things, things would
> probably never have changed. Every movement has its chiefs and its
> indians. E.g. Stallman was the first to express the idea of free
> software in its current form, but he wouldn't have been able to develop
> GNU unless he had found other people of like mind to work with him.


A lot of this discussion, wherever it appears, seems to derive heat from the
unspoken assumption that 'altruism' and 'self-interest' are necessarily in
conflict, that any benefit to someone else comes at your cost.

And I suggest that that isn't always, necessarily, so. Ghandi, Stallman,
whoever, could equally well be presented as working in their own
self-interest as well as to others' benefit - the interesting point about
them then being that they managed to find their way to an understanding of
their interest that offered gains to other eople rather than the loss Ken
seems to assume is inevitable.



-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem