Constants of Creation

In the natural order of things there are two constants that have always existed since the beginning of time and will go on existing until the end of time.



1. The Rights of Man (i.e., The Right to Dignity, to Childhood, to Freedom, to Work, and the Right to have Property)



2. The Rights of Communities (i.e., The Right to Marriage, the Right to be Governed the State, the Right of Family)



These rights can’t be extinquished, they’re universals. Once they are messed around with by governments, special interest groups, and individuals, it sets off and distrupts the way things should be. Bad things start to happen. We’ve seen this over and over again in history. For example in the dicatorships of the 20th century, in Germany and the USSR, genocide in Eastern Europe, Cambodia, and Africa. Closer to home in the West we see it in the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and in the hyper-materialism that strips the dignity of human beings by reducing us to mere objects of consumption.

Hello,

I'd like to share what I think I have begun to understand about this subject area:

"Rights" is a contrived word.
The word cannot stand alone,
it has no meaning.
To have meaning, the word needs qualifiers.
This word, even with its qualifiers,
only has meaning in human society
because of many people's insistence upon logic.
Animals and plants don't have rights,
they live and co-evolve.
Each of the words that are listed
(dignity, childhood, freedom, work,
community, man, etc.)
are all highly variable in meaning.

For someone to have a right,
there must be others in agreement
of the meaning of a right,
and the implementation of that right,
and there must be enforcement
of the agreement, enforcement of the right.
Thusly, with designated rights
come co-existent, complementary limits.

Example:
One can have the freedom to own property,
if there are co-existent, complementary
agreed upon constraints and limits in place.
If one has the freedom to own property,
one does not have the freedom to steal property, or the freedom to damage someone else's property, without consequence. Etc. Etc.

I can point to an excellent document,
written by Zee Charnoe, titled:
Freedom
From, To, Of, For and With,
at this address:
http://ecophysics.org/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,17/dir,ASC/o...

Dictatorships, disparity, hyper-materialism (called capitalism / democracy) are symptoms.
On a larger scale, we are committing ecocide
with our choices.
Choices based upon fear and closure.
Choices to maintain highly defined selves, and
our highly defined, conflicting beliefs in sustaining contrived rights, at multiple scales,
at all cost.

I'd like to throw a question out here in response to your post....

Is the concept of Justice a universal concept, or is it merely a human convention?

I believe the rights I mentioned above are intimately linked to the concept of justice.

The idea of Justice and the Concept of a Divine Law of justice are one and the same thing.

Whoever says with serious intent, "that is just", or "that is unjust" appeals (whether they know it or not) to a superhuman, supreme or ultimate tribunal, to a standard that transcends all human laws, contracts, customs and usages, a standard where all these human standards are measured.

Either this absolute, divine justice exists, or else justice is just another subjective word for something which suits some but not others (i.e., I personally abhor child abuse or genocide, but my neighbour Mike doesn't not,; just like my personally hate brocolli, whereas my neighbour Mike can't get enough of it).

As Emil Brunner says:

Either the word justice refers to the primal ordinace of God, and has the ring of holiness and absolute validity, or it is as a tinkling cymbal and sounding brass.

We might doubt justice as we might doubt truth, but, one thing is impossible- to believe in justice and at the same time reject the divine law of justice.

The primitive mind expresses this connection by representing gods as lawgivers and guardians of the laws of justice. These mythological images reveal a truth, namely that justice but it's very nature is holy, that it stands above humankind, that we cannot make arbitrary use of it, than we can make arbitrary use of truth.

It's interesting that there is a close relationship between truth and justice. Human beings cannot invent either one, we can only seek them. They stand beyond all our human laws and conventions. This is why courts of law have at all times been surrrounded with an aura of sanctity. The judge proclaims, discovers, divine truth. This is a holy thing for a human to hold judgement and pronounce judgement. The pronouncement of a just judgemet is a kind of revelation of God's wisdom.