I would like to read what you have to say about "Rights are shared, not owned" [View all]

[Bernardo de La Paz]

I made a post today in a thread about Trudeau defending some freedoms and that drew a positive response, which got me thinking, so I searched for it and I may have come up with a new turn of phrase.

So I am interested to know what you think of the concept: "Rights are shared, not owned".

What I am thinking of, at this point in the evolution of my thinking, is that when a right is given to a person it is shared by others, not owned by that person. It is not a right they can sell, but they can forgo a right, for example by not voting if they have a dog to shampoo that day.

Rights are extended to groups of people. People who did not have the right before. For example, the right to open a revolving line of credit in one's own name. This was not a widespread right until it was extended to women about 1963, only sixty years ago. So in this sense rights are shared.

But I'm more thinking about it in the broader sense that rights extended to a group of people are rights deepened and strengthened for even the people who used to have them previously. It's all tied up with concepts like diversity is strength because enabling diverse participation enlarges the talent pool and that is always desirable since people and humanity are faced with a beautiful but brutal universe on a daily basis: virus, quakes, the toxicity of burn clouds and the vagaries of winds, too many to list.

If we are "in it together", if we are United in fact as well as name, then we must extend as many rights as much as possible.

But rights must be balanced. There is no right that is absolute. All rights have to embrace exceptional circumstances and embrace other rights.

So, if we understand that rights are shared, I think we can get better at balancing rights.

The individual right to support and the societal right to national self-preservation are, for example, pitted against property rights and against the rights to the fruits of one's labour (freedom from taxation). Gun owners do not own the right to own weaponry because there are limits even gun nuts acknowledge. You can start at no backyard tactical nukes and work down from there. Why no nukes? Because the people living downwind have a right to no disruptive levels of radiation. Presumably unborn fetuses have some rights (avoiding abuse) but this has to be balanced against mothers rights to their own bodies. Which leads me to another reason.

No right is pure.

All rights are shades of gray, none black/white 0/1. Except perhaps rights that are only societal constructs, like the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, etc. But the rights to interact with physical objects and to interact or not with people are complicated by realities we all face in some form or another. Hence, shared experience. But shades of gray. My right to swing my fist stops well before it gets close to your nose. But how far away? A foot? A kilometre? A network's worth of digital packets?

Since no right is pure, they are like yin/yang, each containing a bit of the other, enfolding the other, embracing the other, united with the other. Thus rights are shared, not owned. amiright?

Rights evolve. Since rights are a societal issue, they are refined by people for the people. Thus they are shared that way too.

Anyway, I'm running out of energy on the topic for the moment.

Is it a good thing, a right thing, to say "rights are shared, not owned"? What do you take it to mean and what is your thinking?