Getting Human Rights into Policy and Legislature
I’ve no answers here, and I’m actually hoping to get some ideas on this issue.
The other day I attended Red Drinks (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?sid=2b60210e117ed08cd903de4e7901a451&gid=39307232156) , where Braema Mathi, a very prolific and proficient activist in Singapore, gave an insightful talk about human rights & ASEAN.
One thing she said has kept me wondering. There are many countries where Human Rights is a dirty word, to policy makers at least. Human Rights are simply not considered something to be considered in policy making at all. However, she said that we could get policy makers to think about Human Rights by reframing the issue, re-labelling these Rights. So instead of talking about Human Rights, talk about Accessibility, she said.
She also highlighted how everyone of us can play a contributory role. We don’t all have to hug trees or wave banners. In the course of our jobs, our lives, our interactions with friends, we can make sure that Human Rights are respected, in whatever aspect we have influence over. Or we can simply talk about it to raise awareness. Make sure your maid has enough food, rest, is treated as a human with choices and feelings. Make sure that your department doesn’t have an unfair discriminatory culture.
In light of these 2 things we can do, ie. highlighting Human Rights considerations using alternative lingo, and maximising our influence within our own domains, I’m brainstorming the different ways we can do this. Specifically, if you’re in the position to influence policy — not just national policies, but your company’s policies, your school’s policies, or country club’s policies, or religious institute’s policies etc etc
As Braema pointed out, Accessibility is an aspect of Human Rights.
Other things I can think of, that people would tend not to find objectionable or controversal, are stuff like Safety (your right to a work environment or food that does not kill you) , Staff retention (you need fair practices to retain staff? ), Productivity and stress ( slavery creates mental stress, decreases productivity??) etc etc. I wonder if readers would share their ideas??
If you think about it, Human Rights are in a way, enshrined in the Singapore pledge — Justice and Equality. The only thing is that its only regardless of race, language or religion. Health status (people with HIV, disabilities), nationality , gender, sexual orientation, “intelligence” (“meritocracy??”) are not basis of Justice and Equality — YET.
How do we bring that YET about?
I was just talking to someone else the other day about our laws that weren’t very fair towards homosexual people, or people with HIV. Not just about the laws that were in place, but also about the laws that OUGHT to be in place.
He brought up a most interesting point. He said,” As the government, you’ve got to listen to the voices of your people. Most Singaporeans are not willing to accept such laws yet — most people here support the current legislature, as unfair as you may think it is. The government needs the support of these masses — this is a democracy. “
I said ” But it’s the government’s duty to uphold justice. We made laws countering racism when it was at its most violent point. We made laws protecting pregnant women even though it was unpopular with employers.”
He responded “True, but you can’t force legislature down people’s throats in such a draconian way every time.”
Me? Draconian?? I thought I was fighting for democracy and human rights?!?!
How do you deal with that?!? How do you balance democracy ( acting according to the majority’s wishes) with human rights (justice and equality) ??
( See also : http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/can-a-democracy-work-in-a-place-with-an-uneducated-majority/ )
Protesting the Singapore’s naming an orchid after the Prime Minister of Burma.
I am officially shouting out my strongest disgust & disagreement with the Singapore Botanic Gardens naming an orchid after the Prime Minister of Burma.
http://seelanpalay.blogspot.com/2009/03/singaporean-activists-protest-against.html
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/03/great-job-singapore-botanic-gardens/
Tweaking political systems for greater good: What biology has taught me
The desired outcome/ purpose/ function of the system as a whole is often correlation, rather than causative, of the events that occur within the system .
This is something working on evolutionary ecology / ecological evolution (!?!?!?) and biological signaling systems has taught me.
Reproductive fecundity, species survival etc is often the result and molding factor of species/populations à That’s what evolution is about : survival of the fittest.
Yet each animal never has that in mind. It acts out of instinct, for pleasure , away from pain. That determines its actions. Because of natural selection, instincts/desires which align/correlate with reproductive fecundity are selected for. When we want to manipulate the reproductive rates / species viability for a particular animal population, what we do is to manipulate factors that rewards the individual animals according to its instincts/desires: we don’t ever reason with the animal about its reproductive plans.
Same with signaling systems. When I talk about signaling systems , I refer to those within the biological cells – the genes, proteins, nuclei acids etc etc that interact with each other to achieve the cellular phenotype that enables our bodies to function. A particular pathway, for example one that causes the genes to duplicate so that the cell can divide, has the intended outcome of duplication. Yet during this molecular process, the proteins involve never do what they do, because they have that goal at the back of their mind. Protein A binds to, and works with Protein B because of the molecular affinity it has for each other. When Protein A + B complex binds to a particular stretch of DNA, it does not do so because it recognizes that stretch has the Origin of Replication – that’s the human name for it. It binds, simply because the microenvironment makes that interaction the one of least energy expenditure, of highest affinity. Basically the molecules just go down the path of least resistance.
So bearing in mind how natural systems works. And applying that to human systems.
Why does capitalism work and not communism? I believe that the same principle applies. With capitalism, the basic human instinct/desire is rewarded with each action the individual takes. Human greed is aligned with the intended outcome of the capitalism à collective wealth. With communism, the individuals have to give up their human greed, and agree to share. Behavior that benefits the individual does not benefit the community under that system and vice versa. Human benevolence is aligned with the intended outcome, and the whole essence of benevolence is to put self-interest at a lower priority,
Why does religion work so well, but not atheistic moral systems (ok, I can hear some of you jumping up in protest, but hey, look at humanity over the last few millennia and see for yourself what I mean ) ? Religion that works well almost always rewards the individual for being good. Under religious systems, lying gets you thrown to eternal hell, and honesty gets you to eternal heaven, and so you would choose honesty even though the earthly temporal reward system may reward lying. You are honest, because that behavior is aligned to your individual benefit of going to heaven. Under the atheistic moral system, where there is no heaven, lying is aligned to your earthly benefit of wealth and prosperity. And so you lie. What is the result of everyone lying? You get societal chaos, which results in a less pleasurable community than the orderly one that has religion. Do communities of people then agree to be religious just so that they get a more ordered, pleasurable community to live in? I don’t think so — it goes back to natural selection; they tend to survive and chaotic ones self-destruct. What about a community of atheists who collectively agree to be moral, for the greater good of having an ordered, pleasurable community to live in? It won’t work, because even when everyone is honest, it still pays for an individual to go against the agreed system and lie. It necessarily descends to chaos, until you decide to punish lying behavior, in order to align individual benefit to the communal good — that’s when you get those oppressive communist regimes.
Why am I going through all this? What’s my point?
I think a lot of NGOs / activists / advocates etc etc tend to use the public good, human rights etc etc to campaign for their causes. That’s the intended good they want out of the system. But that cannot change behavior and so they find it incredibly difficult. The way the businesses go about it – bribery / nepotism / corrupted behavior on the other hand, rewards individual behavior. There’ll be little use saying that the Elites / People Accumulating Power ought to behave a certain way because that is the most ethical way , for public interest. What’s needed is a system to align the good of the people acting on behalf of the State, to the collective good of everyone. Democracy does that, because the people acting on behalf of the State are directly and individually rewarded with power and wealth when they act for the public good in order to get voted.
During the whole financial crisis, people have been laying the blame at the feet of the bankers for their greed. But seriously, everyone has to be maximally greedy – that’s about getting individually rewarded. Expecting bankers to act ethically and not out of greed would be to ask them to give up individual good. We need to tweak the system that aligns this greed with public good. It’s a system error.
So what’s my final point?
I think in trying to get our society (not just Singapore, but in general) to be improved, we need to go beyond bashing individuals of the system. We need to recognize that ANYBODY in a particular position in that system will act out of his individual interest to the maximum. What we need to do is to alter the system to align individual interest and public good that we intend.
How do we do that? I don’t know. But that’s the direction I think our thoughts should go towards.
(PS. I’m no politics student, never ever took even an elementary course in that area, so pardon me if this seems really duh ……. I’ll be happy if you would share your insights. This is just something I came up with during lunch hour, as a student of biology, as my opening paragraph says already. )
Self-Censorship: How do you say what you need to without getting into trouble?
What I’ll like to explore with this post are the ways/strategies we can say what we want to say, without getting into trouble. I’m going to limit the scope to sociopolitical writing, and not how you can tell your friends that the guy last night was such a jerk without letting your colleagues know that you didn’t do OT with them because you went on that lousy date.
More importantly (as I’ve been doing of late) I am looking forward to reading any strategies that any of you readers might be able to suggest. Or perhaps any suggestions / critiques of the strategies brought up. I suspect a fair number of you might be in this position to, and for a much longer time, and so would have a lot of experience to share. Again, you DON”T have to reveal who you are, especially since the powers-that-be might be watching ; )
In the overwhelming number of countries/empires/regimes/societies etc in the world and throughout history, people have been getting into trouble for saying/writing the wrong things. Deep trouble, along the lines of death and torture by either the powerful or by their enemies that have somehow gotten the upperhand. Whether as a Straits Times writer, or as a blogger with a readership of 3, the thing about censorship and self-censorship weighs in at some point of time, to varying degrees.
Art has always been a platform for different voices. In more liberal places, sociopolitical themes can be very overt. However, in places where there is most need for alternative voices, being overt is often asking for trouble. Love stories and seemingly trivial comedies are used, and it takes a discerning, sensitive ear, or else it takes a suffering society, to understand the underlying message. Mozart’s Figaro – a comedy about the life of a servant – caused a stir in the political echelons.
I suspect many ancient religious texts grew out of this need too. Hindu mythology, Greek mythology etc. I am most familiar with the Abrahamic texts, and so I’ll use Genesis as an example (the Creation story that most people fight over, in the context of Creationism vs Evolution). The Hebrews then were a small tribe in Egypt – basically descendants of a single 12- children family 500 years after they migrated to Egypt to escape famine. Like many countries of today, we see that poor immigrant populations are often the most oppressed within large, affluent societies. The Hebrews then were probably no different. They wanted to change their situation, but labour laws then really sucked. Most of the Hebrews were unhappy with their situation, but they were content to complain, and few dared to challenge the regime. Against that backdrop, a few leaders arose. They saw the need, and they knew what to do.
However, to mobilize the entire community of Hebrews, you needed to motivate them, give them reasons, assurance, and directions. You needed to communicate with everyone, but you didn’t have the TV, internet, radio. You couldn’t even write. All you could do was go by the word of mouth. You needed a story that was interesting enough, memorable enough, and impactful enough.
I once attended a course on interpreting Genesis at the Singapore Bible college by David Lang – a really fascinating lecturer. He suggested (there other scholars who think likewise) that Satan was depicted as a Serpent because the Serpent was the symbol of Egyptian Royalty. When we read Genesis today, we are reading it against the backdrop of our culture – one where Science plays a huge role. We immediately interpret Genesis in a scientific fashion, because that’s how we’ve been trained to interpret things.
The oppressed Hebrews on the other hand, had no inkling about science, and probably did not care. Reading the Genesis account, they would immediately see the references made – how the cause of the trouble they were in – were because of the Egyptian empire. The Serpent(Egyptian rulers) had given the Hebrews false incentives (the Forbidden Fruit). By taking these false incentives, they got into the miserable position they were in. We see in today’s context, how many popular governments are voted into power, despite being corrupt and ineffective, because they gave housing incentives, etc etc to the poor voters.
As a result of Adam and Eve taking the Forbidden Fruit, they were kicked out of Eden. The curse laid on Man as a result, was that he would have to toil the earth and work really hard for a living. That explained to the oppressed Hebrews that because their ancestors had fell for the fake Egyptian ploy, they had become oppressed and enslaved as a result.
The curse on Woman as a result, was that she would have a tough time giving birth. While many interpret this as literal pain during childbirth (perhaps again, because of our cultural context today), reading the rest of Genesis, a common theme in the patriarchal stories are that the women often had trouble conceiving/having the children they wanted ie. The heirs. Knowing how often ancient rulers used to control the populations they were trying to enslave, and judging from the biblical records themselves, the Egyptian mass murder of the Hebrew children / first-born sons, was probably something that happened and caused them great grieve. To the Hebrews of the day, “with pain you shall give birth” would probably bring these events to mind, rather than simply birthing pains.
The Genesis story explained to the oppressed Hebrews why they were in the situation they were in , who the enemy really was. It also explained why God did not seem to be real – I suspect there were many disillusioned atheists amongst them. It explained that why God had left, but now was going to return, and it assured them of victory, but only after they suffered to get the victory: Eve’s son would have his heel struck by the Serpent, but the son would crush the head of the Serpent. We see parallels in many wars of our modern societies – how often is God’s name invoked? How often is religion a motivation for fighting to the death?
Coming back to the point about skirting censorship. Some strategies practiced:
- the factual reporting of only the palatable views, in the newspapers.
- Very clever presentation of news articles, so that the reader must make the connection (I’ve blogged about this previously)
- Migrating out of the country and saying what you want – many Chinese dissidents do that
- Sticking your neck out and taking the risk of being sued
- Talking about minor issues rather than the big ones
- Using anonymous forums
- Shutting up
I’m sure this is not an exhaustive list, and it’s probably a very poor list.
I’m just coming up with a starting point, to hopefully get people to think about strategies, and to share these thoughts. I think many have agreed, and have written much about the restrictions we have on us. I think that should be the start of a solution-brainstorm. At the end of the day, both repressors and repressed are all equally human, equally capable, equally motivated
Is Procreation Ethical? Is Humanity worth preserving?
“If an action you took necessarily results (albeit indirectly) in the death of another person, is it ethical for you to take this action? “
The intutive answer that most people would give is “Of course it is UNETHICAL!”
Perhaps they would attach a condition, like ‘unless it’s for self-defense/to save many more lives/as a punishment for crime’ etc etc.
However, these people would have no qualms about the act of procreation.
Yet, Procreation is an Act which Necessarily results in the death of another Peson.
As soon as a person is conceived, the only certain event in his/her life is Death.
This person would not have an choice in the matter. The conception of this person is not a consented event — in conceiving a new person and hence making his death an inevitable event, the consent rights of this person is violated.
Yet few people ever see it this way.
Consider for a moment, the conditions people attach to my starting statement — that it is ethical only if that Action is for self-defense, for saving many more lives or as a form of punishment.
Apply these conditions to the act of procreation again.
It would logically follow that having a child as a means of self-defense ( to harvest her organs to save your own life, to be sold to save you from starvation, to save your marriage etc etc) , or as a means for saving more lives ( to harvest his organs for people who are dying of organ failure, to demand your child fight in a war etc etc) would be a lot more ethical than having a child simply for the hedonistic pleasure of having a child (often labelled as ‘love’).
Before the advent of cheap, widely available contraceptives, pregnancy was something that HAPPENED to people; it wasn’t a choice (Ok, I’m pressuming here that life-long abstinence is way too morally-demanding for most people). If a consequence is beyond one’s control, then it is meaningless to discuss the ethics of the action that caused the consequence.
In today’s context, Procreation has become a CHOICE, — choice of using contraceptives or not.
And that makes it meaningful to discuss the ethics of that CHOICE. Especially, when that CHOICE could result in the conception, and hence the necessary death, of another person.
That is the first part of this issue anyway.
The second part now.
I was discussing this issue with my bioethics professor.
She brought up this point . If everyone ceased to procreate, then humanity would disappear.
That led to the next question that I’ve been pondering on, for a long long time.
What is so valuable about humanity that we should preserve it?
Now, I’m not talking about going on a killing spree — the unconsented deprivation of exisitng life is outright wrong to me, and to most people.
In NOT procreating, you do not violate anyone’s rights and no one is being harmed. ( I don’t think anyone would ever claim the unconceived person’s rights are violated, because there is an infinate number of unconceived people, and it would be ridiculous to say we are violating all their rights)
The value of humanity depends on its observers/valuators.
I was watching The Watchmen last night (the movie inspired this post). Laurie tries to persuade Dr Manhattan to save humanity. Dr Manhattan questions the value of humanity and why he should save it. If humanity disappeared, the galaxy would not even notice it.
For billions of years, the universe existed without humanity. Without humanity, it would continue to exist for billions of years. Species come and species go. It is hubris for us to believe that anyone apart from humanity values humanity. ( Unless you believe in a God who does. Which brings about the next question — do you need to believe in God to see humanity as valuable? )
If we stopped procreating , so that no one else need die, humanity would cease to exist. The value of humanity would also cease, because the only ones who value humanity would have ceased to exist.
What is so good about humanity that we should preserve it by creating new people?
That’s my second question.
And so, in summary, on International Womens’ Day, and response to The Watchmen, I pose 2 questions to all my readers who did not find this post tl;dr, and were kind enough to read up to this point = )
1a. “If an action you took necessarily results (albeit indirectly) in the death of another person, is it ethical for you to take this action? “
1b. If yes, is Procreation an unethical act, because all procreated people will necessarily die one day?
2. What is so good about humanity that we should preserve it by creating new people?
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