Truce

Peace begins with a truce over conflicting rights.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

That is the first article of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are twenty-nine more. They all contain words awaiting definition and are based on assumptions that could confound an army of philosophers. I am not one of those, but I am not too timid to speculate about it because I enjoy a discussion. It is my hobby. I don't do Sudoku.

Let me start with some unstated premises behind the declaration, of which I can identify five (after half an hour of head scratching).

1. There should be a code to which we can defer whenever the wants of one person or group are in conflict with those of another person or group. If there is no code, then we follow the whims of the powerful and the rest of us just submit and suffer. I don't have the power and I don't like to suffer, so let's have a code.

2. There is no code unless we agree upon a code. It is what we say it is, and what we say emerges from our thoughts informed by social norms, experience, circumstances, and debate. Some may insist that God dictates the code, in which case those with differing gods will disagree on the code, which means the code is what we say it is, QED.

3. Rights are reciprocal; they always go two ways, you to me and me to you, or society to me and me to society. In other words, rights flipped around are duties. (See article 29).

4. Because the code is an artifact of human conscience, it will evolve as human awareness evolves.

5. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is notable for what is left out, specifically anything nonhuman, and that is one vector along which it must evolve as we become aware of and responsible to the larger system in which humanity is imbedded.

If you want to join in a discussion, I suggest running the pandemic or climate change or indigenous policies through this filter to see what comes out.

Or maybe just do Sudoku, your choice.