Orion Digest №9 — The Rights of Humanity

There is nothing in nature that I appreciate more than humanity. Our species, though it has committed acts wrong and right, is a beautiful work of art in it’s history, structure, and enduring quest to make a better world, and figure out their place in the universe. The tapestry of history that we have woven is, truthfully, filled with mistakes, but those mistakes have taught us lessons, and every day, we progress a little bit further.

One of the greatest parts, however, is not what we accomplish as a species, but we accomplish as people. Individual people, in their own worlds, living out their own unique stories. Each person is on a journey to find meaning and personal satisfaction in life, and that takes them to places that perhaps you and I would never see or think about. What may be mundane to one person is magical to another, and that means that billions of people are constantly experiencing something new. No one person is truly unimportant compared to another.

And yet, the lives of so many are held back by the constraints society has placed on them. Some groups are incapable of doing the same things as their neighbors because of who they are, who they love, how much of a imaginary currency they possess. We’ve trapped each other in small, invisible boxes; a perversion of how society should function. Our distrust and blind hatred of differences has created a society of false education that turns people who, in another life, could have been virtuous and friendly into racists, homophobes, sexists, and all the other vile categories of hatred that plague the world today.

For I think that is where the problem really starts — societal conditioning. Some factors are present in us from birth — ability, temper, personality types; but much of who we become is dependent on the circumstances of our childhood. In subtle ways, the biases and opinions of previous generations hang down on us — our parents, teachers, and other childhood influences all contribute to how we see the world. Our experiences of the world, too, help us see the world — the kinds of people we interact with and how they treat us, which in turn, is a product of how they were treated. Negativity is the spawn of growing up with negative experience, a subconscious weight added to every decision we make.

I often see history as a line of dominoes, with every event that happens being caused by every event that came before it. The conditions of one’s childhood are shaped by the world around it, which was shaped by the people of previous generations. They were, in turn, shaped by the world they grew up in, which was shaped by those who came before, and so on. Society is like a layered tower, where the faults and shape of every floor will result in changes and additions to the floor above it. By the top floor, you no longer have flat ground, and that is caused by all that came before.

As I have said, many of these faults are mistakes that breed lessons, lessons we have started to learn from. We have taken steps to better ourselves, and successive generations become more tolerant of others (we are not quite there yet, but there is improvement). Still, until the rights of humanity are respected in full, we cannot look at ourselves and be satisfied, because we not only continue to discriminate against each other unjustly, but we carry the marks, the weight of divisions in society, and we will likely unconsciously pass those on to our children.

A good guideline for social progress is measured by the rights and freedoms of any individual human. That is, if they are not only treated with the same respect as any other human being, but are able to live a satisfying life. This does not mean a life without hardship; rather, I think a healthy amount of struggle in life builds character. In school, you have to put effort into studying and work in order to learn and further your knowledge. The difference between just struggle and unjust struggle is whether or not every student has the chance to succeed, for the goal should be for everyone to eventually reach the goal. Students that take a bit longer to learn deserve help and more tailored programs, and should not be shamed for experiencing difficulty, but they should be lead to the same goal.

Another example of healthy struggle is labor. Society will always need labor of some sort to produce goods, otherwise we will not have the goods and services we need. Working at a craft will refine it, earn monetary reward, and contribute to the operation of society, giving skill, pay, and purpose all in one. It becomes unjust struggle when workers have no say in what they do, and are left at the mercy of wealthier higher-ups who would prefer to act in their own interests rather than the workers’. It is unjust when those that are unable to contribute are forced to in order to earn what they need to survive, and when education needed to get a job in the first place only puts the worker in further debt, making the path to stability like climbing up a steep hill of slippery mud.

Indeed, every citizen of the world should still have challenges, ones that inspire them to rise to the occasion and to improve themselves. However, the point of any challenge is not to permanently fail, it is to learn and succeed. At the end of the day, anyone, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, physical ability, religion, or any other of the factors which determine our identity, should have the right to live and to pursue their dreams. There should be no hindrance on someone because of what makes them who they are, and failure should not result in poverty and disgrace, but education and assistance.

Anyone on Earth, by virtue of their very existence, is entitled to have equal protection and freedom no matter their identity, and among those protections is the right to have the resources necessary to live. A system that does not allow for any person to be born and express themselves without oppression and financial obligation is inherently immoral. Why should someone be in debt the moment they are born? Why should the color of one’s skin and their choice of gender make their life matter any less in the eyes of society? The ability to be born and live freely is a simple right that people deserve, and it is baffling that our world has still not reached a point where it is the norm.

- DKTC FL