• TheDemonBuer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    2 months ago

    Isn’t the idea of rights that they are endowed upon or imbued into each individual by some supernatural authority, like a god? I mean, aren’t rights metaphysical, in that they are not context dependent, and exist even outside of time and space itself? Like, the idea of inherent individual rights is that you can remove a person from any given time and place, move that individual to any other time and place, and their “rights” would follow with them, not unlike a soul.

      • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        2 months ago

        Well, I didn’t construct this description out of thin air. It’s based on how the concept of individual rights has been explained to me by various people over the years.

          • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            01·
            2 months ago

            I don’t have a written record of every interaction I’ve ever had regarding this topic, unfortunately.

            However, I’ve had a number of conversations or debates that have gone something like:

            I will say that rights are essentially meaningless without a sufficiently strong state to enforce said rights, and they’ll reply that the state doesn’t grant rights, they can only take them away, and that the rights are theirs even if the state doesn’t recognize or enforce them. These conversations are usually with people who are very suspicious of state authority, even going so far as wanting to see the state abolished completely.

            It’s kind of understandable, they’re usually American and one of the foundational documents of the US famously states that “…all men are…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Every child in the US is taught this, more or less from birth.