Mar 16, 2023
The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.
– Charles Malik
The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.
– Charles Malik
The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.
– Charles Malik
On Guns and Violence and Understanding
On Guns and Violence and Understanding
Another.
5 dead, 21 wounded in Texas.
I suspect that the reasons for the epidemic-like uptick in gun violence and school shooting are probably more like 50-100 (or maybe 1000’s) of reasons in nature.
Fear is an issue. The greater availablity of guns is an issue. The rise of internet insighment to radical thinking is an issue. The alienation of teens is an issue.
The breakdown of the…
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The Importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
As has been noted in a post about the recent launching of the new U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the following favorable comments about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): “The Commission will focus on “human rights grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An…
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Review: Christ and Crisis
Review: Christ and Crisis
Christ and Crisis, Charles Malik. Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2015 (originally published by Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1962).
Summary: Contends that the deepest crisis of his (our) age is a spiritual crisis that the church properly addresses by laying hold of all the resources and pursuing the calling of people of faith.
Charles Malik was a Lebanese diplomat and a drafter of the 1948 Universal…
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The fastest way to change society is to mobilise the women of the world.
Charles Malik Change will happen regardless but women can speed up the process. If not we still have the power to influence the next generation.
The Individual's Benefits of Duties
“I have duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of my personality is possible.” –Charles Malik, Talk on Human Rights
This first person statement is a twin to the second person Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
In his speech "Talk on Human Rights", Charles Malik spoke about the concept of duties in Article 29 of the UDHR. It may seem fitting in some aspects to address the topic of duties when discussing rights, and even Malik affirmed that there was some lobbying for matching every right with a duty in the UDHR. However, my first reaction to putative duties established in a document that was meant to restore humanity and the rights of the individual against often-oppressive government was slight consternation. How could duties, as I perceived them, belong in the liberal UDHR? Could the duties established help “proclaim man’s irreducible humanity, to the end that he may yet recover his creative sense of dignity and reestablish his faith in himself”(Malik)?
Malik notes that Article 29 is the only mention of duties in the UDHR. Additionally he opposes the focus on duties to society over restoring humanity. Malik also stresses that it is not any and every community that these duties are prescribed; rather it is the community that benefits the individual that ensures the freedom for “personality to be developed” (Malik, 3). These factors make Article 29 appear to be more about the individual’s benefit through these duties than the obligatory protection of states and community.
The duties discussed are not explicitly described in the UDHR, and they are not detailed nor clearly defined by Malik. In some respects, they can easily be perceived as vague. We can only be sure that there are certain moral and legal obligations to the specified “community”, but these obligations could range from the individual actively contributing to society to the individual refraining from an act. How do we know how these duties will benefit the individual?
Considering that these duties are conditional for free and full development, it’s important to examine such a community. Of course if a community is free and fosters development than its legal or moral code will be in accordance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore any legal or moral obligations would be beneficial to humanity. The duties are not sacrifices that would counter the individual’s development because that would paradoxically oppose the freedom for personal development. Plus, the legal code in the community would maintain freedom and opportunities for improvement. The continuation of the community to ensure freedom for individuals to be developed requires that the individuals follow the legal and moral code. Therefore fulfilling ones’ duties to the community would be for the benefit of the individual.
It is important to ponder Malik’s own objections to the emphasis on the individuals’ contributions to the state and society. However, the duties mentioned in Article 29 are clearly necessary. Just like the rest of the human rights should not be regarded as optional when trying to ensure a community in which humanity can thrive, neither can Article 29 be overlooked. My duties to the community that benefits me, whatever those duties may be, are not optional if I wish to be in accordance with the UDHR. There are things I must do, perfect duties, and things I must not do, imperfect duties. In regards to perfect duties, I must actively participate and contribute to changing and improving my community. At the same time, I must subscribe to imperfect duties, restraining myself from doing anything that could negatively impact my community or inhibit application of the UDHR. In regards to whether or not the duties are moral or legal, they should, in some sense, be both. It is undeniable that there is a moral duty one has to the community, and the idea has been around for awhile. Tolstoy advocated that people ought to follow the golden rule: "do on to others as you would have them do on to you". However, there may be a moral duty to follow the laws of such a moral community, resulting in legal duties to the community. So, when a community that fosters personal growth and freedom is present, there are imperfect duties and perfect duties on both the moral and legal levels.
However, what if that ideal community seems not to exist? According to the UDHR, I have no obligations to a community that does not benefit my humanity. My duties belong to “the community in which alone the free and full development of my personality is possible” and not to any other community. I am not obliged to the state if it is tyrannical or oppressive in nature according the UDHR. Likewise, I have no moral duty to any communities, whatever form they take, that are harsh and do not promote respect for human rights. Yet, in the absence of the desired community, do I have a responsibility to the potential future existence of said community? Unfortunately, there is not enough detail in Article 29 to clarify whether the duties extend to a potential community that would meet the needs of individuals for truth and progress towards their finest self. Should meliorism be translated into a moral duty? Do the duties we have better the community, or do they solely maintain it?
For a life worthy to be lived is one that is full of active aspiration, for something higher and better; and such a contemplation of the world we call meliorism . (Paul Carus, Monism and Meliorism)
The idea that humans can and ought to improve the world is not uncommon. Considering the characters of history demonstrating great social progress—Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and so forth, what shape would the world be in if they had not done what they did? Was it their moral duty to fight injustice and work for the betterment of humanity? Do we all have such a duty at some level, whether it is teaching others about human rights, volunteering to improve the human rights of others, or demanding that human rights violations be corrected? Personally, I am inclined to think so. In a world that is stained with deadly famine, a myriad of prisoners of conscience, the recurring plague of genocide and leaders who flaunt public executions, individuals must restore the world’s humanity, the goal of the UDHR.
To me, duties had previously carried a negative connotation giving me apprehension about the idea of that they are beneficial for the individual. However, it is for my benefit, my ability to develop as a human being that I have duties to the community that fulfills the objectives of the UDHR. However these duties are not applicable to communities who do not follow such objectives, but could be applicable to a non-existing community that does so. The passage is question inducing, complex, and, yet, genuinely straightforward. I will continue pondering the gaps in the sarcastic gifts of diplomacy’s translation of truth and noble ideals into vague and maneuverable words. Yet the fact remains:
“I have duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of my personality are possible.”
Breaking the Norm
It was spring 2012 in Dr. Hope May’s Philosophy of International Criminal Law class when I first heard a phrase I hope to live by for the rest of my life: “If not you, who? If not now, when?” an interpretation of a passage by Hillel the Elder. This phrase is a call to action for me; so much so that I have it tattooed on my wrists as a constant reminder. It demands courage. It demands breaking the norm. It demands actions that we are so conditioned to not take. It is not the easy way to live and that is why it is important. It reminds me that if I do not stand up for what is right then I cannot expect other to do so. As a society we are encouraged by capitalist machinery and material wants to be complacent in our own objectification. We are expected to be a passive undistinguishable member of an unconcerned populace. The upper end of the social hierarchy want nothing more than to continue our willing slavery to a system that creates wealth and privilege for a few and poverty and unrest for the majority. A system that creates such imbalance and injustice that
“The value of pet products sold annually in the United States is four times the GNP of Ethiopia. The sales of just the two giants General Motors and Ford easily surpass the value of all black Africa's economies. According to the United Nations Development Program, "Ten people, the ten richest men on the planet, own wealth equivalent to the value of the total production of fifty countries, and 447 multimillionaires own a greater fortune than the annual income of half of humanity” (Eduardo Galliano, Upside-down: A Primer to the Looking glass World.)
It is facts like these along with much worse realities that ‘shock my conscience.’
Shocking facts about the world I live in along with a deep and almost unquenchable thirst to leave the world better than I found it are what drive me to aspire to become a leader in the human rights field. In order to do so it is necessary to be able to communicate powerful messages that some people are not ready to hear, but none the less these messages must be thrust onto the world or it will never change. Courage is essential. While it is imperative to say the things that are hard to say or controversial or radical it is also important to be able to connect with the populace on a level that appeals to emotions rather than reason. As Charles Malik pointed out in “Talk on Human Rights,” “If your institutions and traditions are not adapted for the production of a ringing message which will appeal to the mind and hearts of others and on which you can stake your whole life, then in the present world in which man is desperately hungry for truth and conviction, you cannot lead.”
While Malik expresses the need to wins people’s hearts in order to win their minds he also expresses an idea that goes as far back as Socrates. The idea that you must be willing to give all, including your life, to the causes you find most worthy, and, furthermore, that this is what will allow you to win the hearts of other. You need to be deeply invested in your ideals in order to convince other that you are worthy of following. Socrates took his conviction all the way to death. Socrates was of the thought that if he truly had thought about, believed in, and subscribed to a system of ideas that he should stick by them even when it meant his own death. This is either a problem or solution for decision making. It comes down to whether you sacrifice your ideals in extreme situations or you stick by them no matter the consequences.
In the end it all comes down to flesh and blood. It comes down to the human element. Do we stick by our ideals even when lives are at stake? Or are there times when it is imperative to throw out our ideals in order to save the lives of other or our own. Socrates gave all for his ideals but should he have? While I hope to have strong convictions and be passionate enough to put my life on the line for it I also think there are times, however rare, when flesh and blood come before ideals.