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Rights are not a plaything
Browse through any media content and you will invariably bump up against a whole slew of opinion pieces talking about rights, often arguing that the authors own version of rights is the best way of understanding rights in the round. What many writers, especially those on the right, forget is that rights are not an abstraction in isolation, each person’s rights are always in tension with every other persons. Your personal rights, and the way you perceive other people’s rights, is subjective, and the way you project your understanding is equally subjective. Right wing ideologues often demand we pay attention to their personal subjectivity, failing to see that in their rush to proclaim their rights they are in fact treating rights as a plaything to be used and abused.
For rights are not something to be hoarded and jealously guarded. Rights are communal, a communal expression of understanding. Rights emerge as oppression and fear of oppression become apparent. You have no need for rights on an island of one, for unless you are a masochist you are not going to oppress yourself. Thus, when it comes to talking about rights as they emerge within communities and networks there is an explicit need for empathy and narrative of hospitality. Rights are not toys that you snatch from others, a mount you heap ever more verbiage on top of. They are the conversations we have, the understandings we build, and the…
