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CuSithBell comments on Positive Thinking - Less Wrong
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Ah, was my language too strong? I apologize - my point was simply this: that all too often in discussions of the value of Christian community etc., the political, emotional, and physical harms tied up in the same structures that maintain these communities are elided.
This is why I said "not all Christian communities are like the one I attended." I cannot think of a single area where "my" church took a noxious position on human rights. It meant that they focused more on certain parts of the Bible ("love your neighbor as yourself" etc) than on other more negative parts.
Well, for one, it sounds like it explicitly condemns homosexuality? Maybe that's not precisely what you'd call a "position on human rights", but it still causes harm.
From what I saw, the general sentiment was "we feel like we should believe homosexuality is wrong because it says so in the Bible, but we're a bit embarrassed about that, so we're just not going to talk about the issue." Some churches focus more on that element than others though. (One branch of the Canadian Anglican church, for example, has explicitly declared that they're OK with homosexual ministers.)
I'm not sure whether that constitutes a position on human rights or not, and whether it's a noxious position if so.
It is certainly an active refusal to adopt a position I can endorse on a human rights issue. Then again, pretty much everyone I know is in that position with respect to some issue or other.
For my own part, I have difficulty endorsing any community that is incapable of supporting families like my husband and I, and I would not feel welcomed or supported by them.
I'm unclear on why the parent has been voted down. Can someone who has downvoted it please explain?
Thinking about it, I suppose they might be rejecting the idea that my endorsal of a community should be contingent on that community offering support for families like mine.
Which, actually, I agree with; there are lots of communities I endorse that don't actively support such families. Heck, LW is itself such a community, insofar as it has not getting involved in politics as a virtue, given that the existence of my family is a political issue in the U.S..
It was clear to me that by "community" I meant community of the sort Swimmer963 was talking about, but I can certainly understand if that wasn't clear to others.
The idea seems reasonable to me; it would be pretty tough to get any of the support benefits of a community if the community explicitly won't offer you support. :-\
I think that's a somewhat different kind of support than what swimmer963 was talking about. For a given community to be considered supportive of you, they only have to actively support you. If they hypocritically denounce others who are in the same situation as you but who aren't part of the particular community, that's an indication of internal doublethink going on and also a stress on the relationship between you and the community, but I dunno if I'd call it "unsupportive".
Sure. There's a reason I talk about support for my family here, rather than support for me.
I mean, something like "Hey, Dave, we think you're awesome, and it's a real shame that you're caught up in this relationship, and we want you to know that whatever we can do to help you get over that, we're here for you, buddy!" is perhaps supportive of me, but it is certainly not supportive of my family.
(I actually had someone say essentially this to me once, upon discovering that I was queer. We'd met professionally, and she made me a job offer to join her on a startup, and had commented that she was a devout Christian and that was very important to her. I commented in turn that I was indifferent to her religion, but it might make her reconsider the offer upon knowing about my sexuality. Which indeed it did. I thanked her for her concern, let her know that I didn't consider my family to be at all inappropriate, and offered my assistance should she ever choose to get over her religious affiliation, and we haven't spoken since. But I digress.)
That is...fairly horrible. Good comeback though.
Oh, yeah, that is pretty nasty. I was imagining something more along the lines of "Oh, we support you and you family, you're not like those other gay families".
Of course it constitutes a position on human rights. Human rights are not passive things. They must be actively defended or they simply cease to exist. Tyrannies often begin not with the stripping of rights but simply with a lack of enforcement (Haebius Corpus? Don't worry, you still have that right - it says so right here on this paper.) until the memory of it fades away.
There are no rights but those we take. When someone expresses doubts that a particular group of humans should be allowed certain rights they are attacking the concept of universal human rights in its entirety. And anyone who is embarrassed into silence rather than at least saying "no, that's wrong" is implicit in the murder of human rights.
Some groups of humans are excluded from rights that other humans have, in every legal system. Examples would include minors, convicted criminals, and adults who have been found mentally incompetent. Going further, you have the right to own and dispose of your own property, and I do not share this right to your property. I don't subscribe to any conception of "universal human rights" that would suggest otherwise.
Those are, in my opinion, all examples of groups that don't have the power to enforce their rights. They lack the numbers to protect their rights, and lack the ability to draw powerful allies to their cause. Another example of "no rights but those we take."
Which is exactly why I wish to keep social pressure high for all humans to defend what I consider the most basic rights. Reminding people that rights must be actively defended, and condemning those who shrink away from doing so, is one tactic. I do this because I'm rather attached to the rights I have now, and would like to hold on to them. You do not?
I'm surprised at your reaction. Let me illustrate my examples: for "minors," think "five year olds." For "incompetents" think "people in comas." For criminals...well, just think about convicted criminals. You can't seriously be arguing that criminals should never be punished. There is no society on Earth that does not restrict the rights of minors, convicted criminals, and adults who have been found mentally incompetent.
I'm not arguing that (see replies to Davids). But I also note that I am not a minor, convicted criminal, or mentally incompetent and therefore expect I may be biased. I certainly don't trust everything I think, and I note that as long as I'm running on hostile hardware it can be in my best interest to follow certain rules proven to protect me against myself.
Question: are there other reasons, in your opinion, why the rights of these groups might be restricted? Or is it purely a matter of power?
To put this another way, and to pick a specific example for clarity: suppose on Tuesday, Sam and Pat are both free to walk around the city as they choose. Then on Wednesday, Sam and Pat are put in a cage (or whatever), preventing them from exercising this freedom. They attempt to prevent this, and attempt to enlist powerful allies to prevent it, and they fail.
From your perspective, is it correct to claim that their rights are being curtailed and I deserve condemnation if I fail to defend those rights... for example, if I have the key to that cage and don't use it to free them?
Or are there additional factors that need to be established to justify that claim?
There are many reasons why certain actions should be taken, such as putting someone in a cage. It may prevent others from doing whatever it was that prompted us to put that person in a cage. However it is still true that in general we are all better off if everyone possesses a love of freedom for all, even if in this individual case the consequences of locking someone up outweigh other considerations. Thus we should respect that their right to freedom exists even as we are violating it, and acknowledge that the world would be a better place if this wasn't necessary.
That's all in ideal-world-land though. In practice, it's just a matter of power. Right now there are war criminals giving book tours and talk-show circuits in the US who are free because they harnessed a great deal of power over their lives. And there are national heroes who are locked away in isolation because they made those people uncomfortable.
I'm trying to understand your last few posts. Do you believe that human rights SHOULD BE universal, but in fact ARE only for those who take them? Or does 'universal' here mean something like 'with the inherent ability to claim and enforce them'? Because I'm not sure why it would be fundamental that criminals would be unable to enforce their rights?
Because of this, I'm not sure if you think we should defend rights for criminals, minors and/or the mentally incompetent as well as for homosexuals.
As a side point, you say that you encourage others to defend rights because you're attached to your own rights. Is this a case of valuing them in others because you do in yourself, or a matter of your own rights being safeguarded by a society that defends rights in general?
As I said to TheOtherDavid, there are sometimes reasons to take actions that violate others rights. There are more such reasons for violating the rights of minors/criminals/mentally incompetant than for homosexuals and so I'd put more energy into preventing the violation of rights against homosexuals. In fact I think there's so few reasons for violating the rights of homosexuals that I view it as an affront to civilization and to myself as a civilized human to do so.
Both.
What about people who simply are silent, but not necessarily embarrassed?
I mean, there are lots of people in the world whose rights are being deprived, and I am silent about most of them most of the time. So is pretty much everyone I know. I don't know all of our emotional motivations, but our silence is demonstrable.
If that means we're all implicit in the murder of human rights and the spread of tyranny, I can accept that, but it's not clear that there's any grounds for singling out Swimmer's community for special treatment (which I understood to be the original context) on that basis.
I don't spend every minute decrying all the injustices of humanity, but if someone I know says in my presence that muslims are violent I at least let them know of my disapproval. Maybe that's a contributing factor to Swimmer's non-believing friends seeming grumpy and judgmental.
Actually I like it when people frankly correct other people's incorrect opinions. The negativity I'm talking about is more on the line of 'I hate this job, I'm so bored, my family is so stupid, I'm so sick of school' and also comments like 'That kid has the biggest head ever, I bet it makes her sink to the bottom of the pool' or 'seriously, why do fat people keep coming here and buying chips? They should just die.' This is the kind of negativity I see a LOT less of in Christian circles. Atheists may also be more likely to correct people's opinions, being more contrarian, but it's not something I've noticed personally.