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"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone h

• marginalia_nu 5y ago
  I'm just gonna play the devil's advocate here for a moment, because I do think there is an interesting discussion to have. The argument seems to be that we have rights because the UN says so. Who or what endowed the UN (or anyone else) with the prerogative to declare human rights? Let's imagine a that the UN would change its mind and declares the right to eternal salvation, and mandates that every state submit to the authority of the holy see. If the current rights are "true" human rights, and the right to salvation is a "false" human right, what sets them apart given that the UN in this hypothetical scenario declares them both? How do rights become true or false?
  • eej71 5y ago
    I think you've asked a good question. I would rephrase it a bit as - to what in reality gives rise to the concept rights? The answer in this thread appears to be - if enough of a majority of people in power say its true, then its true.
  • mdp2021 5y ago
    > How do rights become true or false Not «true or false»: part of the "social contract".
    • marginalia_nu 5y ago
      This doesn't really change the question. If two people (or groups) are arguing over whether something is part of the social contract, how can we tell which of them is correct? This also seems to go against the spirit of human rights. How can we motivate minority rights in a society that feels justified persecuting minorities (i.e. in a society where minority rights are not part of the social contract)?
      • chii 5y ago
        > how can we tell which of them is correct? might makes right. That has always been the case in nature, because it's the only way that worked so far.
        • marginalia_nu 5y ago
          If you are correct and it's all down to majorities bullying minorities around, how can we motivate human rights? Especially since they seem to have been instituted to prevent majorities bullying minorities around.
          • po1nt 5y ago
            Reduce power of the majority by collectively limiting power of government.
            • tremon 5y ago
              And what happens when government stops being the majority power in a country? Should we still work to limit the power of government, or should we work towards limiting the power of the new majority?
              • po1nt 5y ago
                The issue is whether the new majority power gives itself monopoly of violence.
            • mytailorisrich 5y ago
              That's exactly what having basic rights and human rights does. Of course this is a bit circular reasoning because this works only if everyone abides by these rules, so in practice protects only against relatively 'mild' infringements and situations (i.e. the people are expected to be reasonable enough not to vote extremists in power... if not, all bets are off but that's true of all laws)
  • toxik 5y ago
    I think this is an extremely reductionist view of the UN. The UN was not formed in a vacuum, it was formed in the wake of two consecutive world wars in order to solve international disputes amicably. The UN declaration holds power precisely because it is a declaration, members agree on it.
    • schleck8 5y ago
      The UN as a whole doesn't hold as much power as people think. The only organ that can mandate is the security council. The general assembly can only make recommendations. So we are rather talking about thr interests of a handful of countries.
    • po1nt 5y ago
      Members agree on it yet no one upholds it to the full standard. North korea is a member of the UN, so is China. If we say this is what applying these standards looks like, then this declaration is useless.
      • ratww 5y ago
        Saying that something is useless because it's not perfect is the worse possible and most naive argument one can offer. Life is not a computer program or a math equation. Rules do have exception, especially in complicated systems like "the entire world".
        • po1nt 5y ago
          I believe in this case it's indeed useless as a set of rules. If we'd call it as it seems to be, a "suggestion", we could say it has some purpose.
          • ratww 5y ago
            It is a framework of rules that countries decide to implement into their own. Those countries who implemented it decided it was a useful enough set of rules to implement at home. Others didn't. If by "this is a useless set of rules" you are saying "oh, c'mon! This is not the law"... then yeah, you're right. It's not legally binding. It says so in the first paragraphs of Wikipedia. But it was useful to others as a framework and model.
  • ratww 5y ago
    Some of the premises in your post are incorrect. -- > The argument seems to be that we have rights because the UN says so. That's not the argument. The reasons we have human rights is because individual countries decided to implement them. The Universal Declaration itself is not legally binding. It's just an agreement that participating countries decided to implement into their own laws. UN can't force countries who didn't vote into it to implement. They can't even force countries who actually voted for it to implement it. However, individual countries have the freedom to complain or stop trading with countries who don't implement, or on countries that implement but don't follow. Out of the things that countries do to each other, this seems like a minor thing. -- > Who or what endowed the UN (or anyone else) with the prerogative to declare human rights? Nobody. Anyone can declare human rights. I've declared a few myself yesterday during tea time. The Universal Declaration carries its weight because it was made and approved by the countries themselves who took part in the UN at a certain time. It's not as if some crazy person at the UN has the power to change something in the document at their will. And even if they did, so what?
    • marginalia_nu 5y ago
      Ok, if as you say, human rights can just be declared arbitrarily by anyone and have no special significance or legal power beyond being a fancy way of saying "I want this", why would anyone care about human rights in the first place?
      • ratww 5y ago
        People care because they read the thing and thought it sounded like a bunch of good ideas to implement in their own neck of the woods. Some politician brings it home a copy and tries to make law, representatives vote. That's it. People routinely suggest new human rights and some people agree and others disagree. There is no higher court or secret world parliament deciding your life. You asked "How do rights become true or false?". Well, by becoming new laws in individual countries.
        • marginalia_nu 5y ago
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    It is possible that some countries may provide better human rights than the UN can even hope for. :) One thing is for sure, despite one of its own Supreme Court jurists championing the idea of a "right to privacy",1 America now has some of the poorest privacy protection, culturally and legally, of any country. This intended disregard for privacy today puts money in many Americans' pockets, particularly the Silicon Valley crowd. 1 https://archive.org/stream/jstor-1321160/1321160_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/jstor-1321160/1321160_djvu.txt Was talking to someone in their 80's in the US about the telephone service they had as a child. Operators could listen in on calls. But did they. Honest question. Operators certainly were not jumping into a call and injecting advertising. Nor were they recording metadata, e.g., who someone's contacts are, call history, etc., to support an advertising service. Operators sometimes knew callers personally IRL. This older person was telling me she knew her local operator and one time when she called someone twice in the same day, her friend the operator asked her why she was caling the same person again. "You just called her." Operators could also make free calls and some did. Did people back then have a better concept of privacy than young people today who have been brainwashed by SV.
  • po1nt 5y ago
    I agree, human rights are arbitrary rules built to resemble some kind of framework for policy making in west or west-like societies. But the issue here is the selective enforcement of these rules. It's similar to geneva convention. You can't break it if you're not in war but only in "armed conflict".
  • roenxi 5y ago
    Human rights don't have any special weight because of the UN. Nobody should care what the UN thinks. The heft that they have is because the UN is one of the most wishy-washy and politically petty organisations on the planet. Anything that they can agree on probably is a reasonably universal human value. They would not agree to eternal salvation, for example. The list of things that the UN has agreed to are values not because they are expedient or nice to have, but because they have been generally proven to be hallmarks of civilised life. Losing a right to privacy is much, much scarier than people having private facets of their lives. And, if appeals to authority is what it takes to get people to agree to good ideas, then the UN is telling them these things are really good ideas. Better than whatever looks like a good idea in the short term then turns out not to be.
  • bobthechef 5y ago
    You're asking good 101 questions about rights[0]. I wish more people asked them because it's important to have a clear idea about what rights are and what they are grounded in. The social constructivist view seems to be having its heyday[1], producing all sorts of strange sui generis "rights" untethered from anything real, but there is much to be said about the natural law grounding of natural rights (as opposed to mere legal rights, or even the legal recognition of natural rights) which is then a matter of recognizing them. This is a realist view. But if you're looking for natural rights you can perceive through your senses (which you have indicated elsewhere in this thread), then you have a bad understanding of reality. You already believe in a number of intangible "things" which you've never perceived...like the notion that things must be perceivable through the senses to be considered real. This is a principle, a false principle, but something that is nonetheless taken by you to be true about reality. Otherwise, what are you even talking about? [0] But you're also asking a question that's a bit out of context. We are appealing to endoxa and the violations of privacy we are witnessing are unjustified given the general agreement about privacy as a right. [1] Not to nitpick since the essential question still stands, but since you mentioned the Holy See... > declares the right to eternal salvation, and mandates that every state submit to the authority of the holy see. Catholics do not believe they have a right to salvation. Salvation is a gratuitous gift of God, in fact so gratuitous that good works alone cannot deserve it and faith is needed.
  • GoblinSlayer 5y ago
    >How do rights become true or false? Here's how: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification
    • marginalia_nu 5y ago
      Right, but how does this process create truth?
      • ratww 5y ago
        Why does it have to? Who said it?
      • GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        Ratification makes them law.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    There isnt such a thing as "true" or god-given rights. This was a document agreed by the States that participate in the UN. Every rights declaration will be a compromise over what freedoms will be protected by law. Persons on isolation have infinite freedom , in societies, they dont
• mytailorisrich 5y ago
  The right to privacy is not, and has never been, absolute. Hence, for instance, the careful wording of the text you quote: It does not say "no interference" but rather "no arbitrary interference". There are attempts at infringing on privacy, yes, but we also see attempts at making privacy absolute, and I think the Tor Project is part of that trend. The realistic and reasonable approach is a trade-off, as has always been the case. Usually this takes the form of strong legal protections of privacy but with exceptions controlled by the courts (e.g. warrants for searches and interception of communications) and parliaments.