Friday 8 March 2019

Humans, Humanity, and Human Rights - Chapter 1 (B)

This project commenced with a conceptual outline, published on Saturday 1st December, 2018, at: https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2018/12/humans-humanity-and-human-rights.html
I’ve decided I’ll post each chapter in its first, raw state, and you, Dear Reader, can see if my later research (probably long after I've finished this first version, in my retirement, should I be fortunate enough to actually get to retire) led to any change. (You can also think about the points I am making.) 
I've come up with an initial structure of the book (no guarantees it won't change), and will add the links to each chapter in the latest installment as they are published. Owing to the size of each chapter, I will have to publish this using the sub-chapters. Links below, and also here.

*****

Chapter One – Introduction to Concepts, and On Early Humans

B.  The Benefits of Human Rights


My personal experience (I acknowledge that others’ experience may vary: both sets of experience are valid and deserve genuine, objective consideration) is that critics of human rights tend to portray such rights as a benefit to the individual, and that the matter of benefit to the broader group requires separate consideration.
Well, while there are many benefits to individuals-  and groups - from the recognition, provision and enforcement of human rights (and I will come back to in other chapters), the notion that such rights are of no benefit to larger groups is complete and utter rubbish (my very first draft phrased that more strongly . . . so you could also insert an “expletive deleted” in there, if you wish J ), and, IMO, possibly reflects more a fear of losing power - irrespective of whether that power is fair or foul - than a valid concern.
Groups, whether they are the wide range of modern families (they’re not all “nuclear” families, incidentally), an organisation, a culture / society / nation or an ancient tribe, are, in general, better (“more effective”) when the individual people who make that group up are “better”.
A family of people in genuinely loving regard for each other will naturally pull together in hard times (such as an illness), whereas a family where regard has been coerced will only grudgingly, if at all, pull together. Even worse, a family subject to a problem such as domestic violence or gender discrimination is only harming its members, and is as.
A society that discriminates against certain people is inherently weaker because of the loss of access to human capital – the skills and potential of the excluded, marginalised people. As a good example of this, Markevich and Zhuravskaya’s paper “The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire” [1] contains the following:
“We document substantial increases in agricultural productivity, industrial output, and peasants’ nutrition in Imperial Russia as a result of the abolition of serfdom in 1861. . . . The improvements amounted to about a 17.7 percent increase in Russia’s GDP in the second half of the nineteenth century.”
An organisation such as a company is better when workers are treated fairly and well, with genuine (not manipulative, coercive or false) concern for their wellbeing, than a place where workers are pushed into overtime, don’t have a proper work-life balance, or are modern slaves. (Furthermore, the problems of those places will eventually spread and harm the broader society that they are part of, in a reverse of the gains from freedom that Markevich and Zhuravskaya’s paper illustrated .)
Some media articles which give what I consider a good perspective on this (you, Dear Reader, and others are free to disagree) are:

  • “The market for virtue: why companies like Qantas are campaigning for marriage equality”, by Carl Rhode, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney, 28th August, 2017 [2];
  • “How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand”, by Stephen Bell, Professor of Political Economy, The University of Queensland, 17th July, 2018) [3];
  • “Low wage growth: Working Australia's great struggle is threatening economic growth”, Julia Holman, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), 14th June, 2018 [4].

Similarly, if we turn our consideration to those ancient times when humans had just evolved, those tribes which treat their members well are probably more likely to get more effort from those members, whereas those that don’t may even lose members to other tribes.
That doesn’t, unfortunately, mean that all tribes were “good”. No doubt some people were more aggressive than others, and may have taken on – perhaps by coercion, perhaps by blunt force, perhaps by subtle manipulation - leadership roles they were ill suited to, and in the course of doing so or as a result of having done so quite possibly even harming the wellbeing of some of the tribes members.
Whether such people survived in those leadership roles may well have been subject to how well others could contribute to the tribe despite the poor leadership of overly aggressive people, as well as the complexities of group dynamics generally. Nevertheless, I consider such a tribe, surviving despite a poor leader, would do better under fairer, more humane conditions which are therefore of benefit to both the individual and the group.
Humane.
Humanity.
Human.
Loaded words, perhaps.
(and a lead into the next sub-chapter, when it comes)


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