Humans, Humanity, and Human Rights - A Preview

From a future chapter of my coming book:

How we live our individual lives governs what happens to human rights on the “big” scale (groups, businesses, nations, world-wide).

If we’re insular and fearful (including xenophobic), fascism and other –isms can take root and flourish.

If we’re objective thinkers (the term “critical thinker” has too many negative connotations for everyday [i.e., non-academic] people [1] ), well- informed, aware of and actively manifest our essential humanness and helping others to do likewise, our personal lives are likely to be better (richer and rewarding in important ways, with healthier interactions, free of the flaw of assuming others will be or are like us, and the groups we’re in also healthier, respectful and genuinely beneficial), and attempts at establishing oppression or committing abuse will flicker and then snuff out.

The question for the future is: when that will happen? It will happen, ultimately: we’ve evolved so much since we first evolved, and, although it’s been a bit two-steps-forward-one-backward at many times, we manage to meander to better places eventually. Thus, we will eventually see the connection between the individual and the large scale, and the benefits to both of making sure we, as individual humans, become better at nourishing, nurturing and expressing our essential humanity.

The biggest threat to whether we can meander through to that better place at the moment is the under-acknowledged existentialist threat caused by climate change.

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[1] Including destructive, unbalanced, argumentative, obstructionist, put down, etc. The word “:objective”, in my opinion, better conveys the meaning most academics (the good ones J ) have when they use the term “critical thinking”, which means not getting sucked in, checking the concept, but does NOT mean attacking people (which an elitist academic would describe as an “ad hominin” attack, which shuts out many people rather than using an equally valid, but more widely understood, term) or being uncaring of their emotional state. While I’m having this whinge, in my opinion, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when developing objective (aka “critical”) thinking is the emotional reaction of denial people have – subconsciously, generally – to the implications of matters – such as, for example, climate change. Now, the classical academic approach to managing emotions seems to be denial / suppression, but that simply kills those academics humanity – which makes them less as human beings, cuts the concepts off from non-academic humans, and raises valid questions about all of their work (this is why the ethicist Peter Singer * is sometimes vehemently criticised, in my opinion). A better approach is to work constructively with emotions (no, not in a naïve New Age way – and definitely not in a management fad of mindfulness way), which enables the use of better wording, and the addressing of key issues – or at least their acknowledgement, if the academic(s) want those dealt with by more qualified people. (Incidentally, I repeat that, while I have a professional qualification, it is not what anyone in their right mind would consider scientific or similarly academic. But I have known quite a few – some of whom are dear friends who I understand no more than 80% of the time J )
 * See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Singer&oldid=885258273 (particularly https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Singer&oldid=885258273#Protests), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Singer, https://petersinger.info/, https://www.ted.com/speakers/peter_singer, and https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/peter-singer.