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Carrier's list o' rights
Steve Mizrach (SEEKER1@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU)
Sat, 23 Apr 1994 00:32:00 -0400
>D StC asked what a list of universal human rights might look like.
> Not without irony, I offer the following:
Okay, JGC, with irony I look at your list...
> 1. Freedom from want
"Want" meaning what? Needs? Desires? Whims? People want many things, some
of them patently ungrantable by society.
> 2. Freedom from fear
Unfortunately, this means that in the name of universal human rights, we
must abolish haunted houses, horror movies, and PhD exams. I would argue
that not only is eliminating fear from human life probably impossible, it
might not even be desirable. Like other emotions, fear has its cathartic
value, even if we probably should not be going around afraid most of the
time.
> 3. Freedom to work
As a member of the Slacker Generation, as long as the "freedom not to work"
(e.g., "to slack") is implicit in the "freedom to work," then I find this
last one acceptable.
> Caveat lector,
>
> James G. Carrier
>
>29, University Circle / Charlottesville, Virginia, 22903
>(804) 971-2983 / jgc5p@virginia.edu
For a minute, JGC, I thought you were going to invoke Freud, who said that
the three things all human beings needed was to be free to "be, love, and
work." Since your list addresses neither the right to live (or exist as a
human being, which goes beyond biological life) nor to love/be loved, I
suppose it is not derived from Freud.
Seeker1 [@Nervm.Nerdc.Ufl.Edu] (real info available on request)
CyberAnthropologist, TechnoCulturalist, Guerilla Ontologist, Chaotician
Matrix Master Control Node #3, Gainesville, Fl.
"I slept with Faith & found a corpse in my arms upon awakening/ I drank and
danced all night with Doubt and found her a virgin in the morning." --
Crowley
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