Human rights advocates stay very quiet about responsibilities except in respect of the duties the state owes. But this disguises the fact that positive obligations imposed on the state somewhere along the line always result in obligations being imposed on citizens.
Professor Rhodes - I know of your book and it’s been on my ‘to read’ list for some time. It would be great to be in touch. I’ll see if I can email you.
Thank you David. As a lay person I had always thought of human rights as the negative version. Now I understand what has given Kier Starmer and his ilk not only the power they wield, but the intellectual underpinning. But unfortunately I can't say it's made me happier.
In many ways it's simple - they are actually honest-to-goodness socialists. They think the State should own everything in order to distribute it fairly.
We can already observe the trajectory, i.e. "the complete replacement of the political by the juridical." in the way how the judiciary more and more abrogates the power of parliaments by deciding on the 'suitability' of any given law.
One point puzzles me: how can The State' as described above, act to ensure that intelligence is equally distributed, for the greater moral and economic well-being of the population?
An interesting essay - and I liked the more informal style. I generally prefer the written word in discourse to the spoken, but something 'half-way' is better still.
To the meat of the debate though... there is perhaps 'a third consequence'. Given that the State gets bigger, and the positivisation of rights gets greater, then the De Jassy State must exist in an increasing state(ha!) of mental confusion - trying to respect, protect, and fulfil while managing real world trade-off tasks of Government. You mention the patent absurdity of this but I'll extend the third consequence further and suggest that the State is making itself mentally ill trying to do too many absurd things.
So, treating the State as if it were a person, how many of the common cognitive biases does it suffer from?
Confirmation bias?
Hindsight bias?
Self-serving bias?
Anchoring bias?
Availability bias?
In an individual all of the above biases are the result of trying to reduce the cognitive load of making decisions. Is the State any less likely to practice these biases when trying to cope with increasing absurdity?
You could also make the argument that the failures of the political old guard and the resurgence of populism reflect an increasing mental confusion of the Powers That Be - but that would require another essay to explore fully.
Thank you, Dr McGrogan. No disrespect to academia intended, but as a scientist educated in two universities over 40 years ago, it seems to me the influence of academia has become massively disproportionate. In recent times, you only need look at the sort of daft ideas emanating from universities on respiratory viruses and weather attribution to realise that.
Excellent! I am a bit too uneducated to grasp a lot of what you said - however, I agree!
How accurate am I in thinking that these Demons seem to wear the cloak of rationality and logic, yet appear incapable of thinking past First Order effects?
Am I being too generous and what they merely do is Modern Magical Thinking?
I notice that all ills can apparently be cured by material progress - yet many of us sit alone in our furnished, centrally heated houses staring at screens for company.
Thank you. This article is so helpful. A couple of questions. How much of the totalising impulse of modernity and the state can be seen, historically speaking, in political entities, such as the British Empire, particularly the imperial management of peoples by ‘divide and rule’? I ask this because the British Empire was a global endeavour and, perhaps, the closest to a world government there has been in history. For example, the imperial state was the arbiter of competing rights claims by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Obviously, the Raj was unable to square this circle and ultimately led to its downfall in 1947. So, my second question is that could the contradictions inherent in ‘all rights for all’ actually lead to the downfall of this totalising trend of human rights governance? We already see this contradiction clearly within Britain with the competing rights claims of sex based right vs trans rights, or the rights to freedom of expression vs the right to be free from offensive speech.
What about human responsibilities. The obligation is to provide, not idly receive? I’m guessing we outsource that aspect to the state?
Human rights advocates stay very quiet about responsibilities except in respect of the duties the state owes. But this disguises the fact that positive obligations imposed on the state somewhere along the line always result in obligations being imposed on citizens.
Excellent. I addressed some of these issues in my book The Debasement of Human Rights (Encounter Books 2018)
Professor Rhodes - I know of your book and it’s been on my ‘to read’ list for some time. It would be great to be in touch. I’ll see if I can email you.
I would like to be in touch as well. aaronarhodes@gmail.com
Thank you David. As a lay person I had always thought of human rights as the negative version. Now I understand what has given Kier Starmer and his ilk not only the power they wield, but the intellectual underpinning. But unfortunately I can't say it's made me happier.
In many ways it's simple - they are actually honest-to-goodness socialists. They think the State should own everything in order to distribute it fairly.
We can already observe the trajectory, i.e. "the complete replacement of the political by the juridical." in the way how the judiciary more and more abrogates the power of parliaments by deciding on the 'suitability' of any given law.
One point puzzles me: how can The State' as described above, act to ensure that intelligence is equally distributed, for the greater moral and economic well-being of the population?
An interesting essay - and I liked the more informal style. I generally prefer the written word in discourse to the spoken, but something 'half-way' is better still.
To the meat of the debate though... there is perhaps 'a third consequence'. Given that the State gets bigger, and the positivisation of rights gets greater, then the De Jassy State must exist in an increasing state(ha!) of mental confusion - trying to respect, protect, and fulfil while managing real world trade-off tasks of Government. You mention the patent absurdity of this but I'll extend the third consequence further and suggest that the State is making itself mentally ill trying to do too many absurd things.
So, treating the State as if it were a person, how many of the common cognitive biases does it suffer from?
Confirmation bias?
Hindsight bias?
Self-serving bias?
Anchoring bias?
Availability bias?
In an individual all of the above biases are the result of trying to reduce the cognitive load of making decisions. Is the State any less likely to practice these biases when trying to cope with increasing absurdity?
You could also make the argument that the failures of the political old guard and the resurgence of populism reflect an increasing mental confusion of the Powers That Be - but that would require another essay to explore fully.
Thank you, Dr McGrogan. No disrespect to academia intended, but as a scientist educated in two universities over 40 years ago, it seems to me the influence of academia has become massively disproportionate. In recent times, you only need look at the sort of daft ideas emanating from universities on respiratory viruses and weather attribution to realise that.
Education, Education, Education...
Excellent! I am a bit too uneducated to grasp a lot of what you said - however, I agree!
How accurate am I in thinking that these Demons seem to wear the cloak of rationality and logic, yet appear incapable of thinking past First Order effects?
Am I being too generous and what they merely do is Modern Magical Thinking?
I notice that all ills can apparently be cured by material progress - yet many of us sit alone in our furnished, centrally heated houses staring at screens for company.
Thank you. This article is so helpful. A couple of questions. How much of the totalising impulse of modernity and the state can be seen, historically speaking, in political entities, such as the British Empire, particularly the imperial management of peoples by ‘divide and rule’? I ask this because the British Empire was a global endeavour and, perhaps, the closest to a world government there has been in history. For example, the imperial state was the arbiter of competing rights claims by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Obviously, the Raj was unable to square this circle and ultimately led to its downfall in 1947. So, my second question is that could the contradictions inherent in ‘all rights for all’ actually lead to the downfall of this totalising trend of human rights governance? We already see this contradiction clearly within Britain with the competing rights claims of sex based right vs trans rights, or the rights to freedom of expression vs the right to be free from offensive speech.