Monday, July 10, 2017

The True Origin of Inalienable Rights



The American Thinker site has a post which brought up the subject of "inalienable rights of the individual" (but only in terms of "property rights"). This subject comes under the heading of the "philosophy of science", particularly as newly enlightened by my discovery of the Great Design of the "gods". My response, then:

I think it is not about "property" rights, more like "appropriate" rights. There is a widely known old military saying, "Rank has its privileges", which not so many people know has a second part, "because rank has its responsibilities". So the individual has its inalienable rights, because it has its inherent responsibility, to choose its way, literally from one moment to the next, in matters large and small. (Ha-ha...I just chose to refer to the individual as "it", rather than as "he", or even "he/she". You can't get away from choosing what to do next, and you have to live with the consequences of your choosing.)

At the root of all our problems is the fact that we are not physical creatures alone; we are spirits occupying physical bodies (and in a degraded condition, because we do not KNOW, from moment to moment, that we are not just physical bodies, taking up space). We are spirit inhabiting body; and mind, or intelligent reasoning, is the bridge between the two, and our defining essence. Our inalienable human rights come from our essential being as mind, inhabiting and acting through matter, and our personal responsibility to direct that matter, our bodies. A collective or societal government cannot walk for me, or talk for me; I have to do it. I also have to decide whether I want to buy "health insurance" for this body, given my financial situation or any other considerations I may choose.

My rights, and everyone else's, are inalienable, because they are prior to any consideration of our limited physical existence. At bottom, mind is prior to matter, and the unit of mind, the individual, is prior to the state and any power we may collectively grant it. Put another way, intelligence, good reason--and the universal meaningfulness, or coherence, that underlies good reason and is evinced by it (and which we, as benighted children of our spiritual father, call God)--flows fundamentally and unavoidably through me (and you), the "units" of mind, and that makes us individually responsible.

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