I love how simple acts can demonstrate how things actually work.
In Croatia they decided to ask in a referendum the population whether they want to legalize same-sex marriage. The majority voted against this right for LGB+ individuals.
A left-wing Croatian MEP named Nikola Vuljanić said that “Human rights are not a matter to be decided upon in such a way”. But that’s where even the left-wing and radicals today get it really wrong.
Human rights is a made-up concept, a liberal idea. It is as arbitrary as liberal democracy per se. Created from the beginning for some individuals, not for everyone. And that’s acceptable since some people are excluded from humanity. And if “we” don’t perceive them as human, then they do not exist, so we do not care. Care is an important verb here. Care means empathy. Our present way of constructing our social and political, is to its core a very rationalized cold-blooded apathetic strategy.
The most terrible thing is to believe in a so-called social contract, and expect that human rights will be enforced democratically, that human rights are founded in the essence of democracy, that the majority “knows” better. Alas we believe that the “social contract” guarantees our rights and freedoms.Here goes Mill’s argument “On Liberty” on the tyranny of the majority. Here goes Plato’s argument against democracy. Here goes Marx’s scientific explanation of how the modern liberal “social contract” is constructed to serve the interests of a particular class and has its limitations as for truly liberating and emancipating humans. Here goes Foucault’s perspective who treats the social contract as a discourse, and the discourse of Human Rights as part of the mentalities of the government that are full of power/ knowledge and disguise the perpetual war and domination in a society.
I only wished the left-and-radical-wingers would have known better about the actual nature of our life and stop trying to reclaim something that is not even the point, or is out of reach because that’s how things work. We need to change the perspective if we want to actually change the world!
melancholia 