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Global intercultural dialogue (4) - Rights and responsibilities are the same thing
Germà PELAYO
Monday, November 18, 2002 12:04 AM
ººº Abstract: Besides the necessary enlargement of human rights for to cover
the different aspects of the individual dignity and the cultural survival, a
claim for responsibilities is starting to be built, the Alliance’ Declaration
of human responsibilities being just an example of this. I believe that in a
parallel way to these two lines, it is also necessary to outline a relational
law, where instead of attributing to a * subject * or to an individual, an
abstract category of rights or responsibilities, * relationships *, as real
concrete events, would be being growth in a plural way, adapted to each
situation. That is valid also at a global scale ººº
First of all, I want to remember that I want to talk about such topic that
perhaps are not practical for an immediate future, because I believe that
before going to more concrete topics in next months, we need some time to
meditate and to exchange points of view in a more imaginative and reflexive
way as possible. Thus, what I am going to talk about here, that is, about to
limit the Western rights based on the subject or individual and not in the
relationship, it won’t avoid me later in discussion to denounce the lack of
rights and dignity that many human beings suffer and that a WP should help to
solve. In my opinion, these are not rival visions competing for the first page
of a program of world change, rather than this, from a historical and holistic
perspective, they are complementary and overlapped aspects, as the different
cards that you show in different moments, depending on the state of the
game.
So, let’s go,
Let’s imagine for a moment a world where, as someone have already said during
this month, political community were not only expanded to all the people but
also symbolically, (concerning the real and potential capacity of decision-
making), to the whole nature. Let us imagine that we also include the sphere
of unknown, as I told about in my previous message (Global intercultural
dialogue (3) of 11.10.2002). That is to say, a planet where, without
renouncing to the sophistication and complexity of modernity, is able to be
inspired by, among other, the single vision of things of the autochthonous
American people, who feel themselves as a part of the earth and the cosmos. To
create a * holistic * or * cosmic * political community.
In this vision of the world, each person, group, country, culture, are related
in a diverse and multiple way among them, and also with animals, plants,
water, rocks, the Muses, symbols and gods.
Although things are more complex of such a, perhaps, idyllic vision, in order
to talk about it I am going to make an abstraction, and to imagine that each
one of these multiple links are discomposed in binary relationships between
two elements, to be chosen among those mentioned above or many others.
Rights and responsibilities are imbricate and simultaneous...
How all this matters concerning the so-called * rights * and with their
supposed opposite, * responsibilities *? Because the real exercise of rights
and responsibilities have place through each one of these binary
relationships, so what it is my right becomes your responsibility, and so
inversely.
For example, my freedom implies your responsibility of respecting it, and so
inversely. And also, your intellectual, artistic, professional creativity...
they are forms of exercising, in just the same act, both your right to any
autonomous initiative, and your responsibility of exercising it in benefit of
yourself and /or of the community. In turn, others have both the right of
reacting to it, and the responsibility of making it, in the same response, in
a constructive way. Rights and responsibilities are not opposed neither
separated terms, but imbricate realities, in trillions of relationships that
are tying our world.
A law based on relationships, complementary of the law based on subjects or
individuals
Thus, while on one hand it is necessary not to stop a claiming strategy over
the rights for to the dignity of people, in a much more enlarged sense of that
proposed by liberalism, on the other hand, we need to look at things from
another perspective and to imagine a (local, global...) law not only based on
the * subject * or individual, but also on the * relationship *.
The subject of law - in Western law tradition, that is most of time an
individual subject but also sometimes collective, especially the sovereign
states as dominant and formerly exclusive subjects of international law - it
is a notion that implies a fragmentized vision of reality. The relationship is
a notion that implies an integrative vision. None of both are better than the
other one, because sometimes it is also necessary to separate things in order
to advance in some way. I believe that they are complementary.
We should to imagine a program where, close to the human rights (that it is
necessary to enlarge) and to the responsibilities (that it is necessary to
build, for example as the Alliance essays through the Declaration of human
responsibilities), we need to develop a relational side of law, in which the
objective is the bigger social integration as possible, through the enrichment
of the quality of relationships, in a binary or multiple perspective, trying
to abandon oppressive and competitive relationships and to promote cooperative
and affective ones. A law that was able to take into account * at least * as
much intentions than facts, both at the local and global levels.
How is it applied this law? It is something still to be invented. A possible
way could be to be inspired of some traditional rights, where the rule and not
the exception is the customization, above any equalitarian abstraction.
For example, beyond an abstract rule as the demographically proportional right
to pollute attributed to each country (which is even far from being applied),
it is necessary to study, one by one, particular forms of positive or negative
discrimination, according of the history of each society and of their needs of
development. Otherwise, such needs should be expressed in the more plural
possible way that allow the levels of participative education of each place.
But this is just an example and perhaps not the best. What is really important
is that we leave a space for to question our Western concepts, regarding also
the law, using them when necessary, at the same time, as we have not still
others. This is what the ideas of innovation and tradition have in common. But
I leave this for the next (if possible) contribution.
Hugs,
Germà
WP21 Alliance Forum on a World Parliament for the 21st Century
E-mail : world-parl@forums.alliance21.org
Fax 1 717 264 5036
Information, inscriptions, désinscriptions: germa@alliance21.org
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