Human rights — a discriminatory term!?
A plea for including universal rights for all beings
The Declaration of Human Rights is a milestone in the history of human rights. By prohibiting discrimination against human beings, it is on the one hand a significant achievement of its time and of the global community. At the same time, however, it expresses a limited mindset: All other living beings are excluded from what should be universal rights.
So is the concept of human rights in itself a discriminatory expression?
One of the Non-earthlings said so in the Star Trek series of the 1970s (mutatis mutandis): “Human rights — what a discriminatory word.” (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the series any more closely, so I’ll have to owe a more specific citation).
But we don’t have to interact verbally with a species from other planets like the heroes of Star Trek to gain a new, broader perspective.
For our purpose here, it is enough to expand our senses and feeling — and to perceive what, or better who, is around us. To deeply understand and feel the intrinsic value of nature and animals. Beyond the intellectual mind.
We should not rest on the achievement of a human rights charter. It is only a stage goal. We must expand our minds and hearts to fully recognize the rights of all living beings, such as animals, plants and the earth. We must grow into a new consciousness and transform our paradigm of superiority over other beings into a paradigm of servants of life. Into a special organ of the planet designed to serve the plan of the earth and all life. This is what it means to go beyond mere survival and find meaning in life.
The future calls us: rights of all beings, not just human rights
I wonder if perhaps the future, in the guise of the climate crisis, is calling us to do this: to broaden our perspective of who we see as beings with rights of their own?
That would be another step toward global rights, global consciousness: Earlier societies considered themselves modern even though they excluded members of other tribes, nations, skin color, religion, or gender. Including another group and granting them the same rights as those already included was a struggle and took a long time from idea to social enforcement.
Arguments such as “X or Y has no soul” or “X or Y is not as intelligent” or some other criterion were used that might have been sounded reasonable from the very limited perspective of the powerful at their time, but are absolutely baseless when examined from beyond that perspective. The reason for the spread of such restrictive views was and is probably mainly fear — not belief in the statements. Fear of losing power, status, wealth, influence, rights, etc.
Not much different is the artificial separation into “we humans” and “you other animals”, which is still the ruling dogma today and serves for the exploitation and degrading treatment of living beings. This separation, however, can only be maintained if one closes oneself off from the immediate experience of one’s surroundings. For many this is evident.
And for all to whom the beauty and uniqueness of the earth, of animals, of nature means nothing: You still need to open the eyes to the fact that we cannot win the race against climate change and environmental pollution if we remain stuck in the old paradigm.
Very impressively Charles Eisenstein shows in his essay on the challenge of climate crisis how by reducing climate change to the demand for CO2 balances we get tangled up in the existing system instead of actually finding solutions. And that solutions are only possible if we recognize the Earth and all its ecosystems and living things:
“I propose that the root cause of ecocide is the world-story of modern civilization. I call it the Story of Separation: the story that holds me separate from you, humanity separate from nature, spirit separate from matter, and soul separate from flesh; that holds full beingness and consciousness to be the exclusive province of the human being, whose destiny is therefore to rise to domination over the mechanical forces of nature to impose intelligence onto a world that has none.”
I fully agree with his view. He expresses exactly what I have felt all my life but have not been able to name. As a lawyer, I would add: The 1948 Declaration of Human Rights was a great step toward freedom. But now it is time to broaden our perspective. To recognize its limits: The exclusion of animals, nature and the earth itself. We need to grow into a new paradigm. A paradigm that includes all life and therefore grants essence rights to every being.
From human rights to beings rights
We are not separate from each other — as we painfully learned with the pandemic. And we are not separate from the planet or any living being. We are made of the same basic particles, minerals, atoms, molecules, etc. All the reasons humans have invented or believed why they are more, better, more exclusive and so on are proving more and more to be false.
Maybe not proven by scientific means. Not yet. But with common sense, because the beliefs used as arguments to enslave animals are disproved by counter-examples. I’m gonna list a few examples. They are intended as illustrations, chosen at random:
One of the greatest talks about this topic, I came across, is the one of Carl Safina. But there are more. Just watch this clip about emotions of dolphins. They express a lot through sound. In a documentary about animal communication you can find more examples of animals obviously expressing emotions and thinking.
Animal communication? If you should believe they don’t communicate you might adjust your point of view a little bit when you watch the documentary featuring Anna Breytenbach. Like her many people try to get in touch with non-human animals on deeper levels and put effort into finally understanding them and their specific expression of intelligence better. For instance Interspecies Internet tries to bring those people together.
And finally many non-human animals have social structures and communities. Maybe the example of gorillas is among the well-known. But who knew that crows not only use tools, but create some? They even try out new things they spot in their surroundings. So they’re pretty innovative.
Many kinds of animals can form friendships not only with their own kind, but also with individuals of other species. The internet is full of examples of this and each of these statements.
As we (or our rational thinking) run out of arguments to exclude non-human animals, reason should draw the right conclusion: We must turn to integration and grant basic rights to every creature. Of course, no whale will ever vote and no frog will ever sit in a parliament. But that is no reason to destroy their environment and exterminate them. To treat them unworthily or to deprive them of their freedom.
If we need any more arguments to fully recognize our fellow creatures: They have proven to be highly intelligent. In some ways, much more intelligent than any human: or have you ever heard of an animal constructing weapons to wipe out humans and themselves? Have they ever built a bomb? No, of course they haven’t. Do they produce nuclear waste? Do they drive cars? Do they do all those crazy things that humans do?
If reason is not enough … let’s turn to empathy and set a goal
If reason is not enough of an argument, we should turn to the capacity for empathy. It doesn’t take much empathy to see the suffering of monkeys whose families have been killed or who have to vegetate in a cage for their entire lives — that is, for many decades. To know that your dog welcomes you. Or to recognize the appetite of a sparrow pecking in the garden. Just listen to a cow that has lost its calf. Turn to any animal and sense it and its situation.
By the way, this doesn’t mean per se that we have to become vegetarians (I am for many years). But it does mean that we must treat all animals — domestic and wild — with respect. It means that we are responsible for finding solutions that are fair to them, taking their needs into account — and including them in our actions.
It doesn’t mean we have to change everything all at once. But it does mean that we need to set a goal of being more inclusive of their rights. Finding better ways to communicate — there’s already so much amazing research and examples. And it certainly means we need to set new values, stop pollution, stop extinction, stop destruction of ecosystems. Stop the use of insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, just to name a few.
As Charles Eisenstein says in the essay mentioned above:
„A key element of this transformation is from a geo-mechanical worldview to a Living Planet worldview.“
This is not just an option. It is a necessity for our own species, for we cannot thrive while we are harming other parts of life. Or as Charles Eisenstein put it in the essay mentioned above:
„Just as it is a lot easier to degrade, to exploit, and to kill a person when one sees the victim as less than human, so too it is easier to kill Earth’s beings when we see them as unliving and unconscious already.“
We have a journey ahead of us that, if we are willing to take the next step, will lead to the discovery of many aspects and possibilities that we could not even dream of before. Let’s just start rejoicing in life. Let’s be alive, become alive.
I would like to conclude this plea with a proposal of the fundamental being right:
“The dignity of all beings is inviolable.”
From this follows a minimum of respect that every living being can demand, including dignified treatment.
