We’d like to show the side of the world you don’t normally see on television.

What are "rights"

D H Lawrence once wrote: "A bird can fall frozen to the ground without ever once having felt sorry for itself".

It is important to acknowledge that misfortune happens to all creatures, including humans. Rights do not protect us from misfortune. We do not have the right not to be struck by lightning.

So what are rights? I hear of animal rights but does that mean the gazelle has the right not to be eaten by the lion? Does the lion have the right to eat the gazelle? Animals do not afford one another rights. This is something exclusive to humans.

Rights are not defined by nature but by Mankind and they exist for one purpose only: to protect from abuses by Mankind. We have the right not to be beaten up by another person because common law (which we have invented) defines this right. We do not have a right not to be mauled by a tiger because tigers to not live in accordance to rights.

We have had to invent rights because we, alone in the animal kingdom, have the inclination to torture, imprison, deprive of basic needs and impose penalties.

The way forward is not to increase or strengthen rights against abuses but to decrease and diminish our inclination to commit abuses. Laws will not achieve this. Education will.

We live in a society in which the concept of power is the keystone. But this concept is an illusion. It is an illusion that, for all its abuses, has served us hitherto and brought us to this stage in our social evolution. But it is now redundant.

As long as it is acknowledged that one person can have power over another, abuses will continue. Rights will be defined by laws... and abused by governments.

Education can spread the understanding that everyone's experience of life can be enhanced by surrendering the concept of power. The soldier who enforces oppression by gunpoint is not the one in control. He (or she) has nothing to gain but the approval of those who have no more interest in the soldiers welfare than that of those they oppress. The soldier acts on orders and, as such, is as oppressed as the victims.

Only education will show that the soldier's life would be improved by putting down the weapons and defying commands that conflict with our natural sense of justice and desire for peace. Even those who give the command; those in the illusory position of power, have more to gain by relinquishing their power than by hanging on to it. They simply do not know this because they are asleep. They are also on their knees, just as the soldier is on his knees in fear of his commanders and the oppressed are on their knees in fear of the soldiers. The commanders are on their knees in fear of losing control.

It is time to stand up. Not stand up and fight but stand up and refuse to fight. It is time to see what we have and how close we are getting to destroying everything. It is time to wake up. It is time to stop being afraid.

Laws will not achieve this.

Education and communication will.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by TRISHA SMITH on October 23, 2010 at 10:04am

There’s no fear in LOVE!
PEACE impart into a human soul when one surrenders …but to who to what to where is the questions?

Shakespeare asked, ‘To be or not to be?’ It seems to be a generations question everyone hears once or more in a lifetime.

Do one asks themselves, ‘To be or not to be?’ in the context of the occurring situation, at hand. The choice one makes how one reacts to the world is the key. Do we rebound to the violence? Do we respond with anger for angry words thrown at us? So we give forgiveness for wrongs done to us?

New Dawn occurs in a soul, when surrendering to the God essence in those matters which humanly are impossible to comprehend….the whys… the hows…the where?

Surrendering on its own is futile as humans are sinned in themselves – there’s none without sin – there’s only a saving grace. Surrendering can be powerful on one hand and if surrendered to an abusing power then that surrender is giving oneself to abuse.

Those who do not surrendered to abuse...but great abuse is done on a personal level and on a Human Rights of the International Courts level, creates many questions. One of the bible verses embraces the beginning in my book:

"Because sentence against evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." - Ecclesiastes 8:11

When ‘Rights or laws do not protect us from misfortune’ where does one turn to for protection, for healing, and to live, once again? This is and was then my question, 'To be on not to be?

As I wrote in my essay on http://www.openbooktoronto.com/news/author_and_book regarding why I wrote my book, Holiday in Hell, a true^tragedy legal^drama chronicling years of my life is for exactly that:reason, 'To be who I am and with the decision to continue to live a life full of grace, creative, re-birthing my soul from glory to glory, each day!

Educating youth as my daily profession is, continues also to teach me why I am purposed to continue a life living the things that have been imparted for me to do here on earth. Surrender is HARMONY and ultimate HAPPINESS, from where an energy fuels the soul to live right now in the present!

Education is the critical vehicle…if it is by writing a book, singing a song, or painting a mural, the artists’ voice their protection, their healing, and rise to a higher ground for their soul to live once again, as such is my present Amen!

Blessings to all, here's a quote I read on one of the walls at my High School, where I teach:

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein

Permalink Reply by Craig Davies Metteauer on October 23, 2010 at 5:42pm

Good one Ron!

"No more Dirty Oil or Politics...The Wars in the Middle East are all about Oil, Poppies and Pipelines...Power, Money and Control. It's too Sad...so many Dieing at the hands of the Greedy. How many Wars, Oil Spills, Coal Mine Explosions and Innocent Lives does it take to get the message? WE HAVE ALTERNATIVES!!! Those working with coal and oil could ALL have clean, safe jobs in Green Energy…setting a new standard, saving Lives, saving Face and best of all...NO MORE WARS! Greed has kept coal and oil burning, polluting, and killing for far too long. The Common People are Waking Up! You have your million$...Please do not allow the Keystone XL permit to be approved. Get on the “Free Energy/ War is Over” Train and You will find yourself a Heroine!"

These words I just wrote to Secretary Clinton, via 'The Sierra Club', RE: The New Oil Pipeline between Alberta, Canada and Houston, Texas. This would be the third and largest; imagine if it busted or was sabotaged...

Headline: "Largest Oil Pipeline Breaks...Spill creates havoc in America's Heartland! Instant Karma!"

I feel this would be a good thing for all of us to do...Communicate with the very people who are reading us our Rights...We are Awake and Enough is Enough!

Check it out at: http://action.sierraclub.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id...

Permalink Reply by artemis on November 4, 2010 at 7:18am