Monday 23 January 2012

What would be the universal declaration of human rights in a thousand years time?

I have no idea but the value is not in the correct answer but in what it demands.

It demands thinking hard. Damn hard.

The rights of humanity are often enshrined in various declarations and laws across the world from the rather shoddy Human Rights Act - a practical instrument of law rather than a powerful, idealistic statement - to ...well...other stuff I don't know much about.

Some of them like the American constitution are created after a period of war, a period where life is hell for everyone and everything is stripped to basic living. This trial by fire or cathartic process forces society to know what is valuable and it also enables the idealism to say: this is the future and we want it now.

Wars are also a powerful tool for idealism. Britain entered World War 2 for no other reason than they just wouldn't have Hitler's shit. It was not fear. It was what I see as a very high form of morality. When tyranny rose its head Britain said, "fuck you and the horse you rode in on." The nation suffered but it suffered for something precious: the future and a better future. America stood back but it was Britain which said no.

I was born in Sri Lanka and this is why I have so much in common with the British. I'm from the North. What my people have suffered is worse than what psychiatric patients have suffered. Men and women, young and old all sacrficied to serve something they believed in. Most of all it was not self-serving. It was the same as the British. "Fuck you!" We will not stand for tyranny.

Whereas Britain won the war the Tamils lost. Their lands were devastated and the people imprisoned. Many were tortured, abused and worse. There was no victory for the people of the North. The oppression won.

Perhaps they're best equipped to know the solution. Perhaps they're best to know what declaration of human rights will be written in a thousand years time. The Tamils have been fighting for the same things the British used to fight for but they were left alone, even in their darkest hour. The Commonwealth did not come to their aid, not when they were being decimated nor in the decades of oppression before the end of the bitterest civil war in modern history.

There was no great D-day victory and their oppressors won. But I know Tamils and I know they will never stop. This is the same mentality which allowed Britain to hold the line against the tyranny of evil. It is from this mentality where the answers come to the questions of the future and how to get there. It is the mentality which people need to get there because it is hard. Fucking hard.

People still do it though. The Tamils and the British and many others. They may be few but I hope there are many, many that would fight against the tyranny of evil and many which would fight to answer the question in the title of this post.

They might not do it because its hard. They'd do it because they believe in something.

Sent from my smartphone

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"