Monday 14 February 2011

Rights or Responsibilities?

Right - "Your rights are what you are morally or legally entitled to do or to have."
Responsibility - "If you think you have a responsibility to do something, you feel that you ought to do it because it is morally right to do it."      or
                     - "If you think that you have a responsibility to someone, you feel that it is your duty to take action that will protect their interests."

These days, everyone is on about rights. Whether it's animal rights or women's rights, gay rights or immigration rights, everyone seems to be claiming their rights to anything and everything. Demanding more money, more freedom, more say. Claiming rights always seems, I think, so selfish, as most of what anyone gets out of it is for themselves. (I think animal rights would be the main exception although some of my points will still apply.)

Demanding rights is so much "I want this" and "give so and so that". It's a very "take take take" outlook. I'm certainly not saying that people don't deserve a lot of these rights but I think demanding rights isn't always the best  way to go about it. What we need is for people to embrace RESPONSIBILITY.

If people recognised their responsibilities, responsibilities to treat everyone as equal, to look after animals, to care for children, to provide food, water and sanitation to those who need it, giving and not just taking.

Some people would say that there's no difference between responsibility and rights and, in the sense of outcome, that is true to an extent. However, I think the attitude to how we get to that outcome is important. Are we only thinking about what WE want and what WE deserve or are we thinking of others too?

*Thought worm implanted*

DFTBA - Decrease world suck yourself rather than expecting others to do it for you because if everyone had the same lazy attitude, not much would get done.
 

2 comments:

  1. i've had similar thoughts on this subject in the last few months, but not worded as well as that.

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