We've raised a few questions about Human Rights in today's lesson. Due to limited class time and perhaps more importantly, the need for deep rumination on the subject, let's use this space to throw up ideas and dive right into the core of the issues.
1. What is this thing called "dignity" and why is it important? Because it is a difficult question to answer (and no flippant one-liner can do the idea justice), it may be easier to begin by thinking of examples of "dignity", and non-examples of dignity (just as we had done with the concept of Justice). If the term is so hard to define, yet why do most people instinctively understand what it means? Think about it.
2. Next, we have yet to answer the question "What are rights?" Would anyone venture to define it for us? It is certainly not an easy "thing" to define because it's an abstract idea. I would suggest using the reading "An Allegory" as a starting point. Think about the "things" that the community has agreed upon and think about the nature of these "things" (I will use everyone's favourite catch-all word here) as well as the purpose of these "things". Perhaps by examining these two aspects of the "thing" itself (which is otherwise called "rights"), we can begin to arrive at a better understanding of what it is.
I hope MORE of you will use this space to explore, clarify and argue ideas and concepts. We don't have the luxury of time during class to discuss ideas at a deeper, more philosophical level. Also, there are some of you who are content with scratching the surface of things and we wouldn't dream of boring you to tears in every lesson. So, I would encourage those of you who have a geniune intellectual curiosity, who have a thirst for deeper truths and who aspire to greater things to be part of this THINKING community. Let's not merely be second-hand receivers of knowledge. Let's be creators of knowledge.
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2. Franklin Roosevelt once mentioned that the world should be founded on four freedoms: freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from want and freedom from fear. Thus, he defined these four freedoms as the rights that citizens of the United States would have. However, although the United States has such freedoms for its people, there are still some which have flaws in them, and some of them allow for the inhibition of human rights in the country. Although, when comparing the different rights, 1 of them stands out as the most logical and that is the right that all human beings should have.
ReplyDeleteFor example, we first look at the freedom of speech. Of all the freedoms listed above, this particular freedom seems to be the most frequently abused. People can stretch their freedom of speech to abuse the use of the press. The media, under the banner of being a mouthpiece of the people, has often caused serious damage to both governments and individuals alike. For example, the criticism of the government took place in Ecuador after Palacio, a journalist from El Universo, wrote an opinion article criticizing Camilo Saman, president of the state-run Corporacion Financiera Nacional, for supposedly sending bodyguards to the newspaper to complain about news published by El Universo. A judge then sentenced Emilio Palacio, a critic of Rafael Correa's government and a columnist for El Universo Newspaper, to three years in prison. The judge, Carmen Arguello, also ordered Palacio to pay $10,000 for legal costs. Thus criticism of the government should be controlled and not be allowed to spread freely around as this would have a negative impact on the government. Even when the government is wrong, such freedom of speech should not be given to the people because they cannot accuse the government as every system of government is fallible and bound to err. Instead they should point out the government errors so that the government can improve instead of openly criticising the government.
Next, people should be given the freedom of worship, although there may be a little bit of flaw in the system. For example, some religions allow polygamy but others do not. Thus, in many countries, polygamy is not allowed, causing this group of people to be extremely angry with the government. Thus rules should be included too for the allowance of certain practices so that this freedom can be upheld.
For freedom from want, people with the same wants can cash together. Thus, someone would be sacrificing his wants so that the other party would be able to fulfill his want. Thus, this freedom is difficult to achieve because such a freedom will lead to lots of conflict and instead of ensuring that people remain happy, they get frustrated when they are unable to get what they want. Hence, such a freedom is flawed.
The freedom from fear is respected by many around the world. They do not want to have to fear the government, such as that of Hitler's totalitarian system, but instead want to be able to live without the fear of getting taken to some place and not be able to see the open world again. Hence, many societies, including Singapore, have such a freedom of want in their system, and it is also more important than the rest because true freedom is when people can move about, say anything, believe in anything, and want something, and without the fear to hinder them, they are able to achieve all such things. Even when their wants clash with others, without this fear they are able to compromise to reach a solution.
Thus, it is best for people to have the right from fear. However, they still must observe limits imposed by the government so as not to go overboard.
I think I shall just talk about what I think it is meant by dignity. Sorry if this is a load of hogwash as I wrote this without any reference to dictionaries, wiki or other "correct" answers.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, dignity is definitely abstract and is hard to define, and set the bench-mark for. It is something like love. What is love? Saying that it is just a bunch of chemical reactions is accurate but does not do the whole great notion of love justice, but then it is hard to come up with a good definition for something that varies so much across organisms, people and everything. A mother bird nursing a robin that isn't her own (robin parents hide their robin eggs in the eggs of other bird's nests) might be seen as great love by some, pure stupidity by others. Love is also hard to demarcate as when do you start liking someone? How do you know if it is lust, adoration, or just plain liking? However, people still have a rough notion of what love is, just as how we "sort of" know what dignity means, but cannot use words to express it as we cannot quite put a finger to explain what dignity is.
I shall try my best to explain dignity here, though this definition has quite a few loopholes. Dignity, in my humble opinion, is something like your own measure of how you think people respect or admire you. That is why people sometimes do things, e.g. not accepting free food, not accepting help from an enemy, saying the common phrase "it is an insult to my dignity". That is also why when we for example, trip and fall on stage, "all measure of dignity and self-esteem" was lost. Dignity is linked to self-esteem, pride and also, in a way wisdom. I shall not dwell into these as it would take too long and I am tired.
Why is dignity important? Well, these are things you can do if you are a person without a dignity. A person without a shred of dignity becomes a prostitute, accepts free gifts even if he/she gets insulted and does degrading acts, or stupid acts (think about stripping in the middle of Orchard Road though this is just an extreme example). Dignity is what makes us "noble and respectable" and it would be quite, quite horrible if we lose the respect of everyone because we have no dignity. But then again, you won't feel it if you have no dignity.
Chan Wei 4S106
Hi, so I checked on some internet sources for the meaning of Dignity. Wikipedia gave "Dignity is a term used in moral, ethical, and political discussions to signify that a being has an innate right to respect and ethical treatment." whilst Dictionary.com gave "bearing, conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect or appreciation of the formality or gravity of an occasion or situation." With all respect to the aforementioned sources, I felt that their definitions were probably not the best out there and perhaps too sophisticated for someone like me.
ReplyDeleteSo I would try to elaborate on "Dignity". Dignity is an intangible topic which is probably tough to summarise into a simple post, so pardon me for any loopholes in my argument. In the Singaporean context, we could associate the lost of dignity to what we colloquially say "lose face", which I hope everyone can relate to at one point of his life. Perhaps it was during a speech where you forgot the lines, or perhaps it was in primary school when nature called at the wrong moment, and you dirtied your pants in front of the class. Be it committing a stupid, embarrassing or shameless act in front of an unexpected audience, it tramples upon one's ego and self-esteem. So I believe dignity can be linked to ego and self-esteem, or the "social status" that he expects to garner from his actions. Social status here encompasses a broad spectrum of values of perhaps criteria which come to play with one's social life, such as grace, respect, honour etc. I hope this explanation was able to shed some light on this topic. In a brief summary, you could say that dignity is one's positive perception of himself.
Moving on, why are some people able to instinctively understand what it means? The first thought that struck me was that because everyone is intrinsically hard-wired with dignity. Despite this, this topic is probably a hot topic as everyone has their unique idea of what defines their dignity. Furthermore, there can never be duplicates in human beings; every individual is different, with differing thought processes and reasonings, eventually giving rise to the different permutations of "dignity". Thus, despite having no universal answer to accurately explain the exact definition of dignity, everyone is able to understand what it is, as everyone already has an idea of what their dignity is, just that it would probably be impossible to give an accurate definition for such an abstract topic.
Moving on to the next topic on rights, I believe rights are opportunities one should be entitled to, further elaboration on the opportunities referring to both positive and negative opportunities with the respective results. This means, the opportunity to necessities, such as food, water, accommodation; the opportunity to life, the opportunity to death; the opportunity to deliver certain actions and so on so forth. The list goes on. Yet, rights are slightly different from opportunities as the former seems to give the impression that it everyone is subjected to it against their will while the latter states that it is up to one's own discretion to take up these opportunities.
Next, a right might be "self-contradictory". A classical example would be the right to life and the right to take away life as compensation, which is still adopted in some countries for capital punishment. Eventually, all rights have to co-exist together. Hence, a prudent decision must be made whenever a situation with clashing rights arises.
Lim Zhong Hui 4S121
Issues on dignity by Yan Tianqi 33
ReplyDeleteIn the dictionary, dignity means the state or quality of being worthy of honour of respect. It is also defined as a term used in moral, ethical, and political discussions to signify that a being has an innate right to respect and ethical treatment. It is an extension of Enlightenment-era beliefs that individuals have inherent, inviolable rights, and thus is closely related to concepts like virtue, respect, self-respect, autonomy, human rights, and enlightened reason. We can find that in many documents, it is related to the human rights. Here are some examples:
1. ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
2. ‘Everyone has the right to have his honor respected and his dignity recognized.’ (the American Convention on Human Rights)
3. ‘Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being.’ (The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights)
From the examples, we can find several important words which usually appear in the sentences, ‘honour’, ‘respect’ and ‘rights’. Thus, we can make sure that dignity has a co-relationship with the human rights based on the honour and respect. When we define human rights, we say that it is applied to humans. Thus, dignity is also am important factor defining human beings philosophically. In my contest, human beings are given innate rights. Among those innate or natural rights, there are rights to live and to be respected as a human. In addition, dignity in some way defines human beings philosophically. In other words, without dignity, human beings can only be called human in biology manner, but not morally; because dignity create the condition of rights through respect and ethical treatment, and without those factors, humans are nothing different from the animals. Hence dignity is quite important for humans. I think that we can get one example of dignity from the movie, ‘Dead Man Walking’. There is a scene before the execution of the convict, Mathew. He refused to wear a pair of slippers instead of his boots. For he thought that even though he was going to die, he still had the dignity to have his own boots, more precisely, to die in a relatively good manner. Another example is about the Negro slaves. The slaves were treated inhumanly. They did not have freedom and any rights. They could be traded everywhere. They surely did not have any dignity. They are also human beings, but they were not treated as human beings, but like goods or livestock. This explains why dignity is so important to humans.
However, every one knows the meaning even though it is hard to be defined. I think one reason is that dignity is quite common among us. It exists as the values like respect, self-respect and virtue. In a civilized society, people contact with those values since their childhood. Hence they can understand the meaning of dignity even though they cannot define it.
"Dignity" by Lee Men Quan
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the above four responses, I believe that Zhong Hui has got the nearest to getting what is dignity. If I were to give an over-simplified definition of dignity, I would say that it is anything that one values about himself.
Now, why is this so? I do not care about what Americans define as dignity. Or more specifically, what some leaders have defined for their nation to be dignities. What I care about is an individual case-by-case study of this complicated subject matter, for only by looking at the simple micro stage can you generalise for a macro stage.
A man may feel that his muscles give him his dignity. Therefore, he may want to train his muscles. Another guy may feel that his ability to have baby is his dignity (for which I think most of us here will agree for each of us). Therefore, it is something he feels need to be protected.
Even if a man values his money more than his life, we still say that his dignity comes from both his life and his money, therefore he should protect both. But when he no longer values his life at all (which is another case altogether), it is then appropriate to say that the he takes no dignity in living, and therefore he has forfeited his right to life. Or to simply state, he has no right to life until he values it.
Therefore, I believe that dignity should be anything that one values, and rights is the common dignity of people. For example, life is what every sane person will value, therefore it is a right. Similarly, people value their childhood, therefore children are protected. Most people also value the days when their parents do not starve them, therefore children are given the right to report on their parents (that is if they manage to).
Well, then, let us look at Singapore. Why is it that Singapore has been criticised to lack freedom of speech? Now, we need to see the conflict of interests. If freedom of speech is granted, there is imminent political instability which will lead to economic downfall (which is what I believe in, and what I believe that the government believes in).
In this case, we need to choose one, and that is time when a right is given up for another, known as Social Contract in short. Since most Singaporeans will, if not all, will definitely prefer having a stable society and high-standard of living without total freedom of speech to having a chaotic society with low standard of living where one can speak freely, it can be said that the right to total freedom of speech has been given up. Not that it doesn't exist though.
Then, perhaps more people will say that the government need not grant total freedom of speech, and can still give more allowance. Where, then, is the limit? What should the dichotomy be? I would say that the government has drawn the line, and let us not argue further and risk the stability of the society while wasting time and leading to no result (the government will not do anything no matter how much we argue here).
In any case, I would define rights simply to be the common dignity of people, which greatly depends on the culture and society. Dignity is then defined to be something that people value. When there is a conflict of interest, it will depend on which the society values more as a whole. Obviously, in the modern world, life and money are usually the most valued possessions, but this is still up to debate.
What is dignity? Dignity have been often neglected in many individuals but over-emphasised in others. Dignity measured by oneself, and is often linked with pride, self-esteem, self-respect, and in Singapore, usually expressed as “face”.
ReplyDeleteEvery single individual values themselves different, and so their “dignity” varies according. For example, a student who is performs exceedingly well for a certain subject suddenly stumbles upon a problem for which he just couldn’t solve. And somehow a usual under-performing student happens to be able to solve the problem correctly. If the former consults the latter, in a way ‘dignity’ is pardoned, shall the former value his pride so high it overshadows all advantages he might gain. Then again, if he consults the latter, then criticizes him that he doesn’t perform as well in examinations, we can say that he has extremely low ‘dignity’, and very ‘thick-skinned’.
But what is dignity often measured with? In the industrialized world money and fame certainly plays a great role in measuring one’s dignity. To a female supermodel her body figure constitutes the most to her dignity just as a bodybuilder’s muscles constitutes the most to his dignity.
In the local context, when we see a person collects, for instance, several cups of milo several times, we often say that he is shameful and doesn’t have dignity. But stepping into the person’s shoes, we could see that he values the several more cups of milo more than his dignity, such that he would sacrifice it to drink more milo. In our eyes the individual is a non-example of dignity, but in his own eyes he is merely going for something that benefits him more.
Dignity is often associated with culture and religious practices as well, causing cosmic differences in perspectives of whether certain acts affect people’s dignity. Hence, I can safely conclude that dignity is frequently a measure of the individual by oneself.
But why is dignity important? Do we see a president of a country packaging the left-over food of a buffet dinner back home for his family members? Or do we see a high-ranking official wears a singlet and sits in a coffee house, shaking his legs like a triad member? Dignity of a person rises with his rising fame and rank and it aids to help the individual to be presentable in public. Just a couple of years ago Mr. Chua Soi Lek, health minister of Malaysia, was found to be involved in a sex scandal. He then subsequently resigned as he did not uphold to his expectations and behaviour as a minister and tarnished his dignity by the scandal. Thus, dignity gives an individual respect and pride and earns him recognition in others' eyes.
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ReplyDelete1)
ReplyDeleteDignity refers to the respectful treatment one receives from the community while he/she is identified as an individual of a different "type".
There is dignity on a personal level where one is judge by his/her physique, wealth, education status etc. where the difference of the superior and the inferior is crystal clear. This dignity is usually violated when the superior condemns the inferior due to their lowly individual achievements.
Another type of dignity is based on groups where people are judge by their race, nationality, religion etc. where the difference in superiority is more ambiguous since the different principles and perspective gives a different conclusion as to who is "better" or "right". Comments which damages these dignities would usually be an insult to the whole community of the same characteristic. The condemned are mostly the minority of a region or state. Loss of this type of dignity is much more serious as it can anger whole communities.
2)
Rights are entitlements given to a human being of all age, gender, race etc. such that he/she can request aid from the state or government if these rights were not achieved or infringed upon. The only situation where one does not have rights is when he/she has infringed upon the rights of others.
There are multiple types of rights
Natural rights: These rights cater to the physical needs of a human being such as food, shelter, life. There is usually no controversies over natural rights as it is crystal clear that they are required for the society to function since humans have to survive first in order for a society to exist.
Legal rights: Also known as civil rights, are rights of one as a member of the state to be able to have a stand in the policies, law, statues or actions by the legislation. These rights are usually relative to the politics and culture of the state itself.
Claim rights: These rights are based on the duty one owes to another. It is usually after an agreement between two parties that both parties would privilege each other, either through action or non-action, and hence, both parties have the right earned from the other party as long as the agreement is not broken. This would include things like employment or taxes.
Liberty rights: These rights are based on actions which are voluntary. These rights do not require the obligation of other parties to do anything or not to do anything and depends on the individual's liking of whether to "use" the right or not. Examples such as the right to speech does not force you to express yourself but no one would obstruct you if you do. This is one of the few most controversial rights since these actions may infringe upon the rights of others and yet others have no "obligation" to stop it.
Group rights: These rights are held by any form of organization or community where the main principle is "community over individual". Here, individual rights might be expanded or decreased in the process of maintaining right for the community as a whole. This is also a much disputed right as the line between acceptable or unacceptable altering of individual rights is not clear.
By Ng Soon Zhou
1)Dignity means a state in which one is worthy of respect. No matter how important dignity may seem, the respect that you earn can give you nothing but solely respect. Hence, people might as well give it up when there are more practical benefits.
ReplyDeleteProstitutes and corrupted officials are examples of people who give up dignity, for the sake of economical benefits. Why should someone care about dignity if there are more "beneficial" things that can be exchanged for dignity? We all heard of the case of Sufia Yusof who gave up learning mathematics and became a prostitute simply because she can earn US$ 360 per hour, and the US govt officials who continuously increased their pay despite the economic downturn and the US citizen's objections. Hence, the importance of dignity is only exaggerated in a society, and I think we have heard of many more non-dignity examples without even realising them.
2)As for rights, it is a form of power that is given to the people of a country. Since it given, it can be deprived any time. The only reason why people should have rights is the existence of moral values. No one should have a right to food simply because it is a living necessity, but because it is morally wrong to deprive him of food. The idea of rights is simply a guideline, and it cannot be enforced. People of higher authority would naturally infringe the rights of those below them based on their own interests. Furthermore, the stability of a society also outweighs moral values in giving people rights. Hence, there are some social and political rights which people do not have to maintain social order. Hence, the idea of rights is largely based on moral values, thus cannot be enforced, and limited by social and economic benefits.
The above comment is by fangxu
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTham Shi Yuan 4S128
ReplyDelete1) From my perspective, the reason why we are able understand dignity instinctively is because having dignity is simply not needing to go through the treatments or commit acts that all human beings do not want to go through or do. When we see an act or a treatment that we find cruelly unfair, it will occur to us that all humans do not want to undergo this and thus it will be harming to one's dignity. Slavery is a non-example of dignity, no human will say they want to be a slave (with the literal meaning of giving up all rights). As for harsh and cruel training, there is a purpose to develop those individuals, though some may not be able to see it that way, it is still not an act of taking away someone's dignity. Yet, it's difficult to define because we are unable to determine the type of acts or treatments which all humans do not want to go through, so currently, we just throw in a word called morality.
2) We could define rights as laws for the protection of human dignity, but the reason why rights is such a debatable issue is due to the fact that it is difficult to put out clearly in human language what acts will harm one's dignity and what will not. Such as speaking out against the government, which instances are acceptable and just and which are not is unclear unless given more information, and even then it will be arguable. Since it is not possible to list all the possible instances where human dignity will be compromised, there is currently no way to define what rights should humans have that can be accepted by the global population.