On Human Rights (2)

And yet . . . and yet . . .

The famous ethologist and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz showed an especial interest in the social organisation and behaviour of jackdaw colonies.  He considered jackdaws to be quite high up on the social evolutionary scale.  Jackdaw colonies involved complex levels of status, which, unlike, say, human societies, were quite rigidly stratified, in that each bird knew its place in the pecking order and remained fixed there.  It was a society with a deeply-imbued respect for status.  Birds of a lower status tended to be afraid of those of a higher status and to avoid conflict with them. ‘Very high-caste jackdaws are most condescending to those of lowest degree and consider them mostly as the dust beneath their feet’.

Yet at the same time, where conflicts erupted between birds of differing status further down the social ladder, the leadership of the colony tended to intervene on the side of the lowest ranking bird. ‘Thus a high-caste jackdaw, particularly the despot himself, acts regularly on chivalrous principles—where there is an unequal fight, always take the weaker side.’

One imagines that something similar must have existed early in human societies, too.  The phrase noblesse oblige, traditionally attached to aristocracy, and the implicit duty of care involved in it, certainly hints that such may have been the case.  However, if it was, it has long since ceased to be so.

Whatever matter of genetics or archetype may underlie the creation of natural social orders, it has certainly, to the extent that it ever existed, long since ceased to operate in human society.  Or if it operates at all, then it is only sporadically and in isolated circumstances.  Far from being protectors of the social order and defenders of the weak, human aristocracies became the most ruthless exploiters of the lower classes, inevitably in the process bringing the whole of the social structure down about their own heads.

One factor in this may have been the increasing infiltration of wealthy commoners into the upper classes, something that went on over millennia, and has long since reached its tipping point.

Which is not to say that traditional aristocracies were necessarily paragons of all the social virtues. Probably they were as money-grubbing as the rest; it was just that as their means of grubbing became over time increasingly less efficient, they were forced to open their ranks to others whose primary family interests lay in money-grubbing, usually in the form of wealthy heiresses.

Anyway, for whatever reason, whatever about the noblesse, the oblige has long since run its course.  We live in a world where, as Marx was later to say, ‘The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment."’

The fact is that nowadays the world is ruthlessly exploitative, in a way it never really seemed to be years ago, though probably was.  In any event, the veil has long since been torn from the face of private greed—be it individual or corporate.  Nowadays everybody is nakedly out for himself, without pretence or apology.  Of this, there is certainly no doubt.

The curious thing about it is that, at the same time, the seeming prevailing moral climate is one of touchy-feely compassion and fellow-feeling.  But, of course, that is only window dressing, a smokescreen to lull those silly enough to believe it into somnolence.  It is more a matter of affectation—of wanting to display oneself in the role of benefactor, as a means of inflating one’s social profile and sense of personal regard.  More petting zoo than a matter of meaningful social concern.

What I am trying to say is that those of us who find ourselves in trouble would be very foolish to depend on any sense of third-party responsibility to pull us out of a hole.  Such a mindset no longer exists, nor, in a real sense, does the only true basis for such a mindset, community.  In which case, and in seeming contradiction to what I said in the previously, we do need rights, or at least something very like them.

Yet rights should not emerge from a cornucopia either, whereby new ones can be invented day after day by the most unlikely of voices, each demanding a feeding place at the trough.  They should instead be disciplined, tough and sensible, and aimed like a garden trellis to help people move onwards and upwards, instead of pinning them forever in dependence.

More, probably on Monday.