Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

[Sean R. R.]

I've been pondering a lot about life.

I have vegan friends, that fight for the rights of animals to have their right to live a life not fated to produce food.

I have pro-life friends who fight for abortion to be banned.

But is life really a right?

In under-developed countries, life is harsh, and only the healthy enough, strong enough, smart enough, or wealthy enough, have the privilege to be alive. The others die from sickness, hunger, killed by nature or by another human being.

In the wilderness and the animal kingdom life is obviously a privilege, the unfit for survival die, it is natural selection.

Even in modern, first world societies (where the standard for life are higher), quality life is a privilege. Many people here in Europe live with only the social aids, which are barely enough to eat, but not enough to have an apartment or something. Some people are marginalized to a point that any reintegration is impossible. If that's what you call the right to be alive, you should know that some of them see death as a privilege.

Sorry for my scrambled thoughts.

Is life a right or a privilege to you? Should life, a good life, be given to us, or should we earn it?

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

IMHO, as far as humans go, this says it.

For critters, well, gotta eat something, and they tend to eat eachother.

[Medusa]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Though this may sound I'm being flippant, it is however my true and honest belief when fear and hope and need and desire is stripped away. Life is neither a right or a privilege. it simply is the fact. There is no moral number of important I can assign it. It is something beyond all that. We can try to define or understand it or limit it or rule it or law it into existence. But for what? It doesn't matter what you call it. We are trying to hold reigns to a cell inside the universe. Doesn't really matter for much.

The real question is 'is life a right or a privilege to me'. Because in the end that's all we care about. We aren't truly concerned with life in the next galaxy over. We barely care about the next human body over.

[anunitu]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

One would think in western society life was a right(you can be arrested for attempting to kill yourself) BUT might be ignored if living and sleeping in a cardboard box,except if you get in someones way. Life implies more than just being alive,it is being alive with more than the right not to be killed,the right to enjoy being alive. A right to never be hungry,or thirsty or even cold or to hot. Even the right to be an A**hole and not be kicked and beaten. For some they feel it is dog eat dog,survival of the fittest..others see it as we are our brothers keeper...BUT mainly I feel I have a right to live,each of us feels WE have this right even if no one else feels we do.

[thalassa]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Neither. And both.

Life, the animating state of being alive, is neither a right nor a privelege. It is, as Medusa put it, a fact. It is a state of being for certain (on our planet) organic material objects that allows them to interact with their environment, produce and/or use energy that allows them to avoid decomposition, and replicate themselves to maximize their survival. Life is a certainty on individual, population/species, and community/ecosystem (bioregion, biome, and global system) levels. And, if life is (at least on our planet) a certainty, so is death.

But life is also a privelege AND a right...and it is both of these because it is neither. NEarly everything that lives, dies. This means that the act of living is impermanent, it is incomplete, and it is imperfect. The act of living (for those with the consciousness and self-contemplation skills to seek meaning from it) is a gift. It is a privelege to experience life--just to be born(as a human), a single sperm and egg out of thousands and thousands come together and develop (something like 1/3 to 1/4 of fertilizations end in miscarriage before most people know they are pregnant)...then, out of the millions of things that can go wrong, they manage to go right... That lilife came to to be is pretty miraculous (stoichiometry or not).

And yet, human life, as defined by humans, in this and most other enlightened (and by enlightened, I mean cultures that have undergone their own Enlightenment movement) societies, is a right. There are certain conditions that must be met to deprifve another human of their life without being punished...

So, (short answer) yes. And no...

[MaskedOne]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

I think when societies start viewing human life as a privelege bad things become much easier to enact. As such I consider it practical for the world in general to see it as a right.

[Guest]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

As said above Neither , The only reason we think of life as a right or privilege in those terms as something to be desired is because being alive and conscious is the only state of being that we can comprehend and understand , the only thing other than being conscious is dreaming and sleeping. So therefore as being alive is the only thing we can comprehend we would naturally place it highly as a right or privilege but the fact is it is neither it simply exists . We the most intelligent all the way down to bacteria that live for millions of years and are not self aware. So is life simply is and we as intelligent creatures think categorically and must try and put the concept of life into our terms of comprehension as a positive that exists and not a negative but the reality is that its neutral.

[nbdy]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Anything that lives has a right to life, and also a right to death. Two sides of a coin. I can't see life as a privilege because a privilege requires unequal access to the resource, and life is just life.

[Medusa]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Let's just take humans to narrow this train of thought down. I want to say 'hey! If you find a way to live through all the stuff that could go wrong, kudos for you!' It makes you one strong human being to just get through the ordeal of getting born and living.

Then I look at meth heads doing the kootchie koo in the street and I think 'meh. It's a crap shoot'.

[thalassa]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Let's just take humans to narrow this train of thought down. I want to say 'hey! If you find a way to live through all the stuff that could go wrong, kudos for you!' It makes you one strong human being to just get through the ordeal of getting born and living.

Then I look at meth heads doing the kootchie koo in the street and I think 'meh. It's a crap shoot'.

Well, yeah. Its called a paradox. Or irony, depending on my mood. Can a paradox be ironic?

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Can a paradox be ironic?

No.

Oh... Was that a rhetorical question?

[thalassa]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

No.

Oh... Was that a rhetorical question?

On days of the week beginning with 'T'.

[AntonBRaxas]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Both.
All human life has the Right to exist AND has the Privilege to shape it into their own making.

[Gas Mask]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

While I believe that a woman should have a right to choose, I believe that, once born, a person has the right to decide what they want to believe in and how they want to live. For example, I believe that just because someone is born into a Catholic family doesn't mean that they should be forced to be Catholic. I'm just using that as an example. People should be able to choose what they want to believe. It shouldn't be forced onto children. OK, rant over.

[gelman66]

Re: Is life a right, or a privilege? [Trigger warning for everything]

Once born we have the right to life. Its the most basic human right there is and its non-negotiable. There are other basic human rights which are spelled in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The sad part is the majority of people living on this planet do not have these rights and until they do we will have no hope for peace.