Rights and Responsibilities

If We Have a Right to Our Opinions, then we Must Also Have a Responsibility for Them A Sermon, Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Athens Margaret E. Holt June 1996 John Wilcox read earlier these words from Vaclav Havel “This completely new circumstance makes new demands on the human spirit. It requires something that has never in history been required of it with such urgency, and which, moreover, goes quite beyond the spiritual framework of the very civilization that has created these requirements. It demands a completely new type of responsibility.. . . . .” According to Frances Moore Lappe and Paul Martin Du Bois in their book THE QUICKENING OF AMERICA: REBUILDING OUR NATION, REMAKING OUR LIVES, nearly 25 %, that’s right one-fourth, of the children in the United States are born into poverty, one in five teens carries a weapon, we have more citizens locked behind bars than any other country in the world, the number of billionaires doubles in only a decade while homelessness swells to stunt the lives of over a million Americans. Everyone in this room can create a long, long, long list of our problems: crime, racial tension, environmental degradation, AIDS, campaign financing, adequate health care, and on and on. We don’t need more blue ribbon commissions appointed by governors to tell us that the rate of teenage pregnancy is startling and too many kids are dropping out of school. We have too many people collecting data and too few people applying their minds, hearts and hands to these very real challenges. So what can we the citizens do? First, we have a responsibility to demand accuracy in the information we get about our communities, nation and world. We must cherish the democratic ideal of a free press, and when we believe the report in the paper, or on the radio or television is inaccurate we need to take the time to challenge what we are hearing and reading. Individuals should be prepared to explain their positions and to handle the consequences their actions create. This challenge can be mounted in a number of ways such as letters to editors, publishers, and producers or better yet, when possible, face-to-face conversations. Oh, yes, this will take time, energy, and a little money for stamps and gasoline. I think we should start asking more often the sources of information, and where people got the numbers they are using. HARPER’S MAGAZINE is quite responsible with this type of reporting when they do their famous index they are careful to have a followup on sources for each of the figures cited. To illustrate the January 1996 HARPER’S INDEX reported this figure: “Tons of trash generated last January by NFL-sponsored Super Bowl events: 313" Source: The National Football League, New York. Al Gore’s book, EARTH IN THE BALANCE, is one of the best documented writings I’ve ever read. You may not agree with all that he has to say, but you can count on his revelation of all the sources he turned to for his presentation of information. We should not believe everything we read or hear, and especially when what we read and hear has something to do with the state of our democracy, the health, safety and welfare of our citizens, we should be vigilant in pursuing the sources of this information. “Clarity and responsibility within communication, it seems, is not the sole concern of the speaker/writer/actor, but also a concern for the knower. Particularly when an action or declaration of value strikes a strong affective chord, there is cause for me to stop and consider, How am I making meaning of this, and why might I be doing so?” Terri Deems, Mon, 1 Jul l996 23:57:00 CDT Subject on Learning Organization Listserv: Learning and Lurking LO8247 Let me see if you believe this story. A tourist wanders into a back-alley antique shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Picking through the objects on display he discovers a detailed life-size bronze sculpture of a rat. The sculpture is so interesting and unique that he picks it up and asks the shop owner what it costs. “Twelve dollars for the rat, sir,” says the shop owner,” and a thousand dollars more for the story behind it.” “You can keep the story, old man,” he replies, “but I’ll take the rat.” The transaction complete, the tourist leaves the store with the bronze rat under his arm. As he crosses the street in front of the store, two live rats emerge from a sewer drain and fall into step behind him. Nervously looking over his shoulder, he begins to walk faster, but every time he passes another sewer drain, more rats come out and follow him. By the time he’s walked two blocks, at least a hundred rats are at his heels, and people begin to point and shout. He walks even faster, and soon breaks into a trot as multitudes of rats swarm from sewers, basements, vacant lots, and abandoned cars. Rats by the thousands are at his heels, and as he sees the waterfront at the bottom of the hill, he panics and starts to run full tilt. No matter how fast he runs, the rats keep up, squealing hideously, now not just thousands but millions, so that by the time he comes rushing up to the water’s edge a trail of rats twelve city blocks long is behind him. Making a mighty leap, he jumps up onto a light post, grasping it with one arm while he hurls the bronze rat into San Francisco Bay with the other, as far as he an heave it. Pulling his legs up and clinging to the light post, he watches in amazement as the seething tide of rats surges over the breakwater into the sea, where they drown. Shaken and mumbling, he makes his way back to the antique shop. “Ah, so you’ve come back for the rest of the story,” says the owner. “No,” says the tourist, “I was wondering if you have a bronze lawyer?” No, I think if you checked for the accuracy of this story, you would find it was not true and at least at a dinner party with lawyers, it would not even be politically-correct. This brings me to a second solution to our nation’s woes. - reducing litigiousness. Note, I did not say tossing lawyers into the San Francisco Bay. I said reducing litigiousness. Sometimes by capping malpractice settlements. I have chatted with my ob-gyn, Dr. John Hill, here in Athens and others about the fact [check my sources, I said fact] the fewer and fewer doctors are willing to deliver babies, and this problem is most severe in our rural communities. Why? Enormous numbers of malpractice suits which means enormous fees for malpractice insurance which means fewer doctors who want the risks or the fees. George S. Spindler, Senior VP for Law and Corporation Affairs with the Amoco Corporation made a speech last October to the American Bar Association told these two litigation stories: “A psychic conducted a series of seances at which John Milton regularly appeared, speaking through her. However, when Milton fell silent, she determined that her psychic powers were being blotted out by a dye used in a CAT scan. She sued her doctor for impairing her ability to make a living. The jurors returned an award of $986,000.” By the way I believe that Shirley McLaine talks to the dead. I just don’t believe they answer her. Spindler’s other example of excessive litigation: “In Orlando, a man filed a law suit against a barber for a haircut he said was so bad it induced a panic anxiety attack. In his suit, he said the barber had deprived him of his ‘right to enjoy life.’ Spindler goes on to remark that “Perhaps an appropriate title for a history of our new age would be Victimhood and the Right to Retribution.” The contemporary abuses of the American legal system are unfortunate externalities of a sincere and serious effort to build a society where justice can prevail. We may readily wish to blame lawyers for a failing legal system, but our citizens have hastily and often ineptly sought courtroom settlements for many conflicts that more appropriately could be handled by alternative dispute-resolution measures, neighborhood justice center, arbitration hearings, or divorce mediation where parties achieve the opportunities to be heard, and neutral mediators work toward solutions avoiding the adversarial climate. We should not teach our children to so freely allow the expressions like“see-you-in-court” or “my-lawyer will talk to your lawyer” to roll off their lips. If we don’t alter this way of seeing and being in the world, in the future the luckiest of children will be born to a mother, father, and lawyer. By the way, “What do you have when you bury six lawyers up to their necks in sand?” Not enough sand. “Why does California have the most lawyers and New Jersey the most toxic dumps?” New Jersey got first choice. “How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb?” How many can you afford? Our next civic responsibility is our need to persist in demanding that those who make policy and are elected to represent our society’s interests address candidly our concerns. In other words our responsibility is to demand that they be responsible. How do we do this? We should never be satisfied with clip form-letter/template responses to our inquiries. I’ll give a personal example of how this can work. I once wrote to the late Senator Tallmadge to ask his position on a certain bill. I got back a form letter that did not reveal his position but instead applauded my good citizenship in writing to him. That was not a satisfactory response. So I did what Jeannette Rankin said we should do, I wrote another letter and explained that I appreciated his valuing my civic nature but went to say that he had not answered my question. Soon I got a phone call from his staff providing me with much greater understanding of his position on this bill. This took more time and another stamp, but I feel that this is what we must do until the way we do democracy is elevated. You can be a participant by helping to put yourself and other people back into political thinking and decision-making. Many of you, but not all [and that’s okay] are sharpening your skills with the new electronic tools we have for communicating more frequently and widely with others in our society. There are some new thoughts about what it means to be in a neighborhood or civic community resulting from the building of an electronic superhighway. There are truly thousands of examples of people using their computers to participate in civic life. I’ll give just one example here. Minnesota Citizens Online. Its purpose is provide a focal point for Minnesota citizens and organizations to create free-to-the-user, public, electronic means of exchanging ideas and information in the public interest. The two primary goals of Minnesota Citizens Online are to 1) reduce the gap between the information rich and the information poor, and 2) Encourage Minnesota citizen participation in public decision-making. Of course, our own Athens-Clarke County Public Library has just announced that it is the first public library in the state to provide free Internet access to its patrons. Blacksburg, Virginia, has a massive project that has begun to wire the citizens across their community into an electronic neighborhood. These are just a few of thousands of examples of people beginning to use the Internet to carry out civic conversations and conduct public forums and hearings. David Mathews, president of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation continues in his writings and public addresses to tell us that we are in the midst of a citizens revolt, that we have found ourselves “without representation, voice, or agency.” Electronic town hall meetings offer one way to put more of us back into our public discussions. He goes further to say that we are disenchanted with professionalism - professionals haven’t solved our problems. Again, where is our, the citizens’ responsibility? Dr. Mathews said we were too quick to believe that the “expertise” professionals were selling would work . . . it hasn’t. We have gone into what he calls a “civic sleep” and it is time to come out of this hibernation. Part of his solution is to “create a new professionalism that has a civic character” and what this means is that the professionals have to engage and activate the public in a partnership to solve the problems - there has to be what he describes as “two-way traffic between citizens and professionals.” “Publics are formed by people voluntarily joining together,”, “out of a sense of shared responsibility. The sense of being responsible for our fate, the sense that we can’t wait around on someone else to save us,” be they so-called professionals, experts, or specialists. The press has a tendency to shut out the public as they prefer to talk about issues in legal or technical term. Mathews counters that “citizens usually have a different ‘take’ on issues than experts or institutions. They are more likely to respond to issues described in a public language that is based on everyday experiences and the things people consider most valuable.” He gives as an example the different cut everyday American have on the issue of drugs - they see this as a family and/or community concern, not simply a law enforcement issue. So we need to encourage those who represent the media to attempt to frame the issues in the language and with stories of everyday people. Next, I think we need to stop averting our eyes and pretending we have no problems in our communities because we happen to live in the better neighborhoods. . I say this in the spirit of Kennedy and Kant not Nietzsche. You decide which world views reflect your own philosophy In a very provocative speech titled The Widening Gap Between the Rich and The Poor by Andrew R. Cecil, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, the University of Texas at Austin, delivered this past November is included this story “The Wall Street Journal article chronicles the plight of such workers in the ‘boom town’ of Branson, Missouri, which has become a popular tourist destination as a Mecca for fans of country music. Don Mullins, a plumber from Austin, Texas, moved to Branson in 1993 with his wife, two unemployed sons, and their wives and children. They could not afford the security deposits or utility down payments that would have been necessary to rent an apartment, so all eleven family members continued to sleep in a 28-foot trailer for most of a year. At the time the story was written, members of the family held down five jobs. They had five children and about five square feet per person. The newborn baby slept in the sink. Other full-time workers in Branson found it necessary to seek even less satisfactory accommodations. Nancy and John Rogers and their four sons were living in a homeless shelter by the railroad tracks and eating their dinners in the shelter’s soup kitchen. Mr. Rogers was working a security guard on the night shift for minimum wage, and Mrs. Rogers had a job at local poultry plant. Those who were worse off-newcomers to town looking for jobs -- were sleeping in dumpsters, in their cars, or under bridges.” According to the Urban Institute about 16 percent of the population aged sixty and over --are either hungry or malnourished because they are poor or too infirm to shop or cook. I will offer the opinion that in fact we may choose to avert your eyes, we may choose to dismiss the people in next door who are marginalized and oppressed for the short-term, but our children and grandchildren will not be able to do so without increasing their own health, safety and well-being. If you read the late Christopher Lasch’s latest book, THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES, you will find a very convincing argument that only a small number of those very wealthy globetrotters will be able to barricade their homes with lots of security as they attempt to maintain their privacy and as they try to protect themselves from the starving masses. Recall the French Revolution. Perhaps it becomes more clear why the ancient Greek word for a private person was an idiot. Also, consider this adage from the French, “When you sow poverty you reap anger.” The next responsible behavior I think we can model and encourage is to move our students, friends, family, associates out of the thinking in dichotomies mold. Someone once said there are two types of people: those who think in dichotomies and those who don’t. Which led one other to reply, there are three types of people: Those who can count and those who can’t. It starts simply - things are either up or down, yes or no, local or global. . Most of life isn’t any of these - it’s somewhere in between up and down, yes or no, local or global. Here’s an example. You may hear people say something like, “well I think our government ought to take care of business here at home. We don’t have the resources or we have no business meddling in things globally.” Folks, the answer is not in a dichotomy - oh if it were so simple. The responsible citizen knows that we have to think and act locally and globally. The environment is local and it is global; crime is local and its is global, the population explosion is local and it’s global. John Warfield, a brilliant professor, at George Mason University recently wrote a wonderful primer he calls MENTOMOLOGY: THE IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF MINDBUGS. He has so far created four categories of mindbugs: mindbugs of misinterpretation, mindbugs of clanthink, mindbugs of habit, and mindbugs of error. He is considering a fifth category, mindbugs of specific human shortcomings. The first mindbug he defines is a Mindbug of Habit called Affinity to All-encompassing Dichotomies which is “the necessity of the academic propensity among philosophers to create dichotomies, and to choose one member of the dichotomy as superior to another, not recognizing the possibility that there is a continuum of which the two members may be at best end points. Up and down, yes and no, black and write, right and wrong, local and global are most often polar endpoints. I have just a few more thoughts this morning about politically responsible behavior. Attention to being whatever “politically correct” means is not healthy behavior in a democratic society. Saying and acting in ways that are expected to pander to some social norms that do not honestly represent what citizens are thinking and meaning results in shams, charades, and illusions. I believe the social good, no matter how difficult it is to understand social good, will be more closely achieved when people find it acceptable to say what they honestly think and believe about their nation, religion, ethnicity, sexual preferences, institutions and all matters of public life rather than be corrupted or prostituted by what others inform them to be politically correct.” More than ever we citizens have a responsibility to shout “qui bono” when the policy makers of institutions who uplift or degrade our lives and communities make choices and decisions that we and our children must live by. Who decided the Olympics was good for me as an individual, good for my community? Who gets to decide what is best for us? Us? representatives of our community? shareholders? corporate managers? Who gets to decide what is best for our environment? Do we have a democratic process in place to represent so many interests and weigh the many choices? Should we? Could we? These decisions involve hard work for responsible citizens - they should not be made only by people tagged as experts or specialists. Jonathan Dayton wrote “Each individual takes a different route to happiness; and being the best judge of his own case, has a right to do so. One mode of living and one system of pursuits will not produce every man’s happiness.” So I want to leave you today with the thought that we do have rights, but as of late we have overemphasized them in the scale of democracy. For democracy works best when we try to balance and perhaps temper our rights with our responsibilities. We live in a society that emphasizes rights; the majority, minorities, employers, employees, victims, and criminals all remind us of their rights. Indeed, central to the social political and legal fabric of the United States is the Bill of Rights. The codification into law of fundamental human rights is an essential safeguard against the corrupting influences of power and human weakness as manifested in bigotry and prejudice. However, focusing on rights as the basis of conduct and policy is to create a society that is driven by advocacy, leading to a loss of community and reducing the motivation to work for the common good. Perhaps we can learn from the philosophy of one of the world’s greatest teachers of all time. Gandhi’s life and teachings represent a different point of view- a focus on responsibilities, not rights..... Gandhi spent more than 50 years in active public service and understood the need for legal safeguards to protect fundamental rights. However, he believed that a commitment to personal responsibility, not insistence on rights, should govern conduct and social policy. H.G. Wells once asked for Gandhi’s views on a document Wells had co-authored entitled “Rights of Man.” Gandhi did not agree with the document’s emphasis on rights. He responded with a cable that said, “I suggest the right way. Begin with a charter of Duties of Man and I promise the rights will follows as spring follows winter” Gandhi asked us to remember that if our rights are inalienable, our responsibility is indisputable - given to us by every religion and culture - to treat others as ourselves. He focused on this most fundamental of human responsibilities. If we keep it as our ideal and try to move toward it, we reduce the emphasis on rights and bring personal responsibility to a higher level in guiding our thoughts and actions. In both the political and business arenas, commitment to responsibilities impacts leadership and creates a climate of cooperation in which individuals and groups look for ways to produce benefits for all. (Nair, 1995, p. 26) Gandhi was concerned with human misfortunes and shortcomings. I have read that every day he spent an hour with his grandson teaching him a philosophy of life. Once Gandhi delineated a list of seven blunders that he said led to violence in the world: 1) Wealth without work, 2) Pleasure without conscience, 3)knowledge without character, 4) Commerce without morality, 5) Science without humanity, 6) Worship without Sacrifice, and 7) Politics without Principle. His grandson Arun added an eighth: Rights without Responsibilities. Maybe we should all being to define our own list of responsibilities. I know of one attempt to do this by a man named John F. Smith, III. They were published in a Unitarian World Magazine not long ago and I hope you got a copy when you came in this morning. I think we have a right to our opinions . . . . and I think as much we have a responsibility for these opinions that we hold dear. To be ethical is to accept responsibility for one’s own acts. The Broader Social Context There are pragmatic reasons for all of us to focus on our responsibilities rather than our rights. A society driven by the former promotes service, tolerance, compromise, and progress, whereas a society driven by the latter is preoccupied with acquisition, confrontation, and advocacy. When we fail to meet our responsibilities to others, they are forced to insist on their rights. The founders of the United States were not accountable to women by denying them the right to vote, nor did they meet their duties to African Americans by allowing slavery. Until recently, we did not meet our obligations to those with physical disabilities. Each of these groups had to struggle for its rights and get them made into law, and these struggles strained the fabric of society. If we meet our responsibility to treat others as ourselves, the fabric of society need not be damaged in the effort to achieve rights. Gandhi took the concept one step further. He insisted that those being denied their rights also had to meet their responsibilities. Opponents were entitled to be treated as he would like to be treated - with courtesy and respect. . . . . He never forgot the human relationship in the political struggle. In today’s political environment, we see an escalation of personal attacks at all levels, creating a climate of animosity and distrust and making it difficult to work for the common good. In the formation of social policy, debate often takes place on the basis of the rights of individuals and groups. This creates a climate of confrontation. Gandhi always believed in helping the less fortunate. This was a responsibility based on his fundamental belief that one should treat others as oneself. However, he insisted that those who needed assistance were obligated to help themselves. . . . Focusing on responsibilities removes the mind-set of giving something without return and of taking something without making a contribution. Both these attitudes are detrimental to the human spirit and create a society that is neither productive nor caring. The concept of meeting obligations because it is the right thing to do seems to be declining. We need to reverse this trend. When we direct our attention to our responsibilities, we are forced to look inward and ask what contribution we can make to create something better. When Gandhi was asked about his message, he responded, “My life is my message.” This is true for each one of us - whether we like it or not - our life is our message. Meeting our responsibilities should be a way of life, not of gaining rewards. It should have its foundation in the family, where parents and elders set an example for their children, the leaders of the future. Looking at the world through the lens of personal responsibility creates a landscape of hard work, high standards, commitment to service, and compassion. (Nair, 1995, 30-31) Responsibilities Face it, nobody owes you a living. What you achieve or fail to achieve in your lifetime, is directly related to what you do, or fail to do. People don’t choose their parents or childhood, but you can choose your own direction. Everyone has problems and obstacles to overcome, but that too is relative to each individual. Nothing is carved in stone, you can change anything in your life, if you want to badly enough. Excuses are for those who don’t take responsibility for their actions Those who do take responsibility for their actions are the real winners in life. Winners meet life’s challenges head on, knowing there are no guarantees, and give all they’ve got. And never think it’s too late or too early responsibilities plays no favorites and will pass whether you act or not Take control of your life. Dare to dream and take risks . . . Compete. Anonymous Printed in Vital Speeches of the Day, October l5, 1994, Vol. LXI, No. L, speech “Ten Suggestions for Making the Most of a College Education: Discovering the Value of College - the Bottom Line” by Richard L. Weaver II, pp. 11-13. I would like to conclude a final thought about all of these opinions you have allowed me to voice this afternoon with two final sentences from a speech by Bob Shacochis that was included in a Syracuse University publication: “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter from what culture, or skin, or gender, the voice of consciousness comes. It only matters that it does come and, when it arrives, that we recognize it.” Nair, Keshavan. (May 1995). A Clue from Gandhi. Sky, v. 24, no. 5, pp. 26- -31. Right now we’re indulging ourselves in an orgy of ‘rights’ - we have animal rights, children’s rights, the right to housing, to education, to day care, to time-off, to perfume-free zones, (ugh!), the right to be protected from the wonderful aroma shed by bakeries . . . even the right to artificial insemination - as 14 - count ‘em, 14- killers on death row in California sued for their right to leave their heirs attained by artificial insemination. p. 414. John F. Budd, Jr., Speech delivered at Avon Old Farms School in the Barnes Group Lectures, Avon, Connecticut, December l, 1994, “Ambition is Not a ‘Right’ In April l5, l995 Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. LXI, No. 13, pp. 412-416.