Introduction to “On Israel-Palestine: 2019–2021”
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Human beings invented human rights as human beings invented the gods. To quote Ezra Pound:
The long flank, the firm breast
and to know beauty and death and despair
and to think that what has been shall be,
flowing, ever unstill,
Then a partridge-shaped cloud over dust storm.
The hells move in cycles,
No man can see his own end.
The Gods have not returned. “They have never left us.”
They have not returned.
Nevertheless, as we all know, the concept of a god, not simply the Abrahamic Yahweh — G-d, comes with blessings and cursings, fortunes and failings, and some claims about Him, not all of which may be true — maybe none. The god concept contains premises knit together into a weave — a weave laced as a drape, even a curtain, gently over the mindscape of believers. Believers believe. Believers act. Believers converse. Believers convert. Believers coalesce. Believers change and alter societies. In this way, the god concept transmutes the abstract, the in-mind, into the concrete, the in-reality. No matter the god in mind, that process affects most rising and falling societies in history. Thus, maybe, we can all agree: the god concept, ignoring veracity, impacts the world in history and to the present, massively.
That which amounts to the in-mind, the invented, the imaginary, the unreal, can affect the in-reality, in that sense. The god concept tends to come with a few universalist ethical principles, for example, the Golden Rule, loving one’s neighbour as oneself, compassion and justice, non-harm and welfare, the one family world, brotherhood, world reparation, justice and dignity, service to humanity, living in harmony with The Way, benevolence and reciprocity, and equality. Let us call these traditionalist transcendental religious ethics in the universalist canon; the rest sit in the particularist camp. Parochialism is a specific set of guidelines, rules, and laws for a particular set of believers.
Even if taking the god concept, whether true or not, a mind becomes necessary to make god exist and for the concept to actualize in the world through said beings’ minds and lives. Similarly, with the universalist and particularist camps of transcendentalist religious ethics, those need minds to act within them as social codes. In that sense, they become intersubjective agreements in sociality more than objective moralities — let alone transcendental realities. In this manner, traditionalist transcendental religious ethics become universalist, at times, and parochial, in others. While in truth, that is to say, they become intersubjective agreements bound to specific geographic locales and historical periods, they get perceived as transcendental and objective, mistakenly.
Human rights come forth similarly, in-mind. In the mind, these formulate the codes of conduct and ethics in most of the substantive ethical institutions in the world today. They exist around the globe. They created the framework for establishing an international system of laws, obligations, and rules. These become, not only human rights but, international human rights. These institutions become stronger with each passing year, for the most part, with some, minor setbacks. These international human rights come with massive intersubjective agreements despite consistent violations since the inception of their invention. The striving for international human rights converges with the work of universalism.
The universalism inherent in international human rights represents a convergence of the universalism from religious ethics towards a common core of moral truths bound to a principle of simplicity in foundations for an optimization of ethical considerations with equal application for all in theory with the extinguishment of religion in them while an allowance for belief in them, through them. In a manner similar to the god concept, minds become necessary for actualization in beings’ minds and lives. No minds, no rights, so minds make rights. An intersubjective agreement abstracted for approximated objective observation of formalized processes, human actions, international institutions, and rights documents. The difference: god concepts get blind acceptance, illegitimate authority, and dogmatic worship; rights get conscious deliberation, open debate, and democratic enactment. The former as absolute and simplistic. The latter as statistical and complex.
Traditional religious transcendental ethics seen in the religious ethics come with narrow application. International human rights come with broad applicability. Do not simply believe me; we merely need to count the truism: Even amongst the religious in societies, most adhere to human rights arguments when making cases for fairness, justice, and truth. In addition, few play by religious rules in an international sense. Most play by international human rights through global institutions, for example, the United Nations. Every Member State participates there, whether the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, or the International Court of Justice. Not many take part in the religious ethics in theocracies or the dogmatic secular moralities of Maoism, Communism, and the like. International human rights become secular in this decoupling process. These become international secular human rights, whether spiritual religions or political religions: Both insist on and generate dogma.
Hence, the reason for the stipulations in prior writings of traditional religious transcendental ethics and international secular human rights as a distinction for Canadians and others, one, to make, and two, to decide upon as a path forward for their societies and regions. Even though, these exist, gods and rights, in mind. Their impacts on individual lives and systems of governance remain inevitable while not immutable. Any move towards universalism in ethics will necessitate a move to international secular human rights due to the decoupling from the parochial nature of spiritual and political dogmas. In this way, abstracted ethical principles garner reality through these intersubjective agreement abstractions of international secular human rights enacted through minds into lives with an arc towards universalism as a prism for fractionation to pervasive values and decoupled from spiritual and political religions: benevolence, compassion, dignity, equality, harmony, justice, non-harm, one family world, reciprocity, service, welfare, and world reparation. Which is to say, we never “left” ourselves.
January 19, 2024
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
