The naturality of Natural Rights

This week, we were asked the question "Do human rights exist? Are they real, or why did we decide to create them?" We were then all told to participate in a conversation as a whole class to talk about what we thought about this. At first, i thought we were talking about human rights as we know them now, as a set of  laws striving for justice and equal opportunity for all human beings. But that was not it. Instead, was i later came to understand was that it was not human rights themselves that we were being asked about but rather, about the idea of human rights, being rights we all deserved and simply had the 'right' to have just because we are people. This idea, as i think i mentioned in previous blog posts this week, is the idea of Natural Rights. As the title for this post hinted, i would like to speak of the possible naturality behind this idea of natural rights.

While the actual, literal idea of natural rights sounds to be an obvious phony, the idea behind it makes complete sense to me. Strangely, as the man in document 2 from a reading we had said, wanting is not enough, and i think the should is very similar to wanting, you think something should be because you want it to be so, so bad. So unlike i did in my first post for this week, i do not wish to speak about the answer to the question, but rather of what i think of the question and what i think about this idea of human rights being true natural rights

Do Human Rights exist?

I think that the question of whether human rights exist is entirely different from whether they are real. In the documents given during class, various opinions were given.  These documents did not talk about if they existed, but rather, some referenced the idea they had that such a thing should exist, therefore we should make it be that way. Others, then spoke of the idea of human rights as being something that naturally occurred, something we all deserved and were entitled to from birth. And then there was the one that challenged that by saying that for one, it is complete and utter nonsense that we are 'born' with such a divine right to have 'human rights', and that the idea of such a thing occurring simply because we wanted it to is ridiculous because, as was the example given, hunger does not produce bread.
So to me, do human rights exist? Yes, of course they do, many laws exist granting us with what are considered to be universal 'human rights'. But I don’t think that all these human rights are looked at in the same way by all, much less accepted by all. So how does this universal human rights thing work?  I find it hard to understand how a set of rights can be universally agreed upon when such rights are made to maintain up to some level and to create equality, or at least some certain sense of equal opportunity and treatment, for all. There is no denying that different morals exist in different areas of the world, some things that are considered good in one place can be considered terribly bad in another place, so by setting a universal code for human rights, I think it kind of ignores such differences. Although, not the most basic ones, because I don’t think that there exist such a culture who’s beliefs are against the happiness of individuals. So Yes, I do think human rights exist, just not natural human rights. Yes, every human being should have the right to be happy, but it isn’t so, because if such a thing were actually true, if it were a natural right, we would not find ourselves throughout history, violating such a thing, and also fighting for it. It would just be, and that would be the end of it.

So the whole idea of natural human rights, it really does sound like a lot of nonsense, as one of the documents pointed out. I think we created them and that because we wanted them to be real so badly, we made it evolve into something we all think of as natural. Natural in the sense that it should just be, so it is, and no real reasoning is needed, just because we think it makes sense that way.