Letting go of 'rights'

Many people believe that human 'rights' are something we are born with. But have you ever stopped to think that maybe 'rights' is just another concept someone made up?

Years ago at university I took a course in Chinese history and philosophy. One of the things that stuck with me was an article that compared eastern and western views of rights and responsibility. In the west, the idea of individual rights is sacred; we believe that everyone is equal and we should all have access to certain things that are considered necessary to our well-being.

However in the east they look at things differently. Instead of seeing things in terms of rights they instead focus on responsibility. From this perspective, when each person fulfills their responsibility to others everyone's needs are met. The Chinese philosopher Confucius established the basis for this worldview. Even today if you ask a modern Asian young person about their ambitions many will talk about getting a job that will allow them to support their family, while in the west many young people are more interested in their own individual success.

Now I'm not saying that one or the other of these views is the right one. But I am suggesting that just like so many of the things we hold onto, the concept of rights is just that: a concept. More than this I'd like to suggest that this concept of individual rights may actually hold us back from being free and prevent us from evolving as a culture.

Take for example a woman who deeply desires to have a child but because she does not have a partner, or is not in a stable financial situation, this option is not available to her. In this instance her belief in her 'right' to have a child might cause her to see herself as a victim, to feel that in some way she has been cheated by life. This view of herself can only lead to unhappiness.

And while we all go around demanding our 'rights' we forget that as a human species we are actually denying these rights to the majority of people. In fact, your 'right' to own an iPhone or to have four children may be denying others access to more basic necessities such as clean water or food. Not to mention the needs of other species on our planet.

Human rights and social justice are often considered to be synonymous, but perhaps it is this very idea of 'rights' that gets in the way of developing a truly socially just society. Perhaps this separation of ourselves into individual units is promoting a competitive, grasping culture that divides the world into winners and losers.

Instead, we could see through this illusion of separation and understand the world and ourselves as they really are: a interdependent whole in which every element is indivisible from the rest. From this perspective it might be possible to create a culture where the needs of all beings are met, for as Joanna Macy points out in her beautiful book World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal, ‘to truly perceive all life as interconnected challenges many of our most automatic assumptions about what we are and what we need’ (Macy 2007).

What are your thoughts on this?

Letting go of the need for money

After reading The Moneyless Manifesto by Mark Boyle (aka the Moneyless Man) I've become more and more convinced that learning to live free of the burden of money is a goal worth pursuing. My goal is not to do without money altogether but to become less reliant on it, and less stressed about getting more of it! I'm far from actually achieving this but here are my thoughts so far.

Firstly, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think money is bad. To the contrary, money is an excellent invention that allows us to trade more freely and efficiently. However I've found that the more I have to rely on money as my only means of trade the more tied I am to an economic system that I take serious issue with.

Without getting too carried away on my bandwagon my main concerns with our society's current reliance on money are:

• The monetary system is no longer based on anything real. In fact it's based on debt. (If this sounds absurd you should take a look at the very informative animated film Money as Debt which explains this concept in simple terms). This means that in order for the system to keep working the majority of us need to owe money to the banks and pay interest on this debt. All too many of us have willingly taken up this yoke and in fact it is considered a fact of life in this day and age. 
• The monetary system is controlled by an elite group of bankers and politicians who invest our life savings into all kinds of morally corrupt activities such as resource extraction, weapons manufacture and polluting industries. This unjust and environmentally irresponsible behaviour goes on in our name, even though we may disagree with it. If you have money in the bank you are contributing.
• Reliance on money, and especially my obligation to repay any debt owed by me, keeps me chained to a 9 to 5 lifestyle that allows little freedom of movement. Instead of spontaneously moving through my life and taking up opportunities as they present themselves I am forced to maintain a rigid schedule dictated to me by my employer, or if I am lucky my clients.

Letting go of money is a frightening prospect for me. But the more I think about it the more I realise that the security we look for in money is really actually located in community. When we live in a supportive network of good folk who care about us we will always be ok. And when we put energy into these people, loving and supporting them through their trials, then we are investing in something real. This investment will pay off big time when we ourselves are in need.

Plus, we seem to have forgotten that there are other things we can trade besides money. Our time, skills and the products of our labour are all things we can share and trade with others.

Learning to let go of money is something I'm learning slowly. I know it requires a strong community as well as the willingness to live my life without many of the consumer 'essentials' that are marketed so strongly by the media, such as fashionable clothes, the latest technologies, books and music. Luckily our society is so wasteful that many of these items become available second-hand very quickly after they are released!

Have you tried becoming less reliant on money? Please let us know how you're faring...