Universal Natural Rights & Human Responsibilities

We have adopted a meta-ethical paradigm based upon the acknowledgement of the universal efficacy of natural rights. Natural rights extends from doctrine of human rights and responsibilities, and encompasses all relationships of humankind with nature, including especially other people. This paradigm is expostulated because it is necessary to define and set clear precedents and limits by which human development and social action in the world can be judged, sanctioned and, hopefully, self-constrained. 

Universal Human Rights & Responsibilities

All programs and projects conceived and carried out by or in the name of the larger Lewis Works framework will be done so in accordance and respect to this basic doctrine of human rights and responsibilities within the following meta-ethical paradigm:

1. Basic Human Rights and Responsibilities are interpreted in dynamic balance with one another, and there are many derivative rights and responsibilities that are forthcoming from their interpretation that apply in limited contexts and cases.

2. Human violence is defined as the unnecessary use or threat of destructive force, social constraint or coercion/persuasion in the violation of basic human rights and responsibilities.

3. The central agenda of this doctrine is the realization of greater human potential and possibility through universal tolerance of human difference and the active promotion of human development, both individually and upon collective levels of human social organization.

4. For every rule stated, there are an unknown number of possible exceptions, conditions, extenuating circumstances, and resulting interpretations and applications that nevertheless do not violate the spirit of the implicit principles involved.  

5. There is therefore mandated by the doctrine of human rights and responsibilities a general attitude and behavioral predisposition of generosity, openness, respect, tolerance and forgiveness.

It should go without saying that one's own rights generally leave off where another's responsibilities begin, but this is a central point in the balancing of rights and responsibilities that many people and governments seem to have forgotten. It is true for instance that in some "rights-based" societies like the US, criminals with high-priced lawyers often gain greater attention to their rights and interests than their victims, because there has not been a balanced definition or emphasis upon human responsibilities. On the other side of the coin, in some traditionally "responsibility-based" societies like China and India, individual human rights are frequently sacrificed and violated, and even go unrecognized or tabooed, for the sake of the preservation of a strong sense of social responsibility, which by the way becomes chronically violated anyway by the abuse of privilege and power and the maintenance of double-standards and hypocrisy of office.

It also remains quite true that these rights and responsibilities may be variously interpreted by different people with different backgrounds and orientations. It becomes therefore the case that the gray areas of the interpretation of these basic sets of rights and responsibilities serves as both a ground of contention, possible conflict, compromise, exploitation, violation and even misappropriation, misrepresentation and the dysphemization of the actual exercise of human rights and responsibilities in applied settings. 

The "Right to Life" is a wonderful example of an inherently ambiguous basic statement that can be used by ideologically vested and closed interests to promote their own agendas in the world.  The interpretation of these rights and responsibilities therefore becomes more critical to their realization and the promotion of human development than their legal codification and formal definition. 

The answer to this kind of dilemma is the realization that the basic doctrine of human rights and responsibilities serves not only as a basic anthropological charter for humankind, but as a general ethical code of conduct in which rights and responsibilities, variously interpreted, variably expressed under conflicting and existentially uncertain circumstances, constitutes a kind of meta-ethical system for individual and community behavior. It therefore provides a template for human social action, organization, relation and definition of well being, and at least implicitly sets the standards for defining and measuring relative human well being, conduct and its consequences in the world.  For instance, promotion of human development, both individually and collectively defined, emerges in this framework as a certain high priority that cannot be responsibly ignored in the world.

Different rights and responsibilities of self and others operate and condition one another in a complex way in variable settings and under different sets of conditions. The system in part or as a whole always remains open to interpretation, discussion, revision conflict-resolution, adjudication, legislation and compromise.

Universal Natural Rights & Responsibilities

The doctrine of universal natural rights represents a meta-ethical and logical extension of the doctrine of universal human rights. As with everything else, things can be argued both ways and nothing is incontrovertibly set in stone. There are of course gray areas in the articulation of development that will be manipulated by interests capitalizing on development.