Rights vs. Needs

I have been thinking about rights vs. needs for a long time - since about 1995. I haven't done much writing on it but sometimes I think it may be one of the most important contributions I can make to improving society. I haven't done much to publicize my thoughts about rights vs. needs, but I want to at least write a little more about it today.

The other day I was talking with Jerren about a suicidal 17 year old in the USA. He said it seemed like she had virtually the same rights as a 5 year old child.

This helped me see that there is another problem with confusing rights and needs. It is the problem of what happens when a person's needs change but their rights remain the same.

The 17 year old has very different needs now than she did when she was 5. But it seems that the laws in the USA treat her almost the same as if she were still 5. I think this is true in most countries around the world. But in some countries 16 year olds have more "rights" than 16 year olds do in the USA. For example, I believe 16 year olds in England, Australia and Canada are legally free to move away from their parents. In other words they have the "right" to decide where they want to live, with the exception of living in another country.

I don't think a 16 year old in any country can get a passport without their parent's permission. So if a 16 or 17 year old has the need to live in another culture it doesn't matter. What matters is whether they have a legal right to get a passport. Or more simply put, it doesn't matter if they have a need for more freedom. Their needs are always less important to the people who make the laws and control the weapons and jails than are their "rights."

One of the major problems in democratic societies is the confusion between needs and rights. By helping us understand our emotional needs, emotional intelligence helps us distinguish one from the other. For example, I have a need for sex and intimacy. But few would claim that I have a right to either of these. I also have a need to protect myself. Yet in certain countries I have the "right" to own deadly weapons, while in others I do not. The situation becomes even more complicated when we consider our desires as opposed to our needs. For example, I may desire a certain standard of living, but I do not have a right to any lifestyle I choose--instead I must earn it. So who decides what is a "right," as opposed to a need or a desire?

A need or a desire becomes a "right" only when one group of people decide that it is a right. In democracies, the majority rules, at least theoretically. If, for example, the majority rules that they have a "right" to something, however far-fetched it may be, they can literally force others to give it to them. They simply elect leaders who pass laws accordingly. When these laws are put into effect, the full power of the government, which includes deadly force if necessary, enforces these laws.

There are at least two problems with this process of transferring a need to a right:

Responsibility is compromised because once something becomes a "right," one no longer has to do anything further to earn it. When a person believes he has a right to something, he feels entitled to it. If he does not receive this entitlement, he believes he has been wronged, cheated, victimized, deprived, and treated unfairly. In most cases, he tends to place blame on the person or group which he believes is responsible for depriving him of his "rights." Logically, he then focuses his energy on asserting his "rights." He does this by making demands and by trying to coerce, manipulate or in some way change the person or persons he holds responsible for his unhappiness.

Since changing others is difficult, if not impossible, he sets himself up to feel frustrated, defeated, controlled, dependent, victimized, and powerless. All of these are direct opposites of the positive feelings needed for happiness. They are all also the opposite of that required for high self-esteem and self-reliance. When a low EQ person feels such negative feelings, he does not know how to soothe himself. Over time, he may feel resentful, bitter, jealous, envious, hopeless, despondent, or depressed. (This brings to mind Freud's definition of depression as "anger turned inward.") Or the "victim" may take out his negative feelings and frustrations on others, either those close to him or total strangers. He may also look for other ways to fulfill his need to feel powerful and in control. In the extreme case, he may turn to rage, random violence, and destruction. In the long run, all of this is not only anti-social, but self-destructive.

The second problem mentioned above is the neglect of the minority's needs. Again, this is particularly relevant to those who are both more intelligent and more sensitive, since they are, by definition, in the minority. In the long run, the social conventions, the laws, the values, the beliefs, and the definition of "rights" will all reflect the majority's needs and desires. To those in the minority, all of this has the potential to cause feelings of being left out, isolated, misunderstood, unsupported, controlled, invalidated, rejected, etc.

The result of these problems is that there will be an increase in irresponsible behavior and a compounding of the natural tendency for groups to subdivide. This subdivision causes them to insulate and isolate themselves. The more the groups separate, the more they misunderstand, fear, resent, and compete with one another. As long as resources are plentiful, this may be a tolerable situation, but if resources become scarce, or even if they are perceived to be scarce, the competition becomes intense and ultimately leads to violence and warfare. What is needed, then, is something to reunite the groups by emphasizing their commonalities. A deeper understanding of our universal human emotional needs is probably a good place to start and it is probably much more helpful than relying on arbitrary declarations of "rights."

What happens when a person's needs and rights conflict? For example, what if I have a need to ask questions and to understand but I have no legal "rights" to question them. For example, questioning a police officer or a judge about their feelings, beliefs, or reasons for their decisions?

What happens when a child has a need to understand but his "right" to question the teacher runs out when her patience runs out?

What happens when a person has a need for sex but he has no "right" to it, even if he is willing to buy it?

What happens when a child, teenager or adult has a need for a hug, but has no "right" to one? And how could we make it a "right" and legally force others to give hugs so everyone's right to hugs would be satisfied?

What happens when a customer has a need for restitution from a company but she has no legal "right" to it according to existing laws?

What happens when we try to write laws and policy statements including certain specific "rights" but excluding others?

What happens when people have the same rights but different needs? - People in very broad groups have the same rights. But their individual needs can be quite different.

What happens when there is a conflict between a person's needs and their rights?

What emotional "rights" does a person have? Do I have a "right" to feel understood? Do I have a "right" to understand? Do I have a "right" to feel respected? Loved? Admired? Helpful? Accepted?

Whose responsibility is it to see that your rights are met? And whose responsibility is it that your needs are met?

Relationship Bill of Rights

1. I have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

2. I have the right to be free from psychological or physical abuse.

3. I have the right to proper notice and negotiation prior to the relationship being terminated.

4. I have the right to experience my own thoughts and feelings.

5. I have the right to tell my partner honestly and responsibly what I am thinking and feeling, even if my partner does not agree, without being condemned for it.

6. I have the right to have my own life outside of the relationship.

7. I have the right to continue to learn and grow.

8. I have the right to openly talk about and seek to resolve relationship problems.

9. I have the right to end the relationship if it is not meeting my needs.

10. I recognize that my partner has the same rights as I do.

From Getting Love Right, Terrence Gorski.

Notice also that number 10 says my partner has the same rights as I do, but each person will have different needs.

When I look at this list I can picture someone shouting "I have a right to so and so...." and "It is not fair!" Or maybe "You can't do that. I have a right to such and such."

While our needs come from nature, there really are no such things as "rights" in nature.

Rights are a completely man-made fabrication which hark back to the days of kings and subjects. The kings treated the subjects badly so the subjects came up with a list of "rights". The kings agreed to certain "rights" but the kings still kept the power. To this day governments still control the power by deciding what the people's "rights" are.

Here is something from the USA. I think it is from the Declaration of Independence, but I have to check since I forgot my 8th grade history lesson on it!

First, I say there is no "Creator," so this nullifies one of the most basic premises/assumptions of the government of the USA. Also, I say there are no inalienable rights, even in nature. For example, we all die, so there is no right to life. We can be imprisoned, so there is no right to liberty, and if we are dead or imprison, we certainly have little chance of pursuing happiness. So the entire beautiful, poetic statement is nothing more than an unrealistic ideal. This fact goes a long way to explain the problems in the USA of so many people feeling entitlted and looking for answers in the wrong places.

Here we see one of the problems with confusing needs and rights. The author states that children have certain basic rights. But in her definition of toxic parents she speaks only of the children's and the parents needs. Here is how she describes "toxic parents":

The author can't say "unavailable to meet the children's rights." This wouldn't make sense. It also wouldn't make sense to say that the parents demand that the children meet the parents rights. We don't meet rights. We don't fill rights. We just "have" them.

One person can't fill another person's rights. But does this mean a person's needs are unfillable?

According to common English usage, I can deny you of your rights. I can peer into your window when you are undressing and rob you of your right to privacy. But we don't talk much about denying a person's needs. We don't say he denied me of my need for privacy.

We also talk about "violating" someone's rights. And we talk about "revoking" someone's rights.

I am not sure what these terms mean exactly. To deny someone of something is something like taking it away from someone. It is also something like stopping a person from obtaining something. I am not sure what violating a right is like.

I do know that we don't talk about violating someone's nees or revoking someone of their needs. We can't take a persons need away from them. We can stop them from getting their need met, but we can't take the need away.

Consider a teacher and a student who wants to get up and get a drink of water. The teacher can take away the student's right to get up, leave class and get a drink of water, but she can't take away his need for the water.

From EST The Steersman Handbook, L. Clark Stevens. Bantam. New York, 1971, page p 93, 94

The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. -- Albert J. Nock

Every child has an inalienable right to be bonded in welcoming arms, kindly initiated into a caring culture, allowed to play freely in the senses and imagination. -- Sam Keen

I just checked the a copy of a summary of the United Nations Rights of Children for the word "needs." Nowhere was it found I had looked over some UN pages before to see if they talked about needs, or emotional needs in particular and found they had almost no mention of either one.

This reminds me that there is a lot of work to do in changing the mindset from one of "rights" to "needs".

Crystal is a teen who has tried to kill herself. She has been ordered to live in what is called a treatment center. When she arrived there she was given a list of her rights. But she was never asked to give them a list of her needs. Also, to the best of my knowledge, no one else has ever given them a list of Crystal's needs either.

In my experience, her needs go unmet, and this creates an infinite number of problems for both people like Crystal, and for the rest of society.

- If our rights our inalienable, then why do we need someone to read them to us?

- Who makes up these lists? And, importantly, why do they make them? To help us or to control us?

I suppose fires were one way of determining who was responsible and who wasn't a million years ago. Because it is power. As I have said in my journal many times, give someone power and see what they do with it. But don't give it to them too quickly. You don't give a monkey a machine gun if he can't use a pistol responsibly. (this is also why we don't let kids play with matches- so all of history mankind has been concerned about access to, distribution, use and abuse of power.

And we have told them it is their "right" to have it! What a mess we have made, we humans, we intelligent humans. I wonder what TJ would say if he came back today? (Thomas Jefferson)

Voting rights for example. Would we let a group of uneducated people vote on whether to blow up another country with nuclear weapons? No. But how much voting power do we give to people? The power to decide who will be the President is a lot of power. Too much, I believe. First we need to see what they have done with the power they already have. **

aug 2001 - does every child have a right to water? Most will say yes. Next question. How much water does he have a right to? And does every child need as much water as every other child? Are everyone's needs equal?