Full disagreement with this.
You're far too smart to cling to these lies.
We simply do not have ANY rights at all, none of us. What we have are some limited social contracts with power structures, which can disappear in any crisis.
Again, you Westerners live in sheltered bubbles. Stop this lunacy and fight against reality, I beg you.
There is no supernatural entity to grant rights. There is just power and its manifestations, and flawed humans. "Rights" is simply a manifestation of power, where weaker humans are granted conditional privileges by a rich elite and their structures - finance, state, nation.
My fren, we are not living in caveman days. We have sentience, dignity, and the ability to conceive of ourselves and others as more than amoeba-like organisms.
Too woo? Even atheists acknowledge that humans have capacity beyond mere existence, and recognize humanity as more than walking meat. My point with that is that even if one doesn't ascribe to metaphysical conceptions, there is some difference between humans and animals (and even animals, as a group, have the capacity for more than the purely physical or immediate-needs-based value). So sure, "rights" are a concept, but (and sorry for the US-based reference; it's the handiest example), "we hold these truths to be self-evident."
You could say it's just a construct, meaningless without power, but then that means we are just beasts, and our excess intellectual and emotional capacity is worthless. That means loyalty, allegiance, community, and on, are also worthless.
No, there may not be some external power that authoritatively confirms that "humanness" definitely for sure means x, y, or z privilege or right. Because we are just here, left to sort it for ourselves. If you like the Bible, it separates man from beast in the earliest verses. If you don't relate to that, find another person exercising higher thinking but not self-interested in power and manipulation who says that not one human matters, there are no filial or emotional ties, that all of anything beyond the physical is lies. Communism maybe tried, but only theoretically; human connection was/is at least implicitly acknowledged. And you yourself don't believe that. (OK - I speculate. Afaicr, you have never spoken about attachment, so I could be wrong (though you do seem to value intellect and self-actualization...at least for men...). But aside from this jag about rules required for equal humanity, you haven't seemed to suggest that you think there's nothing unique about humans vs animals.)
And if we are not mere beasts, or only partly beasts, is it not possible that notions of essential value also trump base animal drives? We have intellectual and emotional distinctions from worms, yes? Is it not also possible that we can have moral ones? And if there even is such a thing as moral behavior, then there can also be such a thing as inherent dignity and value. Neither is tangible. Wrestling with the inscrutable or ineffable or inherent is tricky. But the human condition of considering, sorting, trying to articulate these things suggests there is something in the concept that is of merit. And what is more fundamental than basic recognition of being human vs something less evolved, and a least common denominator set of essential aspects of being human? And if humans are a group apart from animals, then logic dictates there are important commonalities existing and due to every member of this group. Mere existence isn't it, because that applies to every living thing. The broad species that is human is a whole class, not limited to circumstance. "Human rights" are a manifestation of the basic uniquenesses of humanity, applicable to all. To live unmolested is a right; its manifold violations don't mean the right didn't exist or that the violations weren't violations.
Your line of thought suggests that random killings shouldn't be condemned. Yes, we justify killing in the name of all the reasons for war...but if that weren't troubling you wouldn't have people in here bitching about who's drafted and not. And we wouldn't have universal laws of war...or any restrictions whatsoever. That all such laws and rules of engagement don't apply to all people equally means only that humans will find ways to violate the most essential aspects of humanity...not that those don't exist
a priori.
Creating tiers of humans for basic, fundamental things is done for power and advantage, subjugation and acquisition. That's going against humanity, not embodying it.
Tl; dr: humans, including men, have the capacity to recognize affiliation of others of the species. Power moves are just moves, not some kind of divinely ordained (or grunt grunt ordained) truth. Power isn't inherently good or bad; it's a mode, not a
raison d'etre. That makes it a second-tier value. Humans are clever; power is just a mode to manipulate the world, not a moral ordering of it.
