Imagine what might happen if the results of the Human Genome Project really rocked the world.
People would stop each other in the streets.
“Hey, cousin!” they’d exclaim.
“I just found out we’re related! How are you? Good to meet you! We must get together soon…”
Imagine then, if the realization that we are physiologically part of the same family, prompted us to begin acting like a family?
We’d be a sensible family. One that knew it had problems but was confident that by working together we’d sort them out.
Problems like the issues surrounding human rights.
Our first step in tackling these problems, might be to make sure everybody feels part of our family. This in itself is a complicated process. We’d already know, from our smaller family units, that true belonging is only possible when both rights and responsibilities are in place. It’s necessary for everyone in a healthy family to both give and take. This is justice and creates not only basic well-being but dignity and independence.
However, our ‘family’ might pause at this point to examine its conscience, just to make sure that there really is a place for everyone. It’d be in our own interest to do this because, as the African proverb goes,
If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth.
This proverb wasn’t written about the London riots but there’s no denying how well it fits them both literally and metaphorically.
Instinctively we all know that alienation is an extreme of ‘otherness’. None of us have any loyalty, responsibility or affection for a society – or a family – we feel doesn’t want us. This alienation can sometimes be self-imposed but even so, the ‘family’ needs to be careful that we don’t create structures that perpetuate alienation and disaffection.
OK – so now we have our global family structure. Everyone is welcome and needed – so, what happens next?
Well, obviously, we’re going to ensure that everyone is fed, clothed, housed and safe within our family. Basic life prerequisites.
But this doesn’t mean that some people should do the providing and others should just get to consume the resources – far from it. A good family will always help out in emergencies and will gladly provide for children and anybody vulnerable. But a really good family will also create an environment where everybody can stand on their own feet and live a dignified, productive and independent life.
So, in very simplistic terms, a ‘family’ approach would ensure that everybody had the basics necessary to sustain life and access to the ‘tools’ necessary to allow independence, dignity and the opportunity to contribute to the overall well-being of the family.
How then might our family gathering approach unpleasant issues like the abuse of the ‘rights’ accorded to everyone within our system?
Well, we all know that this behaviour doesn’t have a place in a functional family. Everybody is absolutely expected to respect everybody else and no abuse can be tolerated. We do make mistakes in this regard – even in our smaller families – but overall, guided by the principles of justice – not revenge – our wise family would take whatever steps it needed to take to secure the well-being of the entire family.
And so we might continue, looking at global problems through a lens we understand – the family.
The world is knotted in deep and terrible disorder and no one simple solution is the answer to all of it’s problems. However, sometimes when things are hard to understand and manage it’s helpful to return to first principles. To things we already know and understand. Like families. We all know about families.
In a family we’d expect love, mutual assistance, support, forbearance and concern with each other’s welfare. This isn’t considered ridiculously idealistic as a goal for a family.
Now that we know that ‘our family’ includes all sorts of people – children who are being sold for sex and slavery, men, women and children struggling and needlessly starving to death, minorities who are persecuted for their ethnicity or beliefs – maybe we won’t only feel concern for them but also responsibility, and a certain entitlement to have a say in their welfare, just as we might with members of our known family?
In the words of Article 28 0f the Universal Declaration of Human Rights –
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
The corollary of that is that all of us also have a responsibility to ensure that this happens.
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Photograph – UNICEF – Pakistan, 2010: A boy flies a kite in a camp for people displaced by flooding that began in late July 2010, affecting 18 million people, half of them children.
On December 10th, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
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