Rights

[Contemporary Protestant]

What are a person's rights in your opinion? As a young person (18), I see millennials act like entitled little brats. I live in a town where kids drive new BMWs and have their entire education paid for, yet they still say things like "its not fair that the teacher only gave us three days to do a project" or being glad that one teacher is in the hospital and sick, so that the class will be easier for them.

I am also studying Locke and legal documents, and I wondered "are they wrong about what our rights are?" so I ask y'all for you're take on the topic

[dtq123]

Watch who you call brats, I'm one of them.

Seriously though, have you seen my posts?

I know what you mean though, my friends got angry for getting a wrong phone type.

"It's just not the same!" Teens act like the world revolves around them.

Even I succumb to that occasionally.

[SGOS]

It's human greed.  It exists throughout all strata of society.  People want stuff, and they want to do as little as possible to get it.  This is true for the poor lined up for food stamps, and the CEOs of the most wealthy companies.  Where do you suppose teens get their sense of entitlement?

Seriously, I believe rights are something that are conferred by society.  I don't believe inalienable rights exist.  That would be like saying there is a universal morality.  Society determines rights through legal means.  It also confers rights through unspoken means.  At one time, people had the right to own slaves.  That right was a matter of tradition, but it was an unspoken entitlement, not defined by law.

[Sal1981]

What are a person's rights in your opinion?

"Rights" are a human construct when you cut away all the fluff and jazz.

But still, like the idea of volition (read: "free will") carrying with it responsibility for ones actions, rights is similar in that it displays that we have, more or less, social and law-given agreements of acceptable behavior; like the right to ownership, which makes stealing frowned upon. There's plenty more to rights, but I'm too tired to expound upon it.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

Teens are (generally) stupid and complain about stupid things, that will never change.

As per rights, I agree with SGOS that rights are socially conveyed. "Inalienable rights" are, at best, a concept designed to show how sacred we hold certain rights. It is ultimately up to society to decide, through legal or other means, what rights are to be upheld.

An completely free society would be one where anyone could do anything, including murder, without consequence. That would be an anomie (which is distinct from anarchy). This society, of course, would never work. To remedy this society had decided to curb some freedoms while enshrining others. The ones we have enshrined are what we in America may call "inalienable rights", otherwise they are just known as rights.

The balance that society has to find is between what freedoms to curb and what freedoms to enshrine. My ideal is the classic "your right to swing your fists ends at my face" ideal. Basically you can do what you want, as long as it doesn't negatively affect the rights of others. Equality, often referred to as a right, is also encompassed in this idea, at least in my interpretation of it. Gaming the system to unfairly favor you would be negatively affecting others, so that's not a right.

As a side note: I hope this makes sense, slightly tipsy.

[Moloth]

"Rights" are what happens when a social, tribal hominid gains too much sentience and free time to consider the evolution-based social contract.