versus
this isn't a post about food ya, now that i've got your attention.
it's about the nature of human rights, and whether there is really a dichotomy between satisfying basic human needs like food and shelter i.e. bread and butter rights and rights like freedom to speech and the right to choose our leaders which have been described as non-essential. bringing me to the comparison that they are like cupcakes. nice to look eat and delicious. but you can get on by fine without them.
the bread and butter v cupcakes debate has been raging for years, and even though 1948 UN Charter on Human Rights supposedly represents a universal view, there are sharply diverging points of view.
people need to be fed, the east cries out. and that is paramount. rights can't feed people. bread does. rice does. you think people care about speaking out when they're starving?
(let them have cake, said Marie Antoinette. and the next you know, her head's off on the guillotine and the people are crying for the monarchy to go all the way to hell)
it's a pragmatic viewpoint, but pragmatism isn't all there is to life. i confess i like both bread and butter and cupcakes. and having said that, i would argue that there isn't any dichotomy between being fed and being given human rights. economic necessity must necessarily go hand-in-hand with balancing the rights of the people else the 'life' which is given is only a shadow i.e. mere existence. and as Gopal Sri Ram put so beautifully in Tan Tek Seng v Suruhanjaya Pendidikan Malaysia as well as in Sugumar Balakrishnan - life must be defined widely.
(i m too lazy to extract the relevant passages from the judgments, but all you admin law students under dr gan must be familiar with the passages i am talking about)
have your bread and butter, it's important. but cupcakes make a difference to the meal.
p/s will go into hohfeld's rights analysis another time. kind of tired today. i was inspired to write this by a conversation with a person who actually went for the Hindraf rally. you go, friend.
if you feel hungry after this, don't blame me.
1 comment:
People like to cloud the issue by laying down the premises like:
(a) necessities = bread and butter
(b) rights = cupcakes. or whatever.
and asking you which one you'd rather do without.
It's a very misleading set of premises. Because if you follow it, you tend to forget that, actually:
bread and butter AND cupcakes = food = rights
It's the same thing. There's no difference between "necessities" and "rights". Because being entitled to a necessity IS a right.
Anyway, from a scientific perspective, both bread and butter and cupcakes are mostly carbon plus some hydrogen and oxygen anyway.
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