Today in America, can we conceive of “human obligations” that are deemed “universal”? We are now so fractured into each individual kingdom of opinions that raising such a question, even as a desperate attempt to search for some commonality among us, seems absurd.
Our sources of opinion, although varied, used to be anchored in some centrist positions that represented a sense of unity as a nation and a people. In the last several decades of relentless “algorithmatization” (the technology that allows each person to get only what he wants), three networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) became three thousand cable channels and, now, three billion websites. There we find enough to please ourselves and solidify our own opinions at the exclusion of all others.
It also creates a nation unable to have any center of unity and consensus at all, susceptible to media sensationalism and emotional populism. Every special-interest group — be they political, cultural, economic, environmental, racial-ethnic, occupational-professional — argues its own interest as the most important issue of the day. It is quite impossible for us to transcend our narrow self-interest, personal or institutional, and recognize some “universal” principle upon which we can all agree.
What assumptions can we make about our life in society that are so imperative — existentially and logically — that they would demand a “universal agreement” among all diverse groups and individuals? With the grace of God, otherwise called retirement which allows cerebral overwork, I have come up with a series of assumptions that is so imperative and reasonable that I am absolutely certain that nobody — indeed, nobody — can disagree.
Here are the four steps in what I could audaciously proclaim “Jon Huer’s Four Universal Assumptions and Obligations for All Human Beings Living in America Today:”
First off, let’s agree that we must live as social beings, not as animals. All human beings must live, not die. As we must live, we must live only as human beings in society and its smaller version, community. We cannot live in the state of nature or return to it as animals. This agreement transcends all individual freedoms and arguments: We must live as human beings in society because there is no other option. All things human begin and end with this basic fact.
Next, on the basis of the agreement above, we must recognize that we live because others around us also live. We exist in society because we live with other human beings. No one can exist in society alone (as we are merely animals without others around us,): Our personal names, with which we establish our human identity above all things, are created for others to recognize us as individual human beings. One’s whole humanity is established, recognized and sustained only in his social relations with other members of the human community. If we are not surrounded by other human beings, our humanity does not and cannot exist. We are all human beings, not because of our human genes, but because of other human beings who recognize us as part of their group. Without them, we are no different from field mice or cockroaches. Even the super-rich enjoy their riches because of the poor around them.
Here is our third agreement that follows the first two: Since our own existence as human beings depends on the existence of others in society, our intrinsic duty as human beings is to make sure that all of us (not just you) live. Therefore, it follows that our imperative obligation in society is to ensure that others live, as my own life depends on the lives of others. This obligation is absolute and supreme, standing above all things, superseding all other rights of individual freedom or comfort and underlies all existential conditions of social justice or happiness: All must live so that your own life is made possible. If you are a selfish person bent on self-survival disregarding the lives of all others, you should be expelled as an endangerment to all lives in the human community.
Upon the previous three steps in our thinking comes our final, absolute obligation: That is, to resist and fight any forces that make the existence of all impossible or difficult. If you violate this rule on a large scale, it is called Crime against Humanity, which makes, according to the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis, “the existence of all humanity impossible.” Therefore, it follows from the three agreements above that we must resist, oppose and fight all attempts that endanger human existence for all: Thus, our universal obligations must deny and reject all forms of anti-human powers, past and present, such as Imperialism (Roman style), Fascism (Mussolini style), Militarism (Hitler style), Communism (Soviet style) and, their presently-dominant anti-human form, Consumer Capitalism, which destroys our social-human community with its divide-and-conquer strategy.
We, as Americans and as defenders of liberty and justice for all, have rejected all past anti-human ideologies, from Imperialism to Communism. Standing on such claims, how could we not reject their present form, Consumer Capitalism, which is, thanks to technology and psychology, now so much more pernicious than anything in the past?
Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder, Professor Emeritus, lives in Greenfield.