How To Make Sure Human Progress Sticks

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.

Audre Lorde

From the little history I’ve read it is for me beyond any reasonable doubt that “our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us”. However, the world is founded on conservative ideas and as long as we don’t update that foundation, restorations, like the current one, will occur.

Failed communities and projects of the past teach us that as progressive as today’s children are, without updating our story, our values and what we hold as aim, they will bring about generations who will switch to regressive behavior, just because the natural teen rebel identity search will push them to do it. We need a society founded on progressivism to prevent regression.

I suggest we start amending our constitutions, hold as electoral value, develop as political agenda, make social communities and construct social networking based on the following three basic progressivist rights: the right to need intimacy, the right to want dignity and the right to have identity.

People need intimacy

The state and all the authorities should respect and protect the intimacy of the physical person.

Privacy is merely the time we require to build intimacy.

In nothing else does the human spirit bloom other than itself. Our roots feed and breathe into the soil of our feeble egos. Intimacy is what grounds our personality into our perception of self.

A person without intimacy is a lie. Unregulated privacy will lead to the destruction of intimacy.

Therefore, surveillance without warrant, discretionary invasion of privacy, unprotected privacy rights, snooping put into law and non transparent mandates for unweaving human intimacy is what we must guard against.

To need is not the same thing as to require. All humans require life support to exist, but need is individual, need is entwined in personality and emerges from inner conflict. Therefore we can survive as depleted selves without intimacy, being provided the required life support, and this is exactly what we must avoid.

The problem is we have systems which learn about us so much, that they end up knowing more about us than we do. And the even bigger problem is governments have access to these data, and we don’t.

These data can predict my future. Maybe some systems are generous and give me export and delete options. But I should own my past as well as my future. All predictive AI which binds to personal history should be open for exploration by individual access. If a system predicts something concerning me personally, I should be able to find out that prediction.

We need intimacy in the foundation of our society for true power sharing between the governing and the governed. Only through catering for our human innate need for intimacy, will the ruling and governing be by humans for humans.

People want dignity

The state should declare dignity inviolable. Dignity as in “the idea that a being has an innate right to be valued, respected, and to receive ethical treatment”.

Life is rare and living time is invaluable. Conscious existence needs to be respected for the opportunity it provides: the opportunity for self discovery.

We fail to protect that, that opportunity. We’re throwing people alternative facts since the dawn of civilisation: salvation, glory, bravery, conquest, patriotism and so many others. The fact is you have a one in four hundred million chance to be aware and find out who you are.

Every form of state protection for the citizens should be based on the idea of dignity: social protection, economic protection, health protection. We must stop treating humans like either merchandise available for shopping by corporations or fuel to burn for the economy.

Dignity is what is owned only by a human person as opposed to a incorporated person, it is exclusively human simply because an incorporated person is potentially immortal.

We need dignity in the foundation of our society to truly fight inequality. It is only by recognising the individual yearn for dignity, of every single human, that we will ever be able to grant universal access to the common wealth of our world.

People have identity

The state should guarantee the right to a self defined exhaustive identity that respects the law, but a law which does not in any way restrict personal identity.

Only individual humans can define themselves.

Identity is not property. Property is not the same thing with having. Property is regulated by an agreement between society, its power holders and individual. Three poles guarantee property. But having is primary, having is the inseparable possessiveness. And people have, not own, identity.

You cannot separate a human from their identity, neither by rules, nor by law or social custom. No tradition, regulation, revelation or vote should be allowed to redefine or to coerce the free and unrestrained expression of one’s own identity.

We need this in the foundation of our society so that no life is lost at the altar of social invisibility. Only a social foundation based on the inalienable individually defined identity can truly support universal diversity.


What do you think?

Does it make sense to alter the basic tenets of law and society for inclusivity, diversity and progress or should inclusivity, diversity and progress be constantly patched on top of a conservative build?