Human rights: Food for an overdue thought ‘HR and the transition to a new paradigm’
HRR 743
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the ongoing confrontation between the defenders and the detractors of the current political paradigm that influences our every-day thoughts, expectations and behaviors. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. The paradigmatic hegemony I refer-to here pertains to the ability of a group of people to hold power over social institutions, and thus, to influence the everyday thoughts, expectations and behavior of the rest of society by directing the ideas, values and beliefs that become the dominant worldview of a society. In the every-day reality, agenda distortions occur as dominant entities shift their mission and activities to conform to the perceived exigencies of their corporate partners. (Stella Medvedyuk, Dennis Raphael et al)
2. The conventions the paradigm stands-for tend to ossify with time, and what was once new becomes old and out of step with reality. It takes brave new voices to rediscover the new reality purposely buried under decades of dust. (Henry Miller, Crazy Cock) It thus becomes important to know what kind of knowledge and motivation is guiding the current paradigm in order to denounce it and to establish the frameworks for its replacement. [I say replacement, because seeking consensus can become the prelude to betrayal (Politika)]. In short, the wealth supremacy paradigm has to be replaced by a radical economic democratization. (Francine Mestrum)
3. The machinations upholding the paradigmatically structured conceptual system makes the concept of absolute truth moot …which ought to lead us to acknowledge there is a culturally and politically relative truth being used to protect the ruling paradigm so that we can safely say that the ruling paradigm is based on a corporatized philosophy (and truth).* (George Lakoff).
*: When uncovered, the financial corruption we see can be fought and sanctioned. But the ruling paradigm’s corruption of ideas we see is more insidious, more subtle and, therefore, the more essential danger. (Edwy Plenel)
4. We are, therefore, left to ask: If bad policies are producing such bad human rights (HR) outcomes, why are good policies so rare? (Marc Ash) Well, we live in a globalized capitalist society in which existing rivalries still end up perpetuating the system –at most, by changing the protagonists that change close to nothing.
In this conundrum, with counted exceptions, philanthropic foundations serve as ‘cooling down agencies’ and effectively serve to inhibit counter-paradigmatic activism and grassroot organizing, thus preserving elite class hegemony
5.Philanthropy is both politically and ideologically committed to market-based, technocratic social investments through partnerships, suspiciously to make the market work or work better for capital. (S. Medvedyuk, D. Raphael et al)
Let us be clear (there is no other way): Ideology can be either used to change an unbearable reality or, conversely, to conserve unjustifiable privileges… (Politika)
6. A certain ideology characterizes each historical epoch. The dominant ideas will be –in each epoch– those of the ruling classes, ergo a forced association of unequal human groups, structurally subjected to ensure their complementary functionality through the rule of law. In every society a hegemonic ideology stands out, sustained by that juridical-political-ideological superstructure we call the State. This dominant ideology subordinates or fights ideologies that stand for something different from the prevailing one. Human nature is, then, a historical fact, that is to say, changeable, observable and therefore verifiable within limited contexts. (José Miguel Neira C.)
7. We, who wish to transform the existing reality, understand ideology as what-remains-to-be-done, and the political program that flows from it as the road map for that navigation, with its stages and a final port as the culmination of our efforts [The absence of ideology, on the contrary, is tantamount to immobilism, to staying where we are, reinforcing the hegemonic benefits of the Right].
8. The ideologies that characterized the Left from the French Revolution onward — and true socialism is one of them — are not a pastime of idlers or a hobby for classical intellectuals, a pure imaginary fantasy of idealists or believers. On the contrary, socialist ideas have acted as an instrument for the understanding of the origins of inequality and for the conscious organization of the workers themselves: both to resist, to struggle and to democratically transform societies that have not had sufficient people-oriented social legislation, in good part for the lack of organization of those in need of such reforms.
9. Without the conscious struggles of workers, guided by their what-needs-to-be-done ideology and demands, Capitalism will remain even more savage and ruthless than it still is in pretty much every region of the world.
10. As an ideology at the service of the revolutionary transformation of society, true socialism alerts humanity that they are being used by Capitalism as a cheap resource at the service of the illicit and always immoral enrichment of a few, and which treats pensioners as leftovers, disposable rubbish.
11. At the risk of seeming excessively redundant for those who know the historical itinerary of the struggle against inequalities, I think that it could be educational for those who begin in the reflective study of these issues, to emphasize that some of those banners of struggle that have characterized the ideals of socialism in the course of almost two centuries are contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations since 1948. (J. M. Neira)
Bottom line
12. There are, not one, but several emerging paradigms yet to be determined. “The old paradigm is not yet completely dead and the new one has not yet manifested itself in a credible way”. (Gramsci, already a looong time ago)
13. Without tackling the current Western dominated paradigm, the fear is that the struggle for HR will not prevent Capitalism from becoming increasingly violent towards humans and nature. It is a question of redistributing fear and hope more equitably though. Nowadays, large majorities have too much fear in their daily lives and too little hope that things will get better, while a tiny minority has too much hope that the world will continue to guarantee them their privileges and too little fear that it will not, because they are convinced that they have eliminated or co-opted their enemies.It is indeed possible though to restore hope to the large majorities. Will it have to be with instilling fear in the very small minorities…? (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
14. Do we live under an imposed code of action including many everyday practical impositions, all ultimately to protect the individual over the commons? In doing so, are we protecting the position of power and wealth of the more powerful and wealthy? So, the imposed code ultimately protects our (neo)liberal democracies, doesn’t it? The set of imposed actions we live-under treat the environment and human life as commodities to be exploited, sold, destroyed. [Sorry to add, as part of the worse, that there is no appropriate leadership and grassroots movement great enough to make the needed changes, nothing yet great enough to define a new paradigm for the 21st Century, for today –and to enforce it]. Our youth are clamouring for such changes, as we all should. We must make the guardians of the paradigm stop what they are doing to us all, including their increasing efforts to deceive us with mis-information. (David Zakus)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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