Thursday, October 09, 2008

Deserve?

In a random remark at a recent dinner, one person was being offered support for deciding not to work for a while with the justification that "you deserve time off." Ever since McDonald's told us via Barry Manilow, that "you deserve a break today," the American penchant for claiming right to care for No. 1 has taken off. But is it justified?

To deserve is to be worthy of, qualified for, or have a claim to a reward or punishment. Most of us eagerly claim rewards and just as enthusiastically decline punishment. What do we really deserve?

We cannot claim very much of who or what we are as our own individual merit. We did not choose, despite the pseudopatriots who are "proud to be American," to be born in the United States. We did not elect to be born to households with running water and electricity, a given educational and income level.

Much of who we are or have become is an accident of birth.

Then there's luck. Happening on an idea when a society was ready for it -- or not. Imagine being Nelson Mandela in 1964 and having the idea that apartheid should end. Yes, in the end (in the 1990s) he triumphed. But he could be forgiven for wondering where he had gone wrong as he languished in his prison cell in the interim. So should we ponder where luck has helped or hindered.

Finally, there is the matter of free will. Are we really free, or are we a mass of socially and genetically determined impulses that predictably propel us down a course marked for us before we were born?

Sure, as humans we claim "inalienable rights," meaning that our fellows may not deprive us of a fair share of resources and social "bandwidth." Yet, how do we really know that humans are inherently endowed with such rights and not, say, cats or bees or rocks?

In the end, it is very difficult to claim we deserve anything, good or bad.

6 comments:

Girlplustwo said...

very good post, C.

Anonymous said...

"In the end, it is very difficult to claim we deserve anything, good or bad." Then why to show here on your blog those things :"thinking blogger award", "just post award" ???????????????

Anonymous said...

A danger is that if *I* do not have a "right", then why should anyone else have that "right", therefore why ensure that they get it? It is merely an accident of birth that they have very little indeed, mere chance that they were in the wrong place when the Tsaunami hit - what is that to us? It tends to be forgotten that "rights" entail "responsibilities"!

Anonymous said...

Accident of birth or choice we make?
Some believe we choose are birth parents/families to lay the foundations for the lessons we did not learn in our past lives.
Did you ever have dreams of a place / event that has not part of your life. As a child, prior to onset of on set TV watching, I had a recurring dream of running woman and child as bombs were dropping.
Was I free to make this so called choice or would physics say that my energy drew me to them?

Cecilio Morales said...

As I said, Joan, we claim rights vis-a-vis our fellow humans, for obvious reasons: no one has a legitimate claim to take away essentials we need. But does that mean, in the absolute, that we have inherent rights, just by virtue of being human? I don't think that's been proven.

I'm not sure I understand your question, Geneviève. Are you saying I am hypocritical? Vain? What?

Thanks, Jen. I thought we needed a break from politics for a moment.

Anonymous said...

Just kidding... Taking your words literaly.

"To deserve is to be worthy of, qualified for, or have a claim to a reward or punishment"

Are you qualified for a reward? are the people who gave it generously to you qualified to give it?

Does JMG Le CLezio deserve the nobel Price of literature? (yes)

Who decided that the universal declaration of human rights was universal?

Do Americans deserve a punshment because they created the actual economic crisis in the world although they are intouchable with their dollar since WW1 and WW2?