based almost solely off western schools of thought – other cultures think very different things about rights, and so the individuals in them do too. Therefore every individual has different human rights depending on their culture. Some cultures believe that women are inferior to men: something that seems completely abhorrent to us, but is something that many people believe currently and have believed even more so in the past. Even in some western schools of thought – particularly religious ones – some of these thoughts are still held. Sharia law is practiced and respected by many in the world today, again advocating punishments and beliefs that are simply incompatible with other views. It seems very patronizing to call the predominantly western idea of written down human rights as universal. In fact: due to the nature and fluidity of human rights, as soon as they are written down they are out of date. Not only are things relative to culture, but they are relative to time too – rights that we think all humans should have now have been very different in the past and so it seems that our perceptions and ideas of rights will change into the future – another key part of the idea of ‘universalism’. Not long ago, we thought that slavery was morally justifiable – could it be that some of our current culture’s ideals could be violently changed in the future, making these rights relative to time and therefore not universal? Because of the basic fact that all people are affected by the time and culture in which they live, it is very difficult to find any rights that can span these differences. Human rights need to be fluid, arising out of the interactions that take place, isolated in the time and place that they are happening. It appears from both the subjects of moral and cultural relativism that human rights, rather than being universal, are very subjective and fluid – no one rule can pertain to a group of many individuals all with very different feelings and ideas. While I feel that universal human rights are something that we need to have in our laws and morals as something to aspire to, due to the simple utilitarian benefits that keeping this idea in our society has, no right can ever be truly universal. To all people that are the same, human rights should be the same, but the problem is that not everyone is the same. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need these rights to protect ourselves from each other, but the sad truth is that we do and the concept of human rights today is such that it is much worse for society if we do not view them as universal. Even if they are not truly universal, due to cultural or moral relativism, or due to the simple fact that we have no way of proving for sure that they exist in the first place (other than for utilitarian reasons, which, as I have stated, is incompatible with universal rights), then we need to keep the idea of universal human rights in our society. I believe that deluding ourselves that they’re universal is necessary to prevent atrocities and keep together the fabric of society which protects everyone. The fact is that it is impossible to define human rights without them being universal (you can’t make solid rules to abide by that aren’t definite and universal), and I think that defining them is very important. Conclusion
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