What Is Really Inhuman?

When I lived in China, I had a generally negative opinion of how people there go about life. Even when I left after two years of living there -- working with them, being friends with them, and marrying my wonderful Suzy -- I couldn't help passing a negative moral judgment on the average Chinese person.

In retrospect, I now have to say I greatly admire the Chinese in a lot of ways. To help explain why, I want to go back to something I blogged about before: rights as nouns and verbs.

The majority of people today have a very irrational view of what "rights" are. They talk about a right to this, a right to that, but almost every right they talk about is a noun, a thing that can be possessed or held on to. The implications of this backwards view are quite simple to figure out, and the irrationality and immorality of insisting on rights as nouns is self-evident once you do.

First, it's important to realize that effort is an essential component to human life. The universe does not magically provide food, shelter, and joy to a human simply because he is born. If you are born and you do not feed yourself, or if somebody else does not feed you, you will starve and you will die. It's a sad fact, but sadness does not make it any less true. To live, you need to eat food; to eat food, the food must come from somewhere; to get the food, it has to be grown, harvested, found, bought, borrowed, or otherwise acquired through someone's effort (yours, or your parents', or somebody else's -- regardless, human effort is required to make it happen).

I'm sure you agree with me then that it is the very nature of human life that to continue living, someone must expend effort to make that possible. If you don't agree with me on that point, stop reading now and please go read someone else's blog, because you either lack the logical capacity to understand what I'm saying or you are so emotionally overwhelmed that you don't want to face it.

Once you're an adult and your parents have (hopefully) equipped you with skills to interact with the world, the necessity for effort to sustain your life does not just go away. If you want food, you'll need to grow it yourself or buy it from someone else who grows it. If you want shelter, you'll have to build it yourself, rent it, buy it, or otherwise compensate someone else who will provide it. Again, all these things require effort -- the defining characteristic for all known lifeforms, which includes us.

The problem is that a lot of people really dislike this truth of human existence. Oh sure, virtually nobody will argue against the idea that you have to get your food through effort. And yet when it comes to any of a number of "rights" that people love to assert, that fact goes out the window completely.

As a living person, you have the right to live. You don't have the right to any specific life, but you do have the right to live. Notice the distinction I'm making here -- you have the right to take action, to live, which is a verb. You do not have the right to a great life, which would be a noun. You do have a right to take whatever moral actions you can to make a great life, but there's no guarantee that you will achieve it. The only guarantee is (or should be) that you can make the attempt.

Does this sound needlessly cruel? There's a reason I believe in this crucial difference. If you have a right to a verb, to an action, that means the rest of the world is not allowed to stop you from taking that action. If you want to pursue (verb) happiness, nobody else has the right to stop you. That does not mean you are guaranteed to have happiness, which is a noun. If you are guaranteed to have it, that means your right entitles you to it whether you lift a finger for it or not.

Let's go back to food. Since you have the fundamental human right to live, that means you have the right to pursue the necessary conditions of living. One of those conditions is to eat food. As we already agreed, the universe will not magically give you that food. You have the right, then, to grow the food yourself, or to buy it from someone else who does, or to trade for it, or to otherwise acquire it without infringing on the fundamental rights of other people (infringing on theirs would invalidate your own claim to the same rights).

All of those rights you have for pursuing food are actions, verbs -- grow, buy, trade, acquire, etc. Now imagine that we decide you have a right to food. Now your right is to a noun, to a specific thing. And again since the universe won't just give it to you for doing nothing, that thing has to come from somewhere. It has to be produced or acquired by somebody.

If you have a right to food, but you won't grow your own, or buy it, or trade for it, or otherwise get it through your own effort, it still has to come from somewhere. That means somebody else has to grow it, or buy it, or trade it, and then give it to you. Until we figure out some magical technological breakthrough to produce food out of thin air and with no effort expended by anybody, this is an undeniable fact of reality. The food has to get to you by somebody's effort, and if it's not yours, then that means someone else is providing it.

Now you can see the fundamental problem with having a right to a noun, rather than a right to a verb. The moment you are entitled to a product, a service, or anything other than your own freedom to act, some other person (or people) has been enslaved for your benefit.

Right to food, but you don't want to pay for food? Somebody else has to grow it, transport it, and make it available to you. That somebody else must give their time and energy for you because of your "right."

Right to a job, but you don't want to develop the credentials necessary to earn it yourself? Somebody else has to provide that job to you, whether they want to or not and whether you're qualified or not.

Right to a university education, but you don't want to apply your mind? Some unfortunate university somewhere must take you and figure out some way to shuffle you through a four-year degree, whether you're smart enough or hard-working enough or worthy of it or not.

Right to clean dishes, but you don't want to clean them or even bother to put them in the dishwasher (which would be effort), nor do you want to pay somebody else to clean them? Some sap must put them in the dishwasher for you, or wash them by hand for you anyway.

There's not a noun-right you can name that does not ultimately imply someone else sacrificing time, money, or effort to grant you what you're supposedly entitled to. If you agree that human beings have the fundamental right to freedom and to not be enslaved for the purposes of others, then you cannot agree with rights to things. You can only agree with rights to freedom of action, such as the right to pursue happiness. Freedom of action infringes on nobody, but entitlements to products, services, and things must inevitably infringe on the rights of another person who must provide them to you.

Back to China. While there is much to be disgusted about with regards to the elite there, the average person I met in China (knowingly or unknowingly) lives in accord with what I've just outlined above. When I first went to China, Chinese people struck me as greedy and anti-social because they did not demand rights to food, housing, education, and jobs.

What I didn't realize then, and what I realize now, is that most Chinese live life very honestly. Life can be hard, it always requires effort, and there are never any guarantees. If a Chinese person wants something, they go after it with a passion and dedication that is regrettably lacking in most people I've met here. Chinese people face the reality of human existence and rarely do they complain about it.

Ironically, a lot of Europeans and Americans (including my former self) call them inhuman for that, when in fact the most human thing you can do is to honestly admit that life takes effort. And unless it's your effort, effort you've paid or otherwise compensated someone for, or the effort of someone who values you so much that they are willing to freely help you -- that effort to sustain your life can only come from enslaving somebody else.

Now tell me... Who is really inhuman?