Something I heard today...
What will be the undoing of America, and the west, will be the fact that all we ever think about is our "rights" and we say precious little anymore about our duties. Nobody talks about duties...duties that might even go hand in hand (God forbid) with our rights.
And sometimes, a right becomes somewhat laborious and we begin to see it more as a duty to be neglected. Oddly enough, in the last trip to the ballot box, a greater percentage of Iraqis (at risk to their lives amidst the supposed "chaos") voted than Americans did in their last presidential election (over 6% points more). What exactly does that say about us? What does it say about them?
Well, we Americans are lazy, clearly - much more interested in pleasurable rights than duties. And the Iraqis...well either the danger isn't as great as we are led to believe, or they know very well the connection between rights and duties. I imagine both to be true.
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Is there much of a legal context for duty? I believe there is certainly a metaphysical/ontological context for it.
I'm not sure where I was going with this notion of rights vs duties...except to say that more and more we are creating a culture and society that is deeply hedonistic.
An Athonite elder said, "The more spiritual a person is, the fewer rights he wants in this life."
If we look at our relationship towards God we have only duties and no rights. Looking at the political notion of rights from that viewpoint, the idea that we have inalienable rights to anything seems to me on shaky ground.