Stand Up For....

"Stand up for your rights!" - you hear it a lot these days. We seem to be obsessed by our "rights" - and what we consider to be our basic rights seem to be getting more and complicated as we go forward. And I'm a believer in a lot of the basic things that are defined as human rights - equality, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and conscience are all things that are very important to me, even if my reason for believing in these things is perhaps different from the secular view.

But, the thing I struggle with is that, almost inevitably it seems, when we stand up for our own rights, we are trampling over the rights of others - so often, as we assert our right, it is at the expense of someone else's. But because we are individuals, living in an individualistic world, then we seem to think its okay to do that - we stand up for our rights, they stand up for theirs, and somewhere, where they clash, we try and hammer out (often through the courts) some understanding of which rights are more important, and therefore who gets their own way this time. 

Wouldn't life be different, if, instead of spending our time trying to assert our own rights, trying to stamp our feet and make sure we don't miss out on our dues, we put the same amount of time, energy and effort, into making sure that the things we do, the choices we make, don't impinge on the rights of other people. A world where people looked out for others first, and ourselves a distant second, a world where instead of looking for fault in other people we took a long hard look at ourselves first. Perhaps someone should suggest.... or indeed, perhaps they already have...

You never know, it might take off - perhaps we could call it "community"!