A look at how our perceptions of human rights have evolved over centuries.
This paper discusses how, as society evolves and changes, and as we, as a culture, a country, and a world, grow and change, our standards of what is acceptable vs. unacceptable changes as well. It looks at how, as each of these societies has grown, changed, and matured, they have realized that they have an obligation to care for their elderly, to do away with slavery, and that multiple births should not sentence the infants to death. It also shows how, at the same time, the societies of the world have progressed from isolated pockets to villages and then cities, city-states, and countries, and how those countries have interacted with each other, and how, now, both politically and economically, each country is dependent on others in one way or another.
“Some may argue that one culture has no right to tell another culture how to live. If it comes to issues that do not interfere with a person’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, this is true. Caucasians in the United States should not be telling immigrants from Ecuador what songs to listen to or what food they should prefer for their evening meal. However, if the government of one country was methodically exterminating some indigenous people within their borders, the rest of the world would be outraged, and rightly so, because most other countries have learned that it is not necessary to exterminate whole races of people in order to solve either real or perceived problems.”