Mar 31, 2023. Updated: Jul 21, 2023.

Rights

Every want, need and desire are not rights. Rights are those guarantees that have a reason and can therefore be substantiated.

Rights does not mean that the exercise of right (or decision) cannot be questioned. Questions and discussions are part of progress. Rights only mean that the person cannot be prosecuted or punished in any manner or by anyone for the decision.

No right can be absolute because of the possibility of its misuse; nor can there be one principle on which an exercise can be considered legitimate or otherwise. But, to prevent the misuse of rights, we are to subject the exercise of rights to a set of conditions, where the exercise must not:

• cause tangible harm to others,
• contribute to the downfall of societies,
• defeats the intention of that right, or
• conflict with other rights.

When an exercise of right violates these conditions, it is justifiable to influence and discourage it through (and not limited to) laws or clever redesign of the system. Here are a few examples:

• Cultural Preservation — When cultural whitewashing is going on in a society, the need for cultural preservation is both imminent and justifiable. However, this cannot be achieved by banning individual behaviours since it conflicts with the rights of citizens. So, the system must be redesigned such that it is expensive¹ to continue the behaviours that contribute to cultural whitewashing, and extremely rewarding to change to behaviours that result in the desired outcome.
• Day Life — When a large population leads a day-night life instead of a day life, the need to change this behaviour by the governing bodies is imminent and justifiable on grounds of public health. However, prohibitions of night life will conflict with individual rights and affect extenuating circumstances. A better way would be redesign the entire social system to revolve around a day life, thus making it extremely expensive to continue to the day-night life. For genuine night owls such as those working in night shifts, alternate arrangements can be made in the system to bypass the expensiveness.

One must be careful though of the consequences. They could backfire and yield counter productive. For instance, levying huge taxes on western clothing will make it expensive and may even discourage their sales, but human nature interprets being expensive as being better or superior. So in an attempt to quash the foreign is better syndrome, the redesign must contribute to that sentiment.

There is indeed a question whether a legislation that is directly disallowed by the constitution can be indirectly carried out (doctrine of colourable legislature), such as by redesigning the system to discourage something that is allowed by the constitution. So long as the redesign does not prohibit or prevent someone from those practices, but only tries to discourage it to an extent and for justifiable reasons, application of this doctrine on the redesign may not hold.

Going back to the conditions discussed earlier, a lot can come within the scope of those four conditions. The best treatment to be given while judging the exercise of rights against these conditions is common sense. What is a tangible harm to others and what is a contributor to the downfall of societies need to be determined, and I will leave that discussion for a later time. The others can be deliberated.

Intention of a right

Each right is conferred with an intention and for a reason. If any right is exercised such that the exercise beats the purpose and intension of the right, or if the right is exercised for any other reason than what it is intended for, then it is a misuse of the right or an exercise of the right in bad faith. In such a case, either void the right, and if that is impossible, pass laws to prevent such misuses.

A perfect example is the freedom of religion that is given to an individual to life a life that isn't violative of his or her conscience. But when such rights are misused for economic reasons, socio-cultural demographic change, political gains, increase of religious strength, or to put it simply — for any other reason than its intention, the right is misused and such exercises must be prevented.

Conflicts with other rights

A right that comes in conflict with another creates chaos. A great example of this conflict is the conflict between right to free practice of religion with right to equality, or with right to education. Harmonisation between the conflicting rights is often suggested but it is an impossible solution. Let it also be noted that when a religion dictates civil laws for it's followers, it competes with the constitution or other bodies that define civil laws in the jurisdiction.

Therefore, either restrict religion to the spiritual aspect of the individual alone preventing influencing the civil aspect, or let one right veto the other.