A blog (short for Web Log) is a way of posting writings, thoughts or just plain inane ramblings to the web in a easy manner. It's easier to keep updated and as my site has proven troublesome to keep updated, I've employed a blog here to help keep things current.

Some of these "posts" may not be explicitly Christian - that is they may not be Bible studies :o) but all of them are written from my perspective as a Christian. It is , after all, part of what makes me... well, me.

Note that the blog pages are subject to a different licence to the rest of the site - see the bottom of the page for details.

Human Rights vs Human Responsibility

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

There's been an interesting post on Slashdot (a regular visit for me) recently regarding the use of Blogs as spam.

When somebody commented that they like to see a Google feature that filters out blogs a discussion ensued which included some comments about how asking people not to blog was against human rights (free speech) and also the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights.

The US Bill of Rights aside (like much of the web I am not American and have never read it so I can't really comment) as a human and a (very occasional) blogger I thought I'd comment on the idea that blogging is a human right (that of free speech).

Much seems to be made and held of certain (to use the US term) "inalienable" human rights we apprently have. These I am lead to believe include things like the right to life, freedom from tyrrany, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion (or not accordingly).

The problem I see with this idea of human rights is that the idea is worthless on it's own. I can bang on to my heart's content about my freedom to life but if someone runs me over my "right" is worthless. Okay so governments can protect against such a thing but only in theory. They could enconse in law the right to life and punish my killer but that would not actually ensure I get my right to life.

Now if we talk about Human Responsibility in place of human rights then it starts to make more sense.

• Instead of a right to life we have the responsibility to protect and care for it.
• Instead of a right to freedom we have the reponsibility to allow it.
• Instead of a right to freedom of speech we have the responsibility to listen and engage in dialogue.
• Instead of a right to freedom of religion we have the responsibility to respect other's faith (or deliberate absence thereof) but live out our own.
• Instead of a right to blog we have a responsibility to blog respectfully.
• Instead of a right to have blgos exlcuded from our searches, we have a responsibility to exclude them (thus implying the search engines have a responsibility to give us this functionality, much as Google does with it's safe-searching facility now).