Introduction and the “Meaning” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. - Genesis 11:1-8

As I was reading this week, I was struck by a question that I do not think I’ve ever really had adequately or clearly answered for me: what are Human Rights? Of course, I’d heard of human rights, the United Nations, and I knew the United Nations had a set of laws that it upheld for the sake of all peoples around the globe, but none of these facts allows me, in themselves, to answer the question, “What is a human right?”. To resolve this question, I decided to go the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). I looked to its Preamble so that, from it, I could understand the guiding principles of the Articles of the UDHR. As follows is the whole Preamble to the UDHR:

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

The General Assembly,

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. [Italics Added]” (Assembly, 1948)

Proceeding from the Second World War, it may come as no surprise as to why such a document was written. However, there are a number of highly ambiguous and construable terms and phrases residing within the Preamble. I have italicized the most obvious ones in the Preamble, but I think it prudent to extract said terms and phrases for the sake of discussion: dignity, equality, freedom, barbarous, oppression, friendly, determined to promote social progress, better standards, respect, progressive measures.

The last paper I wrote dealt with the issue of construction, but this preamble seems to suffer from some of the same key issues that many of the interpretations of the mid-twentieth jurists left us with; e.g., what exactly do you mean by equality? For example, what precisely is meant by dignity? Black’s Law Dictionary defines the term dignity as:

“dignity, n. (13c) 1. The quality, state, or condition of being noble; the quality, state, or condition of being dignified. 2. An elevated title or position, whether civil or ecclesiastical. 3. A person holding an elevated title; dignitary. 4. A right to hold a title of nobility, which be hereditary or for life, usu. regarded as an incorporeal hereditament or as real property.” (Black’s Law Dictionary, p 572.)

Of course, there are numerous problems posed by this kind of definition. For a start, I think we may fairly exclude definition 3. from our discussion; it doesn’t seem to fit the first line of the Preamble. I’m also not sure the preamble conveys nobility to all of humanity either. Perhaps they mean something like noble rights? Yet this causes even more confusion, for what do they mean noble?

Etymologically, the term noble comes from the Latin root nobilis, which means distinct, famous, celebrated, high-born. But this opens a series of philosophical questions, for example, is something dignified because it is famous, and on what account is it famous, and more importantly, according to whom and why is it famous? There are many TikTok “stars”, Instagram “models” and “influencers” whom many would consider famous, yet I’ve never heard of them. Are they famous only because they are popular? If they are famous or renowned because they are popular, and what’s popular or renowned is a mere convention or fashion, although such conventions or fashions may be good, can we call that which is famous or renowned good; can we call that which is dignified good? I see no reason why we must. Then why should dignity be an end? If it should: again, what do you mean by dignity?

Another term I think may be worth exploring is oppressive. Of course, we may all have our subjective interpretations of what we think oppressive is, but for the sake of argument, I would like to once again, at least, start with an authoritative definition:

“oppression. (14c) 1. The act or an instance of unjustly exercising authority or power so that one or more people are unfairly or cruelly prevented from enjoying the same rights that other people have. 2. An offense consisting in the abuse of discretionary authority by which a public officer who has an improper motive, as a result of which a person is injured. [etc.]” (Blacks Law Dictionary pp. 1318 – 19)

Based on my previous writings, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that I think something like oppression exists. Yet I would also be remiss if I did not bring attention to the fact that my personal conception of oppression is conditioned upon whether Liberty, the civil and religious rights of a given people, and the security or stability of a society are secured, and thus whether any institutions of power are applying said power without sound reason and thus arbitrarily. Yet why must this signify whether an institution of power is oppressive or not? By the standard just established, Brown v. Board may be considered oppressive. Yet it is not generally considered oppressive today. Of course, this does not mean it wasn’t in fact oppressive, but only that it was oppressive according to my standard, which I think there’s Biblical and historical precedent to hold.

The crux of the problem is this: why must someone value the values I do? With respect to the concept of oppression, let us use this theoretical definer: it is the arbitrary use of power by an agent or principal from an institution of authority, causing harm to another. At least two terms in this definition are subject to extreme scrutiny: arbitrary and harm. I have personally defined arbitrary to mean without sound reason. Yet there’s no reason you must hold this definition if you do not desire to. I think it causes harm if you act out of pure emotion, via the passions, without reason, but others may not necessarily consider this arbitrary. I desire to live in a world with people who act reasonably; I think it is good to live in a world where people act reasonably; I also think, because the world is intelligible, it must be governed by intelligible and sound principles or laws, and thus, if we are to do well in this world, it would be wise to act with respect to those laws or make laws reflecting the intelligibility of the world, i.e., intelligently or with sound reason, i.e., reasonably. Yet there’s no reason you must act reasonably, and you are certainly welcome to pay for doing so.

Harm, too, is highly interpretable. Jonathan Haidt recognized this in his trip to India, the details of which may be found in The Righteous Mind (Haidt, 2012). The crux of his story is this: some people do not consider fairness or harm to be the totalizing principles or morals upon which they engage with others, and what exactly is meant by fair or harm differs between people. They may also consider authority, purity, and loyalty, for example, as grounds by which to judge whether an act is moral or not, and those, too, are subject to interpretation. The moral taste receptors, as Haidt would call them, are not as black-and-white as we would like to believe; they are on a spectrum, likely reflecting a Gaussian curve. For example: is it genuinely harmful to strike someone? What if it does good later on? What if striking someone prevents more damage from being done to someone else in the future? Another: Is it always harmful to restrict someone’s movement? Is it not sometimes necessary to restrict someone’s movements? Might it even be good for them to be restrained, for their movements to be utterly halted for a time? Is the mere fact that a person’s movements are restricted, their locomotion prevented, harmful? According to whom? Once more, these matters are highly subjective, conditional, relative, and thus it would be astonishing to claim that such values, as they are listed in the UDHR, are universally held.

Of the terms and phrases I italicized in the UDHR, I would only like to explore one more before moving on to the next section: promote social progress. Without skipping a beat, those who’ve been following the argument should recognize that the phrase promote social progress is, once again, highly construable. The main question that must be asked is such: progress according to whom? Whoever is in power? Whoever has the democratic will – as if there’s a democratic will from all nations considered to be a part of the UN. If the delegates or representatives are self-selected, how does this simply not result in selection bias? How can such a representative body be considered democratic, emanating from the collective will of a people or state, actually representative of the will of the people of any nation? Let us thus, therefore, say it cannot: then whose concept of progress is being promoted? The people of Nigeria, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mongolia, Uruguay, or Texas? Why should such powers not have the right to determine how they want to progress for themselves? What business does a group of self-selected delegates have telling any sovereign power what they can or cannot do? How is such authority or power not arbitrary, and thus unjust? If peace is one of the main goals of the UN, then it shall not be achieved by forcing sovereign powers to subordinate themselves to the will of a body of self-elected delegates. There can be no genuine capitulation without just representation.

Regardless of the obscure and vague goals set out in the UDHR, my initial question has still not been answered: What is a Human Right? To try to answer this question, I would now like to turn to Charles de Montesquieu.

Charles de Montesquieu – Human Rights?

I believe Montesquieu could be criticized for being highly chauvinistic. He spoke for a people, in a given time, and held ideas about others that were from the perspective of his culture and nation. Yet this is very likely not lost on Montesquieu. Regardless, although Montesquieu did not define what human rights are for us, I think it is clear he defined what rights are and where they came from.

For Montesquieu, laws in general emanate from the tri-part nature of our being: our intellect, animal nature, and vegetative nature. In this, we can see clear inspiration from the ancient Greeks of Late Antiquity and the Humanists of the Renaissance.

He begins by recognizing the necessity for a deity in a world governed by natural laws:

“They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?

There is, then, a prime reason: and laws are the relations subsiting between it and different beings, and the relations of these to one another.

God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them. He acts according to these rules, because He knows them; He knows them, because He made them; and He made them, because they are in relation to His wisdom and power.” (de Montesquieu, p. 34)

By this, Montesquieu justly implies that variation cannot merely be arbitrary, but is governed by a set of laws, and those laws must have an origin, and for Montesquieu and many others throughout the whole of history, that origin is God or an essential and prime deity. In the Platonic and Biblical tradition, this God endowed man with intellect, this intellect allows Man to devise his own laws, as he sees fit, for better or worse. Montesquieu continues:

“Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but they have some likewise which they never made. Before there were intelligent beings, they were possible; they had therefore possible relations, and consequently possible laws. Before laws were made, there were relations of possible justice. To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the radii were not equal.

We must therefore acknowledge relations of justice antecedent to positive law by which they are established: as, for instance, if human societies existed, it would be right to conform to their laws; if there were intelligent beings that had received a benefit of another being, they ought to show their gratitude; if one intelligent being had created another intelligent being, the latter ought to continue in its original state of dependence; if one intelligent being injures another, it deserves a retaliation; and so on.” (de Montesquieu, p. 35)

For instance, if you did not retaliate against an intelligent being who injures another, you would be perpetuating that violent being’s tendency to injure another. As such, you would be destabilizing the world, ultimately requiring a snap-back, or a moment when equilibrium must be reestablished: every action entails an equal and opposite reaction. There is no better example of this, as far as I see, or so clear of an example, as Cain killing Able, mercy being granted to Cain, his descendants propagating across the earth, causing such corruption upon the earth that God felt sorry for His creation, causing him to reset His creation through a flood, preserving those worth preserving through the faith and work of Noah, and lastly, at least, creating a covenant with Noah requiring those who murder to pay for their transgression against their fellow man, who is made in the Image of God. 

He then proceeds to show how animals or, as he describes them, brutes are governed by laws:

“By the allurement of pleasure [brutes] preserve the individual, and by the same allurement they preserve their species. They have natural laws, because they are united by sensation; positive laws they have none, because they are not connected by knowledge. And yet they do not invariably conform to their natural laws; these are better observed by vegetables, that have neither understanding nor sense.

…

[Brutes] have not our hopes, but they are without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even most of them are attentive than we to self-preservation, and to not make so bad a use of their passions.” (de Montesquieu, p. 35)

In other words, animals are governed by the Laws of God and Natural Law, yet they, by the variation of their behavior, do not necessarily follow those laws; i.e., within their actualized form and behavior rests potential variation of the actualized form and behavior. This I believe he gets right, but more on this later. He does, however, underestimate the genuine brilliance of plants. Nonetheless, he says plants are better at conforming to their natural laws than animals, and definitely men.

He continues:

“Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws established by God, and changes those of his own instituting. He is left to his private direction, though a limited being, and subject, like all infinite intelligences, to ignorance and error: even his imperfect knowledge he loses; and as a sensible creature, he is hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions. Such a being might every instant forget his Creator; God has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of religion. Such a being is liable every moment to forget himself; philosophy has provided against this by the laws of morality. Formed to live in a society, he might forget his fellow creatures; legislators have therefore by political and civil laws confined him to his duty.” (de Montesquieu, p. 35 – 6)

Thus Montesquieu has set the stage for an understanding of laws, rights, and duties, as Natural Laws, or negative rights and duties, and Positive Laws, or positive rights and duties.

On the laws of nature, he states:

“The [laws of nature], impressing on our minds the idea of a Creator, inclines us towards Him, is the first in importance, though not in order of natural laws. Man in a state of nature would have the faculty of knowing, before he had acquired any knowledge. Plain it is that his first ideas would not be of a speculative nature; he would think of the preservation of his being, before he would investigate its origins. Such a man would feel nothing in himself at first but impotency and weakness; his fears and apprehensions would be excessive; as appears from instances (were there any necessity of proving it) of savages found in forests, trembling as the motion of a leaf, and flying from every shadow.

In this state every man, instead of being sensible of his equality, would fancy himself inferior. There would therefore be no danger of their attacking one another; peace would be the first law of nature.” (de Montesquieu, p. 36)

The last theoretical claim about there being “no danger of [one man] attacking… another” does seem an extreme statement. Yet this state of immediate peace is not long-lived:

“Next to a sense of his weakness man would soon find that of his wants. Hence another law of nature would prompt him to seek nourishment.

Fear, I have observed, would induce men to shun one another [or establish peace], but the marks of this fear being reciprocal, would soon engage them to associate. Besides, this association would quickly follow from the very pleasure one animal feels at the approach of another of the same species”, a fact supported by contemporary theories on ingroup bias, kin-selection, and the emergence of reciprocal altruism between members of the same tribe. “Again, the attraction arising from the difference of sexes would enhance this pleasure, and the natural inclination they have for each other would form a third law.”

Thus, we have, from the initial state of fear, which Montesquieu attributes to God having been impressed upon our minds as our Creator, a moment of peace, stability and security, harmony, and thus justice, which enable us to seek nourishment, to move according to our desires, attracting us towards our kin or those with a like-nature, allowing us to form groups. From these we have three initial rights: the right to peace or justice, i.e., stability or security, the right to seek nourishment according to our desires, and the right to associate with whomever we wish. Yet Montesquieu continues:

“Besides the sense or instinct which man possesses in common with brutes [i.e., his affiliative instinct], he has the advantage of acquired knowledge [i.e., with his intellect, he may grasp the world as understandable components that he may manipulate]; and thence arises a second tie, which brutes have not. Mankind have therefore a new motive of uniting; and a fourth law of nature results from the desire of living in a society [or a tribe].” (de Montesquieu, p. 37)

In other words, via his intellect, he may gain knowledge of the fact that he belongs to a group that is distinct from the other components of the world, and that this group is a social unit of his kind, which he knows as a society or tribe, and which protects him from the vicissitudes of his environment, i.e., provides him peace, sustenance, and pleasure resulting from the “inclination [humans] have for each other.”

Thus we have our final negative right, or Natural Right: the right to form groups. The violation of any of these, according to Montesquieu, is a violation of the natural laws inherent to all men.

Yet his theory on rights does not end there. Once man knows he is a member of a society, tribe, band, or group, that group, having ameliorated itself from the fear of being nothing but atomized individuals is emboldened:

“Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations. The individuals likewise of each society become sensible of their force; hence the principal advantages of this society they endeavor to convert to their own emolument, which constitutes a state of war between individuals.

These two different kinds of states give rise to human laws. Considered as inhabitants of so great a planet, which necessarily contains a variety of nations, they have laws relating to their mutual intercourse, which is what we call the laws of nations. As members of a society that must be properly supported, they have laws relating to political law. They have also another sort of law, as they stand in relation to each other; by which is understood the civil law.” (de Montesquieu, p. 37)

He continues:

“Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

They should be adapted in such a manner to the people for whom they are framed that it should be a great chance if those of one nation suit another.

They should [thus] be in relation to the nature and principle of each government; whether they form it, as may be said of political laws; or whether they support it, as in the case of civil institutions.

They should [thus] be in relation to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen, or shepherds: they should have relation to the degrees of liberty which the constitution will bear; to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs. In fine, they have relations to each other, as also to their origin, to the intent of the legislator, and to the order of things on which they are established; in all of which different lights they ought to be considered.” (de Montesquieu, p. 38)

Thus, from any group’s natural right to form groups, emerges positive laws. The laws of any group are relative to the climate that group resides within, the land in which they reside, the resources around them, their ability to move about, their mores, the kind of people they are, the kind of government the people of that society establish, and the capacity for that group to reason. Each must be considered on its own terms, relative to its conditions, under the light each deserve. The relation of these groups to each other and the objects or forces any group is affected by is the Spirit of Laws (de Montesquieu, p. 39).

Yet before we proceed with our discussion on Montesquieu, I think it is relevant to quote him on his understanding of the body politic:

“The general strength may be in the hands of a single person, or of many. Some think that nature having established paternal authority, the most natural government was that of a single person. But the example of paternal authority proves nothing. For if the power of a father relates to a single government, that of brothers after the death of a father, and that of cousins-german after the decease of brothers, refer to a government of many. The political power necessarily comprehends the union of several families [or nations].

Better is it to say, that the government most conformable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.

The strength of individuals cannot be united without a conjunction of all their wills. The conjunction of those wills, as Gravina again very justly observes, is what we call the CIVIL STATE.” (de Montesquieu, p. 38)

By this quote alone, I doubt very much Montesquieu would be in favor of something like the UN, and I also think, based on the previous quote, he would find the notion of Universal Rights, but maybe for natural rights or laws, to be thoroughly absurd. The question ultimately to be asked of human rights or universal rights is this: who exactly are the rights enumerated in the articles proceeded by the UDHR for?

The point I am trying to make is that rights are not universal. There are natural laws that govern human social behavior, and many people are capable of exerting these laws unless acted upon by another force. Yet very rapidly, these natural laws give rise to positive laws; these positive laws are founded upon reason, and are relative to a plethora of conditions. The rights enumerated by any people’s laws are relative to those people. Thus, the idea that there can be a universal government, ameliorated from the local, material conditions of a given people, capable of writing laws for humanity as a whole is nonsensical and incoherent; human rights are an abstract incapable of being implemented because they do not emanate from the genuine political will and conditions of a unified people or state.

On the Variety of Nations – The Universal Man

The conclusion of the last section rests on the fact that there isn’t something like a universal man. But is this the case? I think the other key mistake the UN and UDHR makes is presupposing that there’s a Universal Man, ameliorated from the conditions of a specific environment, the latter of which naturally imposes limitations on his personhood. Montesquieu, in his work, very clearly presents a case that there are material conditions that create variation. These various forms of Man, given their material conditions, produce different societies. Again, while presented somewhat chauvinistically, I think there is substantial contemporary evidence for such a claim.

While I have written about the emergence of moral diversity in the past (Striegel, 2022), I think it would be prudent to at least sketch out the theory by which there can be diversity within a species due to environmental differences, without great genomic differences.

Previously, I have relied primarily on Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s work, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (West-Eberhard, 2003). I found her to be a remarkable foundation for studying biology and evolution as it occurs within organisms and their offspring. While I will likely rely on her for some support to express my ideas on the matter at hand, I think I would best be served by the metaphors Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb provide in their work, Evolution in Four Dimensions (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014), much to West-Eberhard’s likely chagrin.

For the purposes of understanding the kind of human diversity I’m speaking of, and which Montesquieu clearly was aware of, I would like to make use of Jablonka and Lamb’s metaphor of the Jaynus creatures:

“Imagine that on Jaynus, a planet not too far or too different from our own, there is life. The organisms found there are very diverse, having all sorts of amazing shapes and behaviors, although their complexity does not exceed that of a jellyfish… All Jaynus creatures multiply solely by asexual processes: there is nothing like the meiotic cell division that leads to the production of gametes in earth’s animals and plants, and there are several types of asexual reproduction. Some creatures multiply by shedding buds from the adult body; in most others multiplication is through single cells that become detached, start dividing, and develop into adults; and in a few it occurs through the assembly of cells from several different individuals to form a kind of “embryo,” which then begins the developmental process.” (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014, p. 112)

Importantly, “every organism [on Jaynus] has exactly the same DNA sequences. From the simplest organisms, a tiny unicellular creature, to the enormous fanlike colonial worms, the DNA is identical.” But how?

“The evolutionary history of Jaynus organisms began about 2 billion years ago, when a large chunk of our own planet became detached and disintegrated into meteorites. These meteorites contained the simple life forms that had evolved on Earth, and one of them, carrying its living cargo (in a state of suspended animation, of course) reached Jaynus. Some organisms survived, and since conditions on Jaynus allowed life to flourish, they evolved into various unicellular and multicellular forms. Present-day organisms are all descendants of a common ancestor – a floating, colonial, mattress-like form, with the same genome as that now found in all of them. Through natural selection, this ancestor’s descendant evolved the “suicide” system for genetically deviant cells, but they still diverged to form all of the many types of organisms found today. Adaptation to different habitats led to structural and functional modifications of the original “mattress” that were hereditary and cumulative. In the shallow parts of the stormy sea, some individuals adhered to flat rocks, evolving a “stem” and flat, leaflike structures that absorb light, energy, and the organic material that is constantly and spontaneously formed on Jaynus. These individuals had an advantage over their free-floating sisters, since they did not break up as easily and could absorb nutrients and other materials more readily, so natural selection led to the accumulation of adaptations in this direction. In other more open habitats, the original mattress fragmented into small balls whose outer cells produced rapidly moving flagella; from this state one line evolved by further fragmentation into a single class, which divided very rapidly and parasitized other species.” (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014 pp. 113 - 14)

Soon, scientists arrive on Jaynus and discover as much biological diversity as that on earth, but upon discovering every organism has exactly the same DNA sequences, the intrepid explorers who discovered Jaynus and her species are amazed and mystified. How could such tremendous biological diversity be present on a planet with only one organism, whose members all share the same DNA? For them, the answer was Epigenetic Inheritance Systems or EIS. EISs allow for “[v]ariations in the functional states of cells, in cell architecture, and in cellular processes… [to be transmitted] … from generation to generation. Sometimes depending on their mode of multiplication, variations in the organization of whole tissues and organs are transmitted. Because EISs play a double role, being both response systems and systems of transmission, the scientists concluded that the role of directed or interpretive variation had been much larger on Jaynus than on Earth” (Joblonka and Lamb, 2014, p. 114) In other words, on Jaynus, through a process of natural selection (remember, the Jaynus creatures are asexual and do not have meiotic cell-division) and through EISs, variation in a single organism, giving the appearance of genetic diversity and thus speciation, occurred.

While this is merely a metaphor, it helps to illustrate the point and to draw our attention towards the matter at hand: in humans, extreme variations of significant effect may occur without there being significant or meaningful change done to the genome. In other words, as on Jaynus, where the “mattress-like” creature diverged to form a menagerie of different types through EISs, so too may humans, from a small group, extend distally in various directions, be affected by natural selection, and sexual selection, resulting in great or meaningful functional and structural modifications. In different environments, physiological and structural differences would emerge that would allow the organism to be more adapted to the specific environment of its ancestors than another from their species whose ancestors had not endured the selection pressures of said environment. The structural and physiological differences of the organism’s ancestor, which ensure fitness benefits for an organism in a specific environment, were the target of selection; i.e., the structure and physiology of an organism very likely already had to exist for the environment to have selected for those component parts of its biology. Variation emerges from pre-existing functions and structures, and the environment or conspecifics select on the basis of those functions and structures. Structures and functions not selectable by the environment or conspecifics will not produce a variation. I.e., even if an initial structure or function confers only a slight benefit, EISs will target that structure or function to generate variation to increase that benefit from slight to significant.

In other words, though humans are not genetically all that different, they are bound to be structurally and functionally different based on the various environments they’ve inhabited. Some humans are lactose intolerant, and others are not; some are capable of resisting malaria at a cost, others are not, yet do not bear the cost; some are capable of consuming alcohol without a significantly high chance of becoming addicted to it, others are far more likely to become addicted to it and much more quickly; some are better at running long distances, others are not; some are better able to tolerate high altitudes, others are not; etc. And thus, because there’s variation in the functions and structures of humans, caused by their biology’s interaction with the environment and the materials in that environment, there’s bound to be variation in the cultures that result from their behaviors, which are altered by those varying functions and structures.

And thus, we get to Jablonka and Lamb’s metaphor of the Tarbutniks:

Unlike the Jaynus creatures, Tarbutniks (whose name comes from the Hebrew word tarbut, which means “culture”) “have mechanisms that completely prevent any transgenerational transmission of epigenetic variations.” Therefore, unlike the Jaynus creatures, the Tarbutniks do not inherit “genetic [or] epigenetic variations from their parents.” However, this doesn’t mean the Tarbutniks are all like – far from it: “Chance events during their development result in small differences in their size, fur color, the proportions of their body parts, and also in their calls and various aspects of their learned behavior.” In other words, “there’s no correlation in appearance or behavior between parents and their offspring,” there are no inherited traits. I.e., “the Tarbutniks cannot evolve.”

Tarbutniks learn through trial and error, “but it takes a lot of attempts to hit on the right way” of achieving a task. They have to taste something bad to learn to avoid it, and vice versa, they have to taste something good to learn to seek it. Oddly, “[T]arbutniks… do not learn from each other.” I.e., “each tarbutnik has to find out about its environment through its own experiences. In every generation, through trial and error, each Tarbutnik has to reinvent the wheel for itself.” I think it’s safe to say that this may not be optimal for the Tarbutniks.

Now let us say the Tarbutniks become capable of “social learning” or “socially mediated learning,” i.e., “[they] can learn from and through the experiences of others.” This would lead to significant information transfer, especially because Tarbutniks are very social creatures: they live with their parents, older individuals with greater experience, and their peers; and although Tarubtniks eventually live independent lives, they still live amongst their peers and thus are still capable of acquiring information through them. This capacity to learn socially has “profound effects.” By “accident, or through trial-and-error learning, or by discovering the activities of individuals from another species, [a Tarbutnik that] discovers how to crack open a nut may transmit this useful information to its descendent.” In other words, while the Tarbutniks are not capable of inheriting genomic variations, they are capable of inheriting culture. This opens the Tarbutniks up to Darwinian selection, i.e., natural selection.

“Imagine that a tarbutnik learns through its own experiences that by squatting in a depression in the ground it is less likely to be spotted by predators.” I.e., by avoiding predators, its chances of survival increase, its chances of reproducing increase, and it may transmit this information to its decedents, family, or peers. I.e., by learning and social learning, the information acquired and transferred in a specific environment may be transferred to an organism’s kin, increasing their fitness. This behavior is as subject to variation as any structural and functional phenotype, and in fact it is literally a kind of phenotype. Soon tarbutniks, in a frenzy to avoid predators, learn to burrow. And yet still, this learned trait is not merely suitable for avoiding predators; digging protects them from “inclement weather”, as well; the telos of the learned behavior is not absolute; it too is subject to variation. And on occasion, “[Tarbutniks] sometimes produce a burrow with two entrances, [allowing] them to escape predators even more easily”; one learned behavior, produces variation after variation, with variations on any given variation.  Because this learned and transmitted behavior increases the fitness of the tarbutniks who acquire it, burrowing becomes a main-stay, and tarbutniks spend ever more time in their burrows. Eventually “females start to give birth there.” Obviously, this provides protection for the mother and her offspring and exposes them to the behavior of burrowing very early, creating even more room for variations on the learned behavior. In other words, the tarbutniks develop a “burrowing tradition.”

Yet tarbutniks also learn through social learning. Sometimes “tarbutnik youngsters… fail to hear and respond to their parents’ alarm call when it is made in thick vegetation.” By mere luck, the parent can discover that another method is much more effective at getting the attention of their youngster. Thus, the fitness of the young in the tall grass is increased. Notice that learned behavior is relative to the environmental conditions and other species within that environment. “Thanks to the benefits of the new call and the ease with which it is learned, a new calling tradition is established.”

Tarbutniks also need to swoon their mates. “Red berries are a favorite… so imagine that by chance a male discovers that females who manage to snatch his berries from him are also more available to mating.” Of course, he wants to mate, so he’ll turn a blind eye to their petty theft. In doing so, he acquires more mates for himself, produces more offspring, and outcompetes his male peers. His offspring are also exposed to this method of mate acquisition, and they too learn that letting the females steal some red berries is more beneficial than punishing them for having done so; it allows them to acquire a mate. We thus have a new tradition: “red berry offering.”

Let us also imagine that not all environments have the same resources. Then let us also say that two populations of tarbutniks split; we now have an A population and B population. The A population carries on the red berry offering, but the B population now resides in an area that has no red berries; how sad! Instead, they choose to offer their prospective mates “already cracked nuts.” For many generations, these two populations diverge, but remember, they never change genetically, only behaviorally and culturally. Let us now say that, by chance, these two populations meet up again. “The females from [population A] expect red berries, and do not respond to the nut-offering males from B; similarly, nut-requiring females from B are not interested in the red-berry-offering males from A.” Because neither will mate with the other, they become distinct subpopulations or subspecies; they are not a different species, but they are different culturally; they are a “cultural species.”  (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014, pp. 154 – 9)

The point of this thought experiment was to highlight the ways in which species, specifically humans, are capable of generating subpopulations based on learned behavior while changing very little genetically. The discovered and beneficial behavior leads to cultural traditions that are learned by offspring, transmitted to peers, innovated by chance or experimental and serious play, and lead to differences within a single species, generating subspecies or subpopulations; the variations and differences are seemingly endless. Combined with structural and functional variations caused by EISs, though not accounting for the majority of differences in observed variation (Jablonka and Lamb, 2014, p. 159), cultural variation leads to a prolific amount of diversity within a single species. As with the tarbutniks, some of the acquired behaviors may not be compatible across subpopulations; i.e., subpopulation A’s behavior may be exclusive to subpopulation B’s behavior, C’s behavior, D’s behavior, etc. Inversely, subpopulation A’s behavior may be somewhat inclusive of B’s behavior, C’s behavior, D’s behavior, etc. These points lead us to an interesting inference about the Universal Man. If the Universal Man exists, he’s compatible only with some of the members from any given subpopulation, likely not most, and definitely not all. Thus, it would be absurd to claim the Universal Man is the representative for all nations, rather he is only a representative for some of the members from some of the nations; he’s not a representative for all or perhaps most nations. Then how can we call him universal? The very idea of a Universal Man may be antithetical to a subpopulation’s learned and acquired traditions. Thus, the UN’s claim to be a representative for all nations is incoherent; who exactly are you representing as a member of the UN; who is a citizen of the United Nations? Once this question is broached, it is clear that there is no legitimate UN nor will there likely be a legitimate UN, because there are logically bound to be mutually exclusive traditions and values between at least any two nations.

The Spirit of Laws With Respect to the Nations

The concept of progress, as already discussed, being highly subjective and relativistic (according to whom is the contemporary society better?), combined with the likely fact that some, if not most, nations have incompatible cultural traditions, must lead to the conclusion that progress (whatever that word means) isn’t the goal or achievable. Instead, it is more accurate to understand the UN as a mechanism for self-interested parties to get what they want, to progress in the direction they desire, irrespective of the benefit or detriment to any given nation or humanity as a whole.

Thus, it is safe to say there are different kinds of humans, genetically and behaviorally, that develop different cultures; those cultures are definitely capable of being mutually exclusive, and thus to treat any human as if he’s materially equal to another is absurd; to see humans as nothing more than human is a literal denial of reality; it is delusional. It is also absurd, then, to believe we can impose a set of universal human rights on humanity. Turning to Montesquieu, this should be made clear.

With respect to the laws of a nation, they are held together by the spirit of the law of that nation, which is the relation between the objects, including people, of a nation. The Spirt of Laws, also exists between nations, and is, once again, the relation of nations to each other and the objects or forces any group is affected by. The laws of nations are as varied as the conditions on the face of the Earth. Yet they are also as varied as how people choose to respond to those conditions or the manner in which it is most beneficial to respond to those conditions. I.e., the laws of a nation are a product of culture, which is a product of learned behavior or “social learning” and “socially mediated learning,” which is affected by and the product of natural and sexual selection; i.e., the laws of a nation are affected by and the product of natural and sexual selection. Importantly, structural and functional variation in subpopulations of humans, caused by sexual and natural selection, can affect behavior, which affects what is learned through social or socially mediated learning in a given environment, affectings the cultural structures of a people, including their laws; i.e., structural and functional variations within subpopulations of humans can affect the laws of a people. In other words, behavioral, physiological, functional, and structural differences between subpopulations of humans, as objects of those people, can affect the relations between those people and their environment, and other nations, and thus can result in laws that are genuinely specific to a given people and incommunicable to another people. These laws can be seen as an extension of these people, property of these people, and thus a violation of the laws of specific people may be seen as a violation against their personhood, an assault on their personhood, or an act of aggression. If you are following, this too follows for their culture. An assault on a people’s culture is an assault on their personhood. If progress requires this kind of act of aggression by the UN, the UN is a threat to the people of every nation.

Montesquieu, was obviously aware of this. With respect to the climate of a people, he has this to say:

“If it be true that the temper of the mind and the passions of the heart are extremely different in different climates, their laws ought to be in relation both to the variety of those passions and the variety of those tempers.” (de Montesquieu, p. 219)

He then proceeds to make some spurious observations about how the hotness or coldness of a climate can affect the passions of people from hot or warm climates, which are clearly antiquated, yet hit on a kernel of truth. Montesquieu is obviously recognizing that different subpopulations, in different climates, have different tempers, because either functionally, structurally, behaviorally, or culturally those people have been affected by the climate; natural and sexual selection has affected the ways in which people behave from those climates.

For example, with respect to agriculture, he says:

“Agriculture is the principal labor of man. The more the climate inclines him to shun his labor, the more the religion and laws of the country ought to incite him to it.” (de Montesquieu, p. 223)

He also makes some interesting remarks about sobriety with respect to climate:

“The law of [Mohammed], which prohibits the drinking of wine, is therefore fitted to the climate of Arabia: and indeed, before [Mohammed’s] time, water was the common drink of the Arabs. The law which forbade the Carthaginians to drink wine was a law of the climate; and, indeed, the climate of those two countries is pretty nearly the same.”

However, “Such a law would be improper for cold countries, where the climate seems to force them to a kind of natural intemperance, very different from personal ebriety. Drunkenness predominates throughout the world, in proportion to the coldness and humidity of the climate. Go from the equator to the north pole, and you will find this vice increasing together with the degree of latitude. Go from the equator again to the south pole, and you will find the same vice traveling south, exactly in the same proportion.” (de Montesquieu, p. 225)

Without regard to the scientific validity of these statements, he is clearly aware of what naturally follows from the recognition that natural and sexual selection work on subpopulations of people, resulting in different manners, and customs (mores) of peoples, ultimately resulting in different laws between those people.

On how laws relate to the soil of a nation, he says:

“The goodness of the land, in any country, naturally establishes subjection and dependence. The husbandmen, who compose the principal part of the people, are not very jealous of their liberty; they are too busy and too intent on their own private affairs. A country which overflows with wealth is afraid of pillage, afraid of an army.

…

The monarchy is more frequently found in fruitful countries, and a republican government in those which are not so; and this is sometimes a sufficient compensation for the inconveniences they suffer by the sterility of the land.

The barrenness of the Attic soil established there a democracy; and the fertility of that Lacedaemonia an aristocratic constitution. For in those times, Greece was averse to the government of a single person, and aristocracy bore the nearest resemblance to that government.

Plutarch says that the Cilonian sedition having been appeased at Athens, the city fell into its ancient dissensions, and was divided into as many parties as there were kinds of land in Attica. The men who inhabited the eminences would, by all means, have a popular government; those of the flat, open country demanded a government composed of the chiefs; and they who were near the sea desired a mixture of both.” (de Montesquieu, p. 261)

Just as the Turbutniks are affected by the lands they inhabit, and the resources at their disposal, and how they choose to interact with the environment, learn from those interactions, and generate tradition and culture from those learned interactions, so too do people, as Montesquieu justly identifies. The type of land, whether it be “fertile provinces” with a “level surface”, making the population more willing to “submit” to a chieftain or king, mountainous regions, requiring a “more moderate government,” like the people of Attica, or populations residing near bodies of water, making them more mercantilist or desirous of liberty, it affects their temperament, behavior, manners and customs, culture and thus laws.

The resources of a land may too affect the people of that land. The barrenness of a land requires the people to be “industrious.” It’s easy to imagine how a non-industrious people in a barren land would quickly go extinct, while those who were industrious were more likely to produce offspring. On these matters, Montesquieu says:

“The barrenness of the earth renders men industrious, sober, inured to hardship, courageous, and fit for war; they are obliged to procure by labor what the earth refuses to bestow spontaneously. The fertility of a country gives ease, effeminacy, and a certain fondness for the preservation of life. It has been remarked that the German troops raised in those places where the peasants are rich, as, for instance, in Saxony, are not so as the others. Military laws may provide against this inconvenience by a more severe discipline.” (de Montesquieu, p. 262)

He also says on the same subject:

“Those countries which the industry of man has rendered habitable, and which stand in need of the same industry to provide for their subsistence, require a mild and moderate government.

…

Thus, in spite of the climate of China, where they are naturally led to a servile obedience; in spite of the apprehensions which follow too great an extent of empire, the first legislators of this country were obliged to make excellent laws, and the government was frequently obliged to follow them.” (de Montesquieu, 263)

By industry, mankind is able to make Mother Nature abide to his will. The people of these nations, who generate manners and customs that reflect their requisite industriousness, will naturally produce laws that reflect the need for that industriousness. In doing so, “the actions of an industrious people are the source of blessing which last when they are no more.”

Whether a people are prone to cultivating the land also affects the kind of people they are, specifically their manners and customs.

“As the produce of uncultivated land is that of land improved by culture, so the number of savages in one country is to that of husbandmen in another: and when the people who cultivate the land cultivate also the arts, this is also in such proportions as would require minute detail.” (de Montesquieu, p. 264)

Uncultured peoples, i.e., people who are not industrious and do not even begin to subsist on the land, cannot form a “great nation.” As herdsmen, “they need an extensive country to furnish subsistence,” if hunters, their “numbers must be less.” Such peoples, according to Montesquieu, often, “abound [in] forests, which as they inhabitants have not the art of draining off the waters, are filled with bogs; here each troop canton themselves, and form a petty nation.”

These people, Montesquieu defines as savages and barbarians. Savages are “dispersed clans, which for some particular reason cannot be joined in a body.” Barbarians are, “commonly small nations, capable of being united.” Savages are “generally hunters” and Barbarians “herdsmen and shepherds.”  Montesquieu feels there’s much strife between these kinds of people. Modes and declarations of war between these people often are over land and resource disputes (M, p. 265). Because laws are not divided amongst these kinds of people, they do not have a civil code according to Montesquieu. Instead, “[t]he institutions of these people may be called manners rather than laws.”

He goes on:

“Among such nations as these the old men, who remember things past, have great authority; they cannot there be distinguished by wealth, but by wisdom and valor.

These people wander and disperse themselves in pasture grounds or in forests. Marriage cannot there have the security which it has among us, where it is fixed by the habitation, and where the wife continues in one house; they may then more easily change their wives, possess many, and sometimes mix indifferently like brutes.”

For such people, Montesquieu paints a picture of unbridled and capricious hedonism. In fact, he suggests such people “enjoy great liberty,” but I would go so far as to say they enjoy liberty to excess. They have no ties to any authority, and thus are not likely to respect one; their kin are their families, and thus they are unlikely to find commonality between peoples of other nations or be loyal to a country whose authority obliges them to certain costly acts, especially ones they may not benefit from; and given their tendency towards excessive liberty and their unbridled sexual nature, they are likely not to have many manners or customs regarding purity or sanctification. They are the contemporary liberal or progressive, to be frank. Being indifferent to authority, the mores of sanctity and purification, and loyal, for a time, only to those who benefit them (i.e., self-serving; highly individualistic), they match the moral profile of a progressive, as identified by Johnathan Haidt, quite nicely. In the eyes of Montesquieu, the progressives are savages. If progress is defined by progressives, and progressives are savages, progress defined by “progressives” must be nothing more than a kind of savagery.

Regardless, according to Montesquieu, those who cultivate the land require money. The cultivation of land requires the use of technology, tools, language, mathematics, mechanisms to preserve order, medicines to heal the injured, weapons to protect farmers, granaries to store the harvest, etc. People who cultivate the land will thus be a highly cultured people, much more fluent in the use of abstractions. As such, they will be far more likely to be familiar with money. For Montesquieu, peoples of the land use money because they cultivate the land; they are likely to discover metals “contained in the bowels of the earth” and thus put them to their proper use, which is as a signifier of value.

As such, peoples from these two different modes of living develop different legal cultures.

“When people have not the use of money, they are seldom acquainted with any other injustices than that which arises from violence; and the weak, by uniting, defend themselves from its effects. They have nothing there but political regulations. But where money is established, they are subject to that injustice which proceeds from craft – an injustice that may be exercised a thousand ways. Hence they are forced to have good civil laws, which spring up with the new practices of iniquity.” (de Montesquieu, p. 267)

In other words, people who develop the use of money require much more complex legal systems than those who do not, this selects for their ability to reason, and thus people from lands who make use of money are more likely to be better at reasoning than those who do not. If they were not good at reasoning, and they resided in lands where money was used, and such lands have complex legal structures that require decent reasoning skills, they would probably find themselves subject to the scrutiny of the law more often than those who were better at reasoning. Those who were better at reasoning would thus have more opportunities to acquire resources and reproduce, allowing their offspring the chance to inherit their reasoning abilities.

For example, Montesquieu says:

“In countries where they have no specie, the robber takes only bare movables, which have no mutual resemblance. But where they make use of money, the robber takes the signs, and these always resemble each other. In the former nothing can be concealed, because the robber takes along with him the proofs of his conviction; but in the latter it is quite contrary.” (de Montesquieu, p. 267)

In other words, even criminals in lands where money is used must be more skilled in the art of guile than those who do not.

Interestingly, Montesquieu also has this to say about those who do not make use of money:

“The greatest security of the liberties of a people who do not cultivate the earth is their not knowing the use of money. What is gained by hunting, fishing, [etc.] cannot be assembled in such great a quantity, nor be sufficiently preserved, for one man to find himself in a condition to corrupt many others; but when, instead of this, a man has a sign of riches, he may obtain a large quantity of these signs, and distribute them as he pleases.

The people who have no money have but few wants; and these are supplied with ease, and in an equal manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and hence it proceeds that their chiefs are not [likely to be] despotic.” (de Montesquieu p. 267)

While it may be true that savages, people without a land they call home, are more likely to value equality, I absolutely do not think this suggests they are less likely to be despotic. Montesquieu even presents us with an example via the chief of the Natches, who resided in Louisiana. “He has a power like that of the grand signior, and they cannot even refuse him their heads,” Montesquieu says. “When the presumptive heir enters the world, they devote all the sucking children to his service during his life,” i.e., he demands their submission to him, and their conformity, and they give it to him. “He is treated in his cottage with as much ceremony as an emperor in Japan or China.” He makes of himself an embodiment of the Sun, which provides them life and nourishment, and so he demands they serve him and conform to his will.

I think Montesquieu also hits on another aspect with respect to the variety of nations that a biologist like Jablonka or Lamb, or even West-Eberhard, are not able to achieve; he’s capable of talking about the spirit of nations with respect to their laws.

On the general spirit of Mankind, he says this:

“Mankind are influenced by various causes: by the climate, by the religious, by the law, by the maxims of government, by precedents, morals, and customs; whence is formed a general spirit of nations.

In proportion as, in every country, any of these causes acts with more force, the others in the same degree are weakened. Nature and the climate rule almost alone over the savages; customs govern the Chines; the laws tyrannize in Japan; moral had formerly all their influence in Sparta; maxims of government, and the ancient simplicity of manners, once prevailed at Rome.” (de Montesquieu, p. 280)

In other words, the general spirit of mankind exists vis-à-vis each nation and their laws as objects vis-à-vis each other. Where increase occurs in one, decrease occurs in another; the general spirit of mankind appears to be a kind of equilibrating force, a genuine force of Justice generating stability, evenness, and uprightness naturally.

Montesquieu, with regard to any nation, and most importantly with regard to our discussion on the goal of the UN to establish peace, has this to say about our effect on changing the spirit of a nation:

“It is the business of the legislature to follow the spirit of the nation, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing so well as when we act with freedom, and follow the bent of our natural genius.

If an air of pedantry be given to a nation that is naturally gay, the state will gain no advantage from it, either at home or abroad. Leave it to do frivolous things in the most serious manner, and with gaiety the things most serious.”

In other words, how then is it that we should alter the spirit of a nation to suit our personal conception of the just? How, in our desire to alter the spirit of a nation, can we be sure that we are doing nothing more than projecting our sense of inequality into it, wherein truth, the disturbance we may be identifying may be nothing more than justice taking its course; and if we were to disturb this process, which we observe with some sense of anxiety, merely because we are in a position of power and have some desire to do so, how do we know we are not also exacerbating the injustice that is correcting itself before our eyes?

To this, Montesquieu has a reply:

“Let them but leave as we are, said a gentleman of a nation which had a very great resemblance to that we have been describing, and nature will repair whatever is amiss. She has given us a vivacity capable of offending, and hurrying us beyond the bounds of respect: this same vivacity is corrected by the politeness it procures, inspiring us with a taste of the world, and above all, for the conversation of the fair sex.

Let them leave us as we are; our indiscretions joined to our good nature would make the laws which should constrain our sociability not at all proper for us.” (de Montesquieu p. 281)

For Montesquieu, it is the politics of the nation, its manners, and customs, which should be reflected in its law, and thus also form the manners and customs, that should be left to take their course. Of course, it’s not impossible to direct this stream, if you truly wish to do so.

“The more communicative a people are, the more easily they change their habits, because each is in greater degree a spectacle to the other and the singularities of individuals are better observed. The climate which influences one nation to take pleasure in being communicative, makes it also delight in change, and that which makes it delight in change forms its taste.

The society of the fair sex spoils the manners and forms the taste; the desire of giving greater pleasure than others establishes the embellishments of dress; and the desire of pleasing others more than ourselves gives rise to fashions. Thus fashion is a subject of importance; by encouraging a trifling turn of mind, it continually increases the branches of its commerce.” (de Montesquieu p. 282)

With regards to the concept of dignity previously discussed, i.e., that which is subject to the popular conventions or fashions of the time, it is the manipulation of these fashions, specifically through the desire for women to compete against each other to be the most fashionable, that changes the customs and manners of a society. Men, in desiring to appease women, e.g., to get them “red berries” or “half-open nuts,” to woo them, conform to the manners and customs women approve of, shaping the institutions of the culture. The kinds of fashion women approve of change in proportion to how open the women are to outside cultural forces and material forces. The strictness of women’s standards is proportional to how much material she has access to: this is really just hypergamy (Buss, 2004). If women have fewer cultural forces or material forces available to her, her standards will be lower. According to Montesquieu, the openness of a society, the pliability of its women vis-à-vis their idea of appropriate conventions and fashions, their material and fashionable standards, can all cause changes in the customs and manners of a society, their institutions, and laws. Where the fashions of women change dramatically, there too will the laws change. Where the law is rigid, the liberties of women will likely be constrained (de Montesquieu p. 284). The problem: fashion or convention as is popularly defined does not necessarily have a bearing on the truth, and thus a society, by the popular and fashionable standards of its women, may become delusional, i.e., removed from the truth. A society that has become so unreasonable that it disregards the truth, or doesn’t seek to discover the truth to the best of its abilities, will likely create unreasonable, arbitrary, and thus unjust laws. Just as the Serpent beguiled Eve with a brief conversation and a delectable though deathly fruit, causing Mankind to fall from grace, so too may a nation’s spirit be altered or corrupted by the openness of its women, their material desires, its men’s desire to appease their women, the changing of their institutional manners, customs, and culture, and thus their laws.

With respect to a nation’s manners and customs, and laws, Montesquieu has this to say:

“Manners and customs are those habits which are not established by legislators, either because they were not able or were not willing to establish them.

There is this difference between laws and manners, that the laws are most adapted to regulate the actions of the subject, and manners to regulate the actions of the man. There is this difference between manners and customs, that the former principally relate to the interior conduct, the latter to the exterior.” (de Montesquieu p. 286)

Legislators often confuse these three. Again, laws regulate the subject of a nation. Manners regulate the interior conduct of the men of a nation. Customs regulate the exterior conduct of the men of a nation. Manners preserve justice by regulating behaviors within the home, while customs preserve justice by allowing members of a group to regulate each other’s behavior outside the home. Legislators may simply preserve these patterns in the law, or preserve the people’s ability to change their manners and customs for themselves. Yet a nation that changes its culture by creating certain manners and customs for its people through its laws will likely be forcing conformity onto its people against their will, upsetting the natural equilibrium or spirit of that nation, naturally necessitating blowback. If the UN, by law, sought to shape the customs and manners of a nation against its will, forcing the people to conform to its conception of the good, to bring about its conception of peace, it would very likely disturb the equilibrium or spirit of the nation, causing instability within at least a nation, disturbing the peace of the world; this is antithetical to its aims. Thus, what genuine legislative force does the UN through the UDHR have? As far as I can see: none. Power and whether its aims are successful alone seem to justify the UN’s actions; its goals seem to merely be a veil to disguise its intention, which is naturally self-enrichment.

The very nature of Man, his biology, and the evolutionary mechanisms of that biology, results in various kinds of men, some of whom are culturally incompatible with each other. The material and environmental conditions of any nation ultimately affect its cultural traditions, which includes its laws. And the spirit of those laws’ aim is ultimately to uphold the equilibrium that exists within a nation and between nations. The UN’s concept of a Universal Man, with universal human rights, seems to be an abstraction with no genuine basis in reality; the very idea of universal human rights genuinely seems incoherent given the means and mechanisms by which Man creates his laws. His laws are for him, in a particular place, affected by particular variables and forces, and his understanding and respect for his liberties are thus relative to those conditions. To claim he has “universal human rights” is to remove him from these conditions and put him in an abstract vacuum, which is antithetical to his actual state, and thus incoherent.

Conclusions and Discussion – The Idol of the Universal Man

“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.” – Psalm 115:4-8

At the beginning of this paper, I set out to understand what “human rights” were, and while the UDHR does have articles listing rights afforded to all people I fail to see how these could ever be considered genuine human rights; not because humans do not have rights, but because the rights of humans are relative to their nation; that nation lives in a particular climate, in a particular land, and has a particular spirit. Evolutionary forces also play a role in shaping the people of that nation, their behaviors, their biology, culture, and thus laws. It is these particular people who have rights. These are realities that man cannot be ameliorated from. To claim humanity, mankind, Man has rights qua humanity, mankind, Man is absurd; none of us have access to such a thing, regardless of whether such a thing exists platonically.

Irrespective of the non-reality of human rights, the UDHR, as noted in the first section of this paper, is also incoherent. It rests on concepts like dignity that ultimately come down to popular convention or fashion, potentially without regard for the truth. If this is the dignity they speak of, it may very easily generate a system of manners and customs, and thus laws, that disregard the truth, are arbitrary, exist without sound reason, and are thus unjust. The UN, if dignity is one of its standards, is very apt to become a tyrannical institution if ever it were granted some semblance of police power.

If the UN were ever granted the power to govern other sovereign nations, the democratic will of those peoples may be completely dissolved. Importantly, their laws, too, may also be disregarded. If such a people’s laws, customs, and manners were disregarded by the UN, their sovereign will would be suppressed. Yet those laws, customs, and manners are an extension of them as a people and have helped to preserve them as a people. If the UN were to violate those cultural objects, they may very well be seen as aggressing against an entire people. And if those people’s manners, customs, and laws stand in opposition to its popular notion of progress, and those people are recalcitrant, what options does the UN have but to refrain from action, neutering one of its main goals (progress for the sake of peace), or engage in war to bring about the popular progress it seeks, based on nothing more than its fashionable conception of peace? Does it not merely become a new imperial power? In doing so, given that its standards are utterly subject to the conventions and fashionable standards of the people embodying it, it may violently oppress a people based on nothing more than the tastes of its delegates. To think that an entire people, their culture, laws, customs, manners, their living history, all could be wiped out because a group of self-elected representatives from the UN preferred it, simply to appease their capricious notions of progress, is disgusting; the UN would become the very thing it was established to prevent; it is ultimately incapable of establishing peace, i.e., security and stability, on Earth; it cannot achieve Justice.

In the end, I think it is clear that to make an idol of Man, to remove him from his conditions, to disregard his nature, his biology, and by extension, the various kinds of men that exist, each with their own functional and structural differences, each with their own behavioral idiosyncrasies, each with their own manners, customs, and laws, each with their own culture and history, is a sin against Man, a sin against God. And for those of you who claim that God is not a relevant variable to this equation, then how are you not proving my point? Do you not also make an idol out of yourself, for yourself? Yet if you think there is a human qua human, a Universal Man, I ask that you show him to me. Let him speak, reason, act, and will himself through the world if he is not a mere construct of an overly sentimental and disembodied mind. If you cannot present this Universal Man to me, capable of exemplifying all the rights enumerated in the articles of UDHR, then he must not exist. If he doesn’t exist, then there are no Universal Human Rights, and such a notion is nothing more than a denial of reality.

He who holds to the concept of universal human rights is at odds with reality itself; his belief belies his lack of experience with the vicissitudes and people of this world; his belief is the product of a mind coddled from the harsher conditions of life that require the formation of a society, tribe, or group, which constrains its members for the sake of their survival as a whole and which obligates them to act for their survival as a whole. The man who upholds “human rights” as if they exist worships an idol that cannot speak to him, cannot see him, cannot hear him, cannot smell him, cannot handle him, and cannot walk by him, for the idol of the Universal Man that he worships does not exist. In worshiping this idol, he too will lose his ability to walk, to handle the world, to smell the world, to hear the world, to see the world, and to speak. Ultimately, the worshiper of the Universal Idol of Man shall be betrayed by his desire to feel better about a world that isn’t as peaceful as he wants it to be.

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