Reflections on Preamble Whereas 6 of 7 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights Using the Value Words: Empathy, Responsibility, and Strength
Welcome to the weekly reflection on the contents of the Human Rights Pocketbook to inspire you to participate in the Human Rights Pocketbook Project to distribute a pocketbook to every 9th grader every year. But first some acknowledgements.
Anita Lewis, one of our monthly Human Rights Pocketbook Project promoters, was recently in Bismarck, ND, visiting her family and was engaging one of the two Bismarck Rotary Clubs about the HRPP. Thank you, Anita!
Jim Rowan, Edward Jones financial advisor, Monks Corner, SC, is taking over his dad’s Edward Jones office. Thank you, Jim, for wanting to explore this project further with the local Rotary Club that you plan to join.
Here is the 6th of 7 WHEREAS of the UDHR
“Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,”
In addition to this WHEREAS, I will make an effort to link this whereas to the Empathy Surplus Project’s (ESP) 1st of 5 Sets of 3 Value Words — empathy, responsibility, and strength. ESP’s Caring Citizens’ Congresses offer a community of practice of using these value words.
THE VALUE OF EMPATHY
Words are physically constitutive in the neural synapses of the human brain. Cognitive scientists teach us that common sense is not a natural phenomenon. When certain words are used often enough between a group of people, brains and neural pathways are physically changed in a human being to create common sense.
The Human Rights Pocketbook Project was developed by the 1st Caring Citizens’ Congress of Wilmington, Ohio, a member educational organization of ESP. It’s purpose is to change your brain and the brains of your spheres of influence to build an empathy surplus in the world.
When we discuss how to respect, protect, and promote human rights in our spheres of influence, cognitive science tells us that we are physically activating the empathic parts of the human brains involved in that particular conversation. Empathy is the soul of democracy, citizens caring for one another, leading to respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms. When “Member States” pledge themselves to cooperation with other member states to promote human rights and freedom, they are governing with empathy.
THE VALUE OF RESPONSIBILITY — PERSONAL AND SOCIAL
Empathy is different than sympathy. Empathy is directly related to both personal and social responsibility to act on that empathy.
Although cognitive scientists tell us that healthy human beings are hard wired at birth for empathy through our mirror neuron system, humankind was not always aware of its importance in governing our actions in our personal lives, business, caring society organizations, or in public government. In her book, Inventing Human Rights: A History, historian Lynn Hunt details the discovery of the importance of empathy in a caring body politic. She begins with the US Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . .”
Hunt then asks if these rights are self-evident, why does Jefferson have to say that they are self-evident? And when did they become self-evident?
It seems that during the 30 years leading up to Jefferson writing those words the romantic novel was invented. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie was the biggest best seller of the century. And as these novels became more popular laws began to be passed that recognized human rights, such as ending torture by the state. Society’s manners also began to change to increase personal control over one’s body, e.g. blowing your nose into a handkerchief. George Lakoff, ESP’s cognitive scientist mentor, said of this time in history,
“These changes (examples of personal and social responsibility) were propelled by empathy, by identification with the problems and plights of ordinary people, feeling what the characters felt, seeing such plight around them, and propelling legal and governmental change.”
THE VALUE OF STRENGTH
If there was ever a time in Rotary’s history when Rotarians exercised their strength to act on their empathy and responsibility concerning human rights, Rotarians at ESP believe it was the decade of the 1940s. As you read this, 25,000 Rotarians are gathering in Hamburg, Germany, for RI’s annual convention.
At Rotary’s 1940 International Convention in Havana, Cuba, they passed a resolution on human rights that was to become the foundation for the UDHR. Two years later in 1942 the London Rotary Club in England hosted CAME, Conference of Allied Ministers of Education, who came and created UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which is now headquartered in Paris.
Many of those same Rotarian allied ministers, 11 more Rotarians were recruited by the US State Department, met in San Francisco in 1945 to create the UN Charter. You can read a commentary published by Rotary International of the UN Charter HERE.
Nowadays, even though it may seem counter intuitive, the world is becoming a more peaceful place. It’s important to be more intentional. For example, it is not unusual for Rotarians in the United States not to know their human rights history or their connection to the UN, where Rotary actually has a seat on the Economic and Social Council, where 80 percent of the work gets done. Ironically, even though all six Rotary causes are directly linked to human rights, Rotary’s Council of Legislation dropped the use of human rights from its 2016 Manual of Operations.
Rotary International’s latest partner is the Institute for Economics and Peace, which creates for the UN and other world organizations striving for peace an annual Global Peace Index, that ranks countries using a sophisticated measurement system that includes 8 pillars of peace. The most important pillar of peace, of course, is the ability to recognize one another’s human rights. (The USA ranks in the bottom third of peaceful nations.)
YOU can be the inspiration in your community, especially to 9th graders, simply by telling your Rotary story, if you are a Rotarian, OR, engaging your local Rotary Club and educating them on their own history and calling them to stand up for human rights, since they wrote the book. Or if your town doesn’t have a strong Rotary Club, partner with others to tell the human rights story.
In closing, Eleanor Roosevelt was a major contributor to the development of the final draft of the UDHR. She wrote,
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
Caring citizens are the solution. Join us.
