Wor[l]d of Difference

"There is," according to the posting, "a whole, giant WORLD between thinking you 'deserve' and knowing you are 'worthy of.' Learn the fucking difference."

The righteous anger is almost palpable, and the judgement explicit. And it makes sense, even if, underneath it all, there is a hint of unintentional irony.

While I'm uncertain that this could be classified as a thoughtful posting, I did think about it, and it lead me to understand something. While there may be a world of difference between deserving and being worthy of, "having a right to" often includes both of those concepts. For instance, in the United States, education from Kindergarten through High School can be thought of as being deserved - it is provided free of charge (mostly, anyway) to the public. Likewise, when campaigners for universal access to health care speak of everyone having a right to adequate care, they often mean that in the sense of deserving. Health care is seen as an entitlement, and if people lack the means to obtain it for themselves, then it should be provided for them. Rights as being worthy of is a slightly different animal, but also present. When we talk about a right to dignity, it's mainly in the sense that every person is worthy of being treated with a level of the same, rather than a direct and enforceable entitlement to a specific standard of treatment that may be seen as "dignified."

To be sure, not everyone understands rights as encompassing both concepts. I, for my part, don't. In my understanding of the world, a right is limited to something "deserved" in the sense of a formalized entitlement granted by a body ready, willing and able to enforce it. So I don't recognize, for instance, that there is a right to health care in the United States. That may be the ideal, but currently, no such actual right exists.

And so when I first read Graeme Wood's assertion, in his (inapt, in my opinion) comparison between Alek Minassian, and the "Involuntary Celibate" subculture with which he is associated and the Islamic State, that: "To have a sex life of some sort seems to me a human right," it seemed utterly inane. Especially considering that Mr. Wood goes on to note that: "It’s claiming the right to another person’s sex, or retribution if it is denied, that crosses from an exercise of one’s own humanity to an infringement on someone else’s, in a form of slavery." After all, it if takes two to tango, how can one have a right to dance, if everyone can legitimately decide they won't be the partner?

But if you read the passage as: "To have a sex life of some sort seems to me something that all humans are worthy of. It’s claiming one deserves another person’s sex, or retribution if it is denied, that crosses from an exercise of one’s own humanity to an infringement on someone else’s, in a form of slavery," it makes much more sense (even if I am still a bit dubious about it). But in the original, in both instances, the word "right" is used. Both the exercise of one's own humanity and an infringement on the humanity of another are categorized as a "right." And so it comes down to what rights one does or does not have, rather than the fundamental difference between "knowing you 'are worthy of'" and "thinking you 'deserve'."

And while this example jumped out at me because it was fresh in my mind, and I was planning to write about it anyway when I saw the social media post that heads this essay, I have encountered this sort of thing before. Mr. Wood's conflation of two very different things under the heading of "rights" is not unique. Part of it is a basic problem with English vocabulary as it used in everyday speech and writing; a notable lack of precision. English has a wide range of synonyms and near synonyms. (One thing that I learned while working for Wizards of the Coast is that Magic: The Gathering cards that have different names in English will sometimes have the same name in other languages {Japanese being the specific example I recall} because those other languages lack enough synonymous terms to carry the same concept with all of the different wordings that English can manage.) And to the degree that language governs thought, the fact that "knowing you 'are worthy of'" and "thinking you 'deserve'" can, in certain contexts, be gathered together under the heading of "rights" blurs the distinction between them, often beyond recognition.

And so we are left with people who do not learn the difference, because, as they understand the language, there isn't one.