FAIR DEALS

A right is a benefit to which you are justly entitled to although you are not a real free agent and are incapable of deserving the benefit as regards using your free will to do good though you deserve it because of what you are. Rights are based on basic needs. They cannot be based on anything else. We need people to keep their promises so what is promised to us should be granted even if it happens that we don't need it. People only have a right to what gives them a decent life though they may have more than that if it is available. Surplus money should be forcibly taken from the rich by the law for the benefit of the underprivileged. Rights are not based on desires for they are too changeable and we can want what we should not have. Rights presuppose the value of the person for a worthless article can't have rights. The biggest right comes first when you can't have all your rights. The most basic human right is the right to life.

Women, children and men of every race, religion and sexual orientation are all equal - one person has the same value as another.

Racists and sexists object that x is better than y if x is smarter or fitter. They say if all are not equal then inequality is determined by the degree of intelligence or virtue and then they pretend that people who are different from themselves have diminished intelligence or moral inclination or both.

But what x has x has got by chance so it does not matter what x succeeds at x is not a better person but a person with better luck. See again the importance of denying that magic and prayer work for they suggest that people are unequal because it is not pure chance?

It is insane to look down on anyone who is allegedly not as intelligent as you are, for intelligence is not as important as having a good nature and we all have the same good nature and the person who is called stupid could have greater love in them than the intelligent person for he or she has to work harder to do good.

It is obvious that the best has to be thought of everyone for if we are going to start always thinking the worst there is no place where we can stop or think we should stop at.

The notion that men and women have different roles that they have to fulfil no matter how much unhappiness this brings on them is as hurtful and fallacious as it is popular and is blatant sexism. It is sexism making an attempt to look politically correct. It is arbitrary to say that it is a woman's job to make the dinner and a man's job to fix the sink. Why can't a man who is better with children than his wife allow her to be the breadwinner? If you can do the job it is very unfair and wrong to speak of roles. And as for the role of motherhood, men would have to carry babies if a virus wiped out all women. To assign sexual roles is simplistic.

Nobody should be discriminated against just because they are a different colour, or because of their religion, sex or sexual orientation. These things have nothing to do with doing a job or mean that we can't be friends with them and they with us. There is no room for snobbery in Humanism for it is not us who work for what we have and are but chance (even if we have been designed then the designer came about by chance so this is still true) and it is not snobbery to be an egoist for the egoists do not put themselves first because they think they are better than other people but only because reason compels them to. All people are equal. Rights are based on needs not on desires. For example, you have a need to live so you have a right to live but you do not have a right to have a child for you don't need a child.

Judge no one by appearances, skin colour or by your feelings. A sinister looking or rude person can be better and more helpful to you in your time of need than the normal looking and polite one. The goodness within is the important thing. It may be warped or badly expressed but it is still there.

Do not boast of your good deeds in such a way that it makes others feel inferior. To be full of pride and show it is to humiliate yourself for others will not respect you or be impressed. What is the point of boasting when it makes you look ridiculous? Do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what it will bring.