ights are overrated.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  Rights are extremely important; indeed, we couldn’t do without them.  Yet, a world in which people merely acted within their rights and did nothing more would very nearly be an intolerable world. 

For instance, kindness would not exist in that world.  Certainly, the heroes of 9/11 would be non-existent.  For who on earth had a right that others should risk their lives to save her or him?  No one.  The catastrophes of the Tsunami and Katrina saw an outpouring of good will.  In a very real sense people went out of their way to make donations or to offer assistance.  The victims of these horrors did not have a right to the good will of these individuals. 

Or consider something like politeness.  A simple greeting such as “good morning” or a simple gesture such as letting the other go first or picking up object that the person dropped.  Imagine a world without these gestures.  It would be bone chilling.  In fact, what makes cell phones so troublesome is that they have resulted in so much rudeness.  Yet, there are no rights as such being violated by the widespread use of cell phones.  I mean cell phone do not cause people to kill or rob others. 

Politeness.  It is not a necessity in the strict sense that we can go on living without it.  Just so, to strip the world of politeness is to strip the world of what is perhaps the most important social lubricant.  For I and I can be polite to one another, though I do not care in the slightest for you.  Nor you for me.  Politeness in context such as this often goes under the banner of civility. 

I may not like the fact that John is marrying my daughter, and John knows that.  On the other hand, John is struck by the fact that I am always civil in my interactions with him.  Indeed, between my civility and John’s awareness and appreciation of that results in John and I becoming friends.  Nothing could be more irrelevant in all of this than talk about rights.

Speaking of friends, notice how irrelevant rights are to friendships.  Whenever two people have to adjudicate their interactions by reference to rights, then what we have between them is not a friendship, whatever else it might be and however wonderful it might be otherwise.  Friends delight in being together and doing things for one another and are committed to not taking advantage of the good will of one another.  A like claim holds for romantic love and for parental love. 

The point here, of course, that some of the most meaningful and nurturing relationships of our lives cannot be expressed in terms of rights.  To be sure, they take place against a backdrop of profound respect for rights.  But I never denied this.  The claim, rather, was that a world in which people only concerned themselves with rights would be intolerable. 

Rights are may very well be necessary for living a meaningful life, but they are by no means sufficient.  My claim actually is even stronger, namely that rights are not sufficient for living even a tolerable life.  In countless ways, we look to people doing what we have no right that they do. 

Today, I went to the bank; and for perhaps the first time ever I did not want to deposit the entire check.  That would be uninteresting but for the fact that I did not have an ounce of identification me.  Had the teller nicely and politely asked for a piece of ID, I would not have any grounds for complaint.  She would have been doing her job, though she clearly recognized me.  Awkwardly, I asked the teller whether a piece of ID would be necessary and she said “Not at all”. 

The moral of the story is that a simple moment remained just that owing to politeness and good will.  Had rights entered into the picture: well, part of today’s blog-entry would undoubtedly have been written differently.  Today was in fact a quite wonderful day precisely because quite few people acted in a thoughtful ways towards me that had nothing whatsoever to do with rights: an email from Mr. Jason Holtz; a loan or gift or whatever of $3.00 to try out a new cookie store on Marshall Street; and a wonderful conversation that Mr. Jeffrey Lander started in Syra-Juice. 

It is true that in a world which people were constantly out to violate my rights none of the above would matter.  It is equally true, though, that in a world in which none of the above happened, life would be miserable. 

The goodness of life is ineluctably tied to our being the beneficiaries of things to which we do not have right: random acts of decency, civility, or good will.  This, in turn tells us something, very profound, namely that it is also the case that the goodness of life is ineluctably tied to our behaving in a like manner. 

Armed with rights—and that is precisely the way to put the point—we can be rather mean and nasty.  We can be indifferent.  We can be parsimonious.  Acting well within our rights, we can be bone-chilling cold in our attitude towards others.  The failure to see this is one of the shortcomings of social moments that they miss this simple truth.  It is thus a perception warranted by reality that social moments often transmogrify into something very vicious.  Why?  Because it all comes to be about rights and nothing more than rights, thereby squeezing out those social virtues that elevate us.  For nothing affirms like that which issues from the good will of another.  To lose sight of this is to lose sight of our humanity. 

It is a truth, then, that when pushed too far the language of rights does more harm than good.