elfishness is not a virtue.  My own view is that society has unwittingly cultivated a culture of selfishness.  This has been a consequence of the proliferation of rights.  There is nowadays a right to just about anything and everything, including a right to be offended and a right to be stupid.  In general, people justify what they do in the name of having a right to do it.  And therein lies the problem. 

The mark of selfishness is that one’s own interests count regardless of the deleterious impact one’s behavior has upon others.  On this account, then, a person is not being selfish in merely brushing her teeth or taking a shower.  Though it is possible to do these things and being selfish, as when a person deliberately and calculatingly brushes her teeth in order to use the last remaining bit of toothpaste or takes a shower in order to use the last remaining bit of hot water, the typical case of teeth brushing and showering, is not at all selfish.

As rights were initially conceived, they were not merely coextensive with a person’s desires.  Rather, they were meant to capture what is unique about being a person; accordingly, rights generally reflected duties that were owed by others.  And the extension of rights to animals accords with the idea that rights are not coextensive with desires.  Insofar as animals have rights, it is not as much about their desiring things as it is about it being proper to treat them in certain ways and improper to treat them in certain other ways.  If animals have a right not to be treated cruelly by human beings, it most certainly is not because animals have the concept of cruelty and wish not to be so treated. 

The right to life, which is generally regarded as a sine qua non of humanity, is not thought to be contingent upon whether or not one desires to live or not.  For the newborn is said to have a right to life.  But this most certainly is not because the newborn has the concept of life and the wish not to die.  And if an adult fully in possession of the concept of life wishes to die, this does not automatically render her or his right to life null and void. 

Historically, rights have been regarded as valuable things.  So it is no surprise that people wish to have the rights that they have and the things that their rights accord them.  It is a mistake, though, to infer from this rights are simply a function of desires. 

The proliferation of rights almost treats rights as if there were a one-to-one mapping between rights and desires.  Alas, this is unfortunate because it has had the untoward consequence of dignifying mere desires.  And this, in turn, has given rise to unabashed selfishness.  So people talk about the right to behave in this or that way even if their behavior is diametrically at odds with responsibilities that they have freely and voluntarily taken on.  So it is not uncommon nowadays to hear parents talking about the right to have fun and to enjoy themselves, even if this means putting at risk the newborn infant whom they brought into the world. 

The language of rights has become a justification for irresponsibility. 

Equally relevant is that the invocation of rights, these days, is tantamount to saying that a person cannot be criticized for how she or he behaves.  And this further solidifies the selfish tenor that rights have come to have.  So the language of rights can now be used not only to justify self-indulgence, but also vengeance and violence. 

The language of rights is now used to justify the absence of self-discipline. 

It would never have occurred to those who espoused the doctrine of inalienable rights that rights were a justification for irresponsibility and the absence of self-discipline.  Quite the contrary, responsibility and self-discipline were deemed to be an ineliminable feature of being a bearer of rights. 

A most unexpected consequence of the proliferation of rights is the decline of gratitude.  Quite simply, gratitude is the sentiment of appreciation and thanks that one has for the efforts that another has willingly and knowingly exerted on one’s behalf.  Gratitude can be appropriate even when a person is doing his duty.  For there is a multitude of ways in which a person can do that.  A person can most begrudgingly and reluctantly do what duty requires of her, looking for any and every excuse not to do.  Or, she can do so with the utmost commitment to the propriety of doing her duty, refusing to acknowledge any excuses however hard the task may be.  A person’s undying commitment to doing her duty is a precious moral gift that she should never go unacknowledged.

The proliferation of rights has increasingly deadened our moral sensibilities to the moral gift of those who make no excuses for themselves with respect to their duties.  This should come as no surprise.  For as we have become increasingly preoccupied with only the satisfaction of our own desires, we have become increasingly indifferent to the goodwill that others have exhibited in acting on our behalf.  And there goes gratitude.

It is easy to miss this if we focus upon the big things.  After all, one has to be a moral monster if one has no gratitude for a person who, say, saves one’s life.  But as a social lubricant, gratitude plays a most vital role with respect to the small things. 

Hopefully, I will never need anyone to save my life.  Yet, there is not enough room to list the ways in which I am grateful.  The parents of Brian Keevil and the parents Paul Frey trusted me with their sons twice a week to teach tutor them in the French language.  Their extraordinary trust has been rather like gold in a vault.  A simple gesture from a child—“Thank you daddy.  I had so much fun today—can occasion much gratitude. 

A society without gratitude is rather like the walking dead.  And in our proliferation of rights, I fear that this is what society is increasingly becoming.  And this shows in a most astounding way that there is more to life than rights. 

Rights were intended to affirm our humanity.  Most poignantly, the unfortunate truth is that it is the proliferation of rights that is squeezing the humanity out of us.