The rights of an individual only apply in the home, i.e. in the private space as long as it is not influencing others. Any negative habits like smoking or drinking should be kept in the home, because once brought into the public sphere it influences others by becoming socially acceptable, thereby corrupting society and making the negative habit more widespread.
So any person has the right to smoke or drink, but as long as it remains in the private sphere since there is an infringement of other peoples right in the public sphere. You are no longer an individual in the public sphere but a part of a collective where all your actions affect others.
It is up to government to decide what is negative and should remain in the private sphere and what is not. Since a person can leave the private sphere or choose not to enter it remains the realm of the individual, free from society's eyes.
Some negative habits which should be confined to the private sphere are smoking, drinking, gambling, sexual acts, drug use, etc.
In this case, an individual's rights are still protected while still preserving the moral fabric of society.
This also provides an individual with a choice in partaking in immoral activities, which is their right, or to abstain. The public sphere should accommodate the people who choose not to partake as opposed to those who choose to do so.
This does not become an issue of transparency but rather an issue of preventing moral perversion from becoming socially acceptable and therefore harder to remedy as well as prevent problems that stem from this perversion.
The government cannot stop a person from partaking in any activities within the confines and privacy of their own home as long as it does not infringe on the rights of other individuals within that sphere or who are forced into it. There should be freedom of movement into and out of that sphere for all other individuals. But once this immoral activity spills into the public sphere it is the responsibility of the government to protect the public arena from moral corruption.
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5 comments:
How do you define negativity? How can you tell that a habit is bad or good?
For example, not wearing the hijab in Saudi Arabia is "negative", whereas wearing it in France is considered negative.
Could it be possible that good or bad, negative or positive are not definite, and requires the frame of context to find its weight on the scale?
Negativity is anything that is detrimental to the health or social well-being of the person. The hijab would not be included in this context.
There is a definite way to assess a habits overall positivity or negativity simply by looking at the habit. Some are socially defined I agree and others are not. Each habit can be assessed and debated. For example drug abuse and use, I am claiming, is a negative habit which is detrimental to society as a whole.
As members of society we should be defining certain negative and positive habits and if there is a debate on where the habit lies, then let us debate it with an ultimate conclusion being the result. I do not think that drug use can be debated as a positive habit.
When talking about the hijab, we need to define what aspect of the hijab we are talking about. Women wearing scarves is hardly detrimental to anyone's life nor can it be a negative influence, just as a woman without a scarf cannot be. It is important to remember that the hijab is a head scarf and we are not discussing public female nudity.
On the other hand, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, mass murders, etc are hazards.
"It is up to government to decide what is negative and should remain in the private sphere and what is not."
What is the point of defining individual rights if they can be changed by the state? Even in democratic societies, such a definition would run the risk of "the tyranny of the majority." What if the majority decides that the hijab is a danger to the social fabric of the nation?
Why not just extend what you define as the right of an individual in his/her own home to society at large. That is to say, free except in so far as that freedom infringes upon others?
The problems I have with the what ifs as presented with the hijab example is that it cannot logically be argued. A person covering parts of their body for whatever reason cannot be argued as a negative to the society as a whole, since it covers as opposed to exposes anyways.
On the second point, the question arises of when does the freedom infringe upon others? Does it negatively influence society? If it does then it must be addressed.
But my point is this: countries like France and Turkey view the symbol of the hijab as threatening. "The government" has decided that it represents a threat to society. Whether you agree with this point of view or not is moot, so long as you maintain that the govt can choose what is negative for society or not. In those examples, society - represented through government - has decreed that the health and social wellbeing of individuals is threatened by a particular form of religious expression. According to what I have quoted you as writing, that is their prerogative.
On the other hand, if you believe that an individual expression of religion, in the form of a hijab or any other benign example, is not something to be regulated by the state (in or outside of the household), then you should say so without qualification.
What I'm trying to point out is that, in one part of your argument, you allow for the government to decide what is detrimental to society, while in the other part of the argument, you suggest that certain things cannot possibly be detrimental to society. To avoid contradiction, you need to qualify your points further.
The hijab is a weak example since it is clearly un-threatening to all except the most insecure of govt regimes. But drugs or alcohol might be better examples - in those cases, it's more difficult to draw the line between personal and social harm.
You suggest that drug use is not a positive habit. Fair enough. But is it a negative habit to the extent that it threatens others and deserves to be banned in every and all cases? If not, under what circumstances is acceptable? This is where the philosophers and lawyers collide.
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