What’s So Funny About Peace, Love & Understanding

As teddy bears, we often hear people talking about human rights but we’re never sure what they mean.

After all if something is a ‘right’ it’s usually something to do with a legal system (“You have the right to remain silent ….” property rights, the right to an attorney) and yet we think that when people refer to human rights, what they really mean is reasonable expectations of how humans should deal with and interact with each other. (like not being jailed for having different political or religious opinions, having reasonable, safe accommodation, not being subjected to any kind of violence and so on).

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees that the above expectations are reasonable.
All over the world there are any number of governmental and non-governmental organizations which seem to think they can do what they like to, or with, other people. This may be as simple as taxing them to death or may involve kidnapping them and forcing them to join a guerrilla army. You can probably think of many more examples.
So, to try to keep these undesirables in check humans have invented a kind of legal framework for human rights so that some of the ‘bad guys’ can sometimes be reined in (but not, of course, if the bad guys also happen to be part of the government or own a pharmaceutical company).

Overall, we don’t think the legal thing works very well but it’s probably better than nothing. This planet will continue to have problems until all the people behave more like teddy bears. Non-judgemental, non-violent, non-demanding and not greedy.

We’d still like to know what’s so funny about Peace, Love and Understanding.

Teddy and Pencil