The Rights Realm
How we agree to do and to be.
Everything we do is done in a context of people, place and things. This context relates to us, and we relate to it according to agreements that have been made between us and it. These agreements may be made explicitly, or implicitly, they may be made deliberately or be there by default.
These agreements take the form of laws and contracts. Laws being a special general form of contract that applies universally. Which is an important word because it gives us the clue to the most important aspect of the Rights Realm: equality.
Everything that applies in the Rights Realm applies equally to everyone in the system, whether that system be a family, an organisation, a society or the whole of humanity. This is the domain of fairness, of a mixture of freedom and compulsion.
When forming an agreement it’s important to think ahead, to imagine different circumstances that might occur, will the agreement be able to contain all eventualities and still remain fair?
What are the mechanisms of the Right realm? Consensus is used in forming agreements between two parties – a future co-worker and a business, a prospective home owner and a bank, a manufacturer and a customer. Unless both parties agree to the contract then it is never formed. Like a pivot point between the Cultural and the Economic, in the Rights Realm there is freedom prior to the decision to sign, then there is compulsion once the agreement is sealed.
The coming to agreement is a critical point, a paroxysm of activity, with the Rights realm absolutely in the foreground. Then it disappears from view, recedes in to the background. The co-worker gets on with the job, the home-owner pays the mortgage, the customer buys the products. Although the contract isn’t part of daily life, it is still there, lurking, waiting for the moment to pounce, to leap forward, and to be used to hold an errant party to account, perhaps the terminate the agreement. The Rights realm initiates, arbitrates, enforces, judges, regulates.
Consensus is difficult to achieve with a larger group of people and the concept of majority decision making appears in order to free up the stalemate. Democracy exists in order that decisions can be made fairly that will effect many people. I think there are two basic sorts of democracy, direct and representative. Referendums are instances of direct democracy, whereas, election to parliament is the way in which, for example the UK, organises its representative democracy.
The laws of a society present an interesting quandary for the child grown up to become a citizen. They haven’t been part of agreeing with the laws that exist, and yet they have to obey them. This quandary is one example that reveals the possibility of protests about laws and movements that arise to change laws that, once seemingly fair, are now seen as unfair, unjust and needing to be changed.
The law courts exist for judging fairness in both contractual agreements and in the case of the laws of the society being broken. The police exist to ensure that the laws of the society are being obeyed, but in private contracts it is up to the parties concerned to police the relationship themselves. However, the laws of the society lie behind all contracts made between individuals, businesses and so on, and the laws take precedence. So, an employment contract signed in agreement between the business and the employee can be overturned by a court if it is deemed to be unfair in the light of the national employment law.
The Prison Service exists to deal with people who, in the view of the law, have seriously broken the law. In the context of the 3-fold, the armed forces belong to the Rights Realm, and have the role of defending a society against forces that would wish to unfairly control it. Joining of the armed forces is usually a free choice, but may become something that is compelled, equally across the society. This is a huge area for debate, but generally, as far as I have been able to tell, the use of force defensively is often successful, and the use of force offensively is always in the end a failure.
The Rights Realm is a backdrop to everyone’s lives, its rules and contracts are like the willow strands that are woven together in the various baskets (family, work, society) that contains our lives. The creation and adjustment of its laws and contracts require earnest consideration and far sightedness.
These are the basic concepts for the Rights Realm: Us, fairness, equality and universality.