The True Origin of Inalienable Rights

The American Thinker site has a post which brought up the subject of "inalienable rights of the individual" (but only in terms of "property rights"). This subject comes under the heading of the "philosophy of science", particularly as newly enlightened by my discovery of the Great Design of the "gods". My response, then:

I think it is not about "property" rights, more like "appropriate" rights. There is a widely known old military saying, "Rank has its privileges", which not so many people know has a second part, "because rank has its responsibilities". So the individual has its inalienable rights, because it has its inherent responsibility, to choose its way, literally from one moment to the next, in matters large and small. (Ha-ha...I just chose to refer to the individual as "it", rather than as "he", or even "he/she". You can't get away from choosing what to do next, and you have to live with the consequences of your choosing.)

At the root of all our problems is the fact that we are not physical creatures alone; we are spirits occupying physical bodies (and in a degraded condition, because we do not KNOW, from moment to moment, that we are not just physical bodies, taking up space). We are spirit inhabiting body; and mind, or intelligent reasoning, is the bridge between the two, and our defining essence. Our inalienable human rights come from our essential being as mind, inhabiting and acting through matter, and our personal responsibility to direct that matter, our bodies. A collective or societal government cannot walk for me, or talk for me; I have to do it. I also have to decide whether I want to buy "health insurance" for this body, given my financial situation or any other considerations I may choose.

My rights, and everyone else's, are inalienable, because they are prior to any consideration of our limited physical existence. At bottom, mind is prior to matter, and the unit of mind, the individual, is prior to the state and any power we may collectively grant it. Put another way, intelligence, good reason--and the universal meaningfulness, or coherence, that underlies good reason and is evinced by it (and which we, as benighted children of our spiritual father, call God)--flows fundamentally and unavoidably through me (and you), the "units" of mind, and that makes us individually responsible.

The Newtown Massacre, and The Key to Wisdom

The mass killing of a class of kindergarten students and their adult school guardians has touched a strong chord in the country, and no doubt around the world. The following is a response I wrote after reading the post, "Lambs Against Wolves":

Anyone who would attain real wisdom in this life must first come, on their own, to the realization that there is more to one's life than life on Earth, in the physical. That greater life is in a higher realm, known to man throughout history (and long before) as "spirit". The two realms -- with the lesser physical "inside" of the greater spiritual -- are bound by an overarching meaning, or meaningfulness, and can both be experienced in our thought, or mental life. (I sometimes point out that no one knows where their more insightful thoughts come from -- instantly showing us a greater meaning than we were aware of before -- and the reason is because they come, "fullbllown" as the saying goes, from the spiritual level of reality.) It is that higher realm that, in the end, gives meaning to this physical life, which is really just a learning life, in a physical classroom. What happened in Newtown is to us now a sudden, intensely frightening end of life, which happened to the most innocent of us. But that is just the viewpoint of a soul which is focused on the physical only, whose faith is in the physical. In the higher reality, in which we all truly live, nightmares (and one can liken the Newtown massacre to any nightmare, no matter how often repeated, that seems to threaten the meaning of our life) are only meant to enable each of us to finally realize that, while everything in this life has meaning, there is no ultimate meaning here, for physical life itself ends, for everyone--and meaning has no end, it is eternal, so it cannot be limited to physical life. Put another way, you can verify for yourself that every nightmare you have ever had came to an end, immediately upon waking; for every nightmare that occurs in this life, relief inevitably and mercifully comes (mercifully, as in "The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" upon each and every soul), and the terror, especially the apparent meaninglessness, instantly evaporates.