Personal Experience

Human Rights ensure every citizen is guaranteed educational, economic and political participation and freedom in their private and social lives. While very important because they affirm the value of life and personal dignity, human rights also support a profound philosophical assumption which is that individual experiences are the means by which we test the truth in our rational and religious imperatives.

This point is made in the parable of the Prodigal Son; who needed to test through personal experience, and indeed validated, the wisdom in his father's religous way of life. Placing the greatest reliance on our own personal experiences as the means of determining truth, is akin to attending the school of hardknocks. This is where we keep testing inherited truths until we get hurt or uncover a faulty assumption.

Often enrollment in the school of hardknocks isn't voluntary, like the story of the Prodigal daughter. Her story began, like her brothers, when she felt that reason and religion offered her no relevant or meaningful guidance. So she sought to challenge, through experience, the accepted wisdom of patriarchal privledge that she was intellectually and morally inferior. She did just that and when she returned home, her father legally changed her status from chattel to person.

The logical trajectory of these parables is that ultimate truth lies in our individual experiences - that no one can tell us who we are, how we feel and what we believe. While this is true, when taken to the extreme of moral relativism, that we each have our own truths and therefore cannot be judged by others, it is ultimately limiting because humans are social beings. We crave recognition of our uniqueness, which necessarily involves judgment.

To balance the critical premise for human rights with the social and political need to have rules that apply to all, it is important to try to understand what differences in personal experiences may lead to different politics. This is not usually done because religion and politics is a very effective means by which we assert our interests without having to discuss our rationale. The courage to solve our political problems lies in our willingness to reflect upon how our religous and political views may be informed by legitimately different experiences.

Truth is a trinity - reconciling the incredible diversity of personal experiences with religion and reason, into one absolute truth. We are not there yet, but belief in this goal is the foundation of peace, hope and charity.