Rights and Responsibilities

One inheritance with two faces, equal and inalienable to all — and, against the old world's logic, rights reaching first to the weakest while responsibilities fall first on the strongest.

Every being flows from one Source and belongs to one family and community of life. On that ground, each inalienably holds all the rights and all the responsibilities that come with membership — and they are equal, because membership is not graded (ØNE · Source · Kinship · Dignity).

The two are not separate systems. A right without a corresponding responsibility is a claim on somebody unnamed; a responsibility without a corresponding right is servitude. Held together they describe one relationship, seen from the receiving side and from the giving side (Reciprocity · Right Relationship · The Two-Stake Principle).

The canon's own move is the ordering, and it inverts the ordinary one twice over.

Rights extend first to the weakest and most vulnerable. Where the old logic lets rights accumulate where power already is, here the first test of any arrangement is what it does for those least able to insist on anything (Protection Of Children · Seats at the Table · Universal Rights).

Responsibilities extend first to the strongest and most capable. It is the duty of those able to exercise Power to use it to help, protect and lift up all, starting with the weakest; the strongest, most intelligent and most capable carry the overwhelming share of the responsibility and the accountability for seeing that everyone flourishes, without exception (Right Use of Power · Servant Leadership · Necessity Of Accountability · Universal Responsibilities).

Those two sentences together are what the pairing is for. They convert a symmetrical-sounding principle into a load-bearing asymmetry, and the asymmetry is the whole difference between a body that lets advantage compound and one that does not. In play, this is the question asked of any proposal before it passes: who does this reach first, and who is carrying its weight?

Also called: the paired inheritance · rights and duties Stands on: ØNE · Dignity · Love · Kinship Opens onto: Universal Rights · Universal Responsibilities · Right Use of Power · Justice · Protection Of Children · Servant Leadership · Equal Opportunity For All · Pillar XI — Sacred Society and Justice In play: the table, when a proposal is tested; the Room and beyond, when a body decides where its protection and its burden fall Sources: Rights and Responsibilities (root page, draft — the one-family ground, the equal-and-inalienable claim, and both inversion clauses argued rather than asserted) · Universal Rights, Universal Responsibilities (root pages) · lionsberg.wiki: Rights and Responsibilities Open: Strongest and most capable is never defined, and a duty assigned by an undefined measure is easy to evade and easy to abuse; the canon leaves it to judgment. · The page dates the extension of rights to All at the opening of the new millennium without saying by whom or where.