What Do We Owe Each Other?

Is there anything we as human beings are entitled to from the moment our consciousness lights up during development? This question has been bothering me a lot lately, and its conflicting answers have led me down several avenues of thoughts, all of which have been playing around in my head like a discordant band.

I'm first inclined to answer negatively; no, we are not owed anything by anyone simply due to the fact that we are born. I'm not arguing for any divine tragedy of birth, as Schopenhauer may have - I'm simply asserting that with over 400,000 babies born each day, the speciality of it seems distilled. Now, childbirth certainly still possesses some amount of miraculous wonders, and I'm not saying that human life holds no inherent worth - only that from an interactional standpoint, humans could owe one another nothing because there are simply too many interactions to consider individually.

Well, a few key flaws immediately present themselves with that theory. First, it does not obey the simple rules of evolutionary biology, in which those who were disagreeable in excess were ostracized from pre-human societies and left to die. In those harsh days of human evolution, every member of a tribe had to be maximally productive, unless they were sick or injured. In the harvest season, men and women both gathered food for their families. In hunting season, men and women took down large beasts as teams to provide their tribes with nourishment. Each member of the tribe owed their lives to the others, and was therefore partially responsible for everyone else's well being. When an entire tribe held this mindset, they proliferated.

But that rebuttal has its own flip side. True, humans in those days owed one another their survival, but that didn't excuse lazy behavior from any one member of the tribe. It was a fine line to walk on, where at once everyone had to provide for one another simultaneously, but no one could be seen relaxing and taking the work of others for granted. Of course, there was still a dominance hierarchy in the tribes, but it was based on competence, and did not grant the person at the peak much rest - merely the right to the lion's share of food (if there was enough food), because they were the most valuable members of the tribe.

Another flaw with the negative answer to my initial question manifests itself primarily in modern society. If it's true we owe each other nothing, and that we deserve nothing, what keeps us from collapsing into moral anarchy and animal barbarism in sociological terms? In other words, why don't we witness a plethora of excessively rude people? I'm aware there are many people who are rude, but why isn't almost everyone? After all, if I owe you nothing in a conversation, then why even listen? Why should I entertain you? The only answer would be egotistical. If I believe that holding a conversation with you has any worth for me, then I'll proceed. If not, I'll go my own way.

That answer seems incomplete to me, with its only saving grace being egoism, which I have spoken about reverently in the past, but which does not encompass all of social morality. So what if we answer positively, in the basest manner possible: yes, we are owed the bare minimum of human decency when we are born. Immediately, several new questions arise.

What defines the bare minimum of human decency? More importantly, who defines it? If we assume this right is subjective to the individual, which it very well may be, then what happens when one person's entitled right to decency directly conflicts with another's? There must be an objective way in which to judge "basic human decency". However, that objectivity eludes me. Furthermore, I don't know if it's even possible to attain a universal basic right when considering the essential symbiosis of rights and responsibility. There will always be people who fundamentally disagree with another person or group's right to even exist. Without delving back into Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, these people are an essential part of a truly tolerant society.

So if both no and yes yield unsatisfactory answers to the original question, there must be a line somewhere in the middle which can unify the best aspects of both sides. Unfortunately, I haven't exactly found that line yet. Perhaps we owe each other only one thing: the right to life - the trust that builds the foundation of a civilized society in which people just let one another be. But where does even that right end? We cannot condone malevolence, and while that may be an easy marker on the human end - if you harm a human you're violating that fundamental right, it does not account for unethical acts against animals or nature.

Two wrong answers and a poor middle ground. Not what one would want from a problem. But maybe this problem demands to remain contested. If there exists no basic human right granted at birth, then a lot remains questionable about the origin of the sociological niceties we adhere to and why we follow them. If we are granted the basic human right to being treated with decency, then we must ask: what happens when one person's definition of decency conflicts with their neighbor's? And if we take the objective route and grant a person the fundamental right to life, then what happens when we observe amoral acts against that which does not receive protection from the objective basic human right? The answer may come to me later, but for now the only solution I can see is the last - to let others live as they are.