When, as the course of Human Events continues, those events include not only greater diversity of ideas and identities and ways of thinking and being, but also greater and stronger feelings of some human groups and organizations about those different ways of thinking and being, a decent respect to the opinions and states of being of human individuals requires that all the people pause and consider, not only their rights as individual human organisms of diverse conditions, but their interconnectedness with each other in the bonds of society, community, and nationality.
We hold these truths to be evident and established by sound and objective principles: that all human beings exist as organisms which partake of independent agency and essential equality; that no race or gender or sexual orientation or religious affiliation causes any human individual or group of human individuals to be superior or supreme over another; and that along with our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there are connections, interdependencies, of each of us with the welfare of all of us, a set of connections that make necessary and possible government of us, by us, and for us, according to well-reasoned laws based on principles founded at least as well in reason, experience, and constructive imagination.
We also repudiate the notion that a corporate body, formed for commercial profit, should have the status of personhood in the eyes of law and government; we reject principles that would try to assert an outsized voice in government proportionate to a rich person’s or a corporation’s spending power and that would claim such money-based influence is a form of free speech; we reject using personal or corporate wealth as a means of acquiring power to manipulate public opinion and corrupt or pervert law and government.
In short, this is our Declaration of Interdependence. It arises from our need to realize and ponder our interconnections with each other, and the responsibilities that come with new knowledge, information, and ideas, at least as enthusiastically as we appreciate and celebrate our independence and our individual rights.
Actually, it’s just me, thinking out loud. 🙂
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