From Marsha: Here’s a little excerpt from a workshop of Dr. Bob’s that gives a little different way of looking at situations where I think I have rights.
Now the next one up here says, you gotta stick up for your rights. Now in the U.S. we’re very obsessed with our rights. I think everbody knows that, don’t you? You got all sorts of things you’ve been told are your rights. There’s a thing in the constitution called the Bill of Rights. If you read them, they’re not rights at all. Anybody can take ’em away from you. And so if anybody can take it away from you it’s not a right. We don’t have a right to even be alive ‘cause any joker with a club or a rock or knife can take it away from you right quick. So a right’s something that can’t be taken away from you.
I sometimes turn on the television. The other night I had very little to do sittin’ by myself. So I turned the television on; and tune into these programs where they discuss controversial subjects. I took a yellow tablet, a pencil and my little remote to change stations. So I watched one program for a little while, then went over to another and another — for one hour I listened to these people propound on all the problems of the world; and I made a mark everytime they mentioned somebody’s rights. In one hour I had 68 marks — 68 times they’d been propounded about somebody’s rights.
Now there’s an interesting thing about the idea of rights. If you have rights, I don’t. If I have rights, you don’t. So let’s say we had a house somewhere and I determined I had a right to have my dinner on the table prepared by you at 6:00 every evening. I think I have that right ‘cause after all I’m payin’ the rent here. And you have the right, according to you, to go out and eat in a nice restaurant because you’ve taken care of all the household things.
And so if I have my rights, you don’t have any, is that right? And if you have yours, I don’t have mine. Now let’s go through that in any direction you want to with the idea of rights — If I have rights, you dont have them; and if you have rights, I don’t have them. So we’re gonna start violence.
So if you eliminated all idea of rights, and you don’t have any — I don’t have any — nobody else has any rights, we’d probably begin to see that perhaps we all have gobs of privileges. You know violence just may come to an end very quickly.
So if we begin to see our conjured up so-called rights as privileges instead, I might want to see that I am thankful for them; and if nothing else, at least show my appreciation in some way or other..