Soon, I’ll be moving back to mainland China. For many years I’ve been meditating on why and how I can relate so well to Chinese culture and feel oddly comfortable in it. To the outside world, China and America are polar opposites in key ways. One of the most prevalent contemporary talking points is ‘human rights’. Many believe the USA is a staunch supporter of human rights, and China is a staunch enemy of human rights. This is close enough to the de facto truth, I won’t argue with someone who claims this. But, is it a de jure truth? Is it ‘really’ true? My lived experience in both America and China would disagree.
First, here is a practical (and personal) example of how the ‘right to free speech’ is an irrelevant or nonsensical term in every culture I know of. When I’m teaching kindergarten, I teach the opposite of ‘the right to free speech’. Not only are my students not allowed to speak ‘freely’, they’re not allowed to speak at all for periods of time throughout the class. This is what is requried of me by my boss and their parents, and rightfully so! This is required so the class can accomplish the target learning objectives. We can’t accomplish anything in a state of chaos. ‘Chaos’ is apt because ‘freedom of speech’ for young children is always chaos. Outside of the classroom it is a lovely and exuberant chaos (for me). Inside the classroom, it is often detrimental and must be controlled, led, guided, etc. You would agree that ‘limited free speech in the kindergarten classroom’ is a good policy right? Do you know why (objectively) you would agree to that?
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In one word, it is Law. There are laws that overrule and are superior to the ‘right to free speech’. In the above example, one such law would be; ‘one can not actively listen and focus on speaking at the same time’. This is not actually law, because some people can do this. Most of us can not, and young children often find it more difficult. There are some students who fight back against this rule, they tell me they want to speak more and they want their voice to be heard. Sometimes I agree, most times I don’t. Regardless, for every student who gives no signal to me that they disagree with this rule, I naturally assume they are complicit. This assumed complicity gives inertia to the classroom rule taking hold and can help everyone follow it nicely. But, it also means that those exceptional students who want to speak out of turn, and genuinely should break this rule because of their particular talents or ideas, they have a more difficult time gaining the ‘right’ to do that. This brings us to the first major and practical point about ‘rights’:
‘Having rights’ only matters if you plan to exercise those rights.
For example, since I was suspiciously young, I’ve always loved exclaiming obscenities, slurs, racial epithets, etc. Is it because I am the kind of person who really believes in what those slurs represent? Not at all. Often I’m being ironical and satirizing culture. Sometimes I’m trolling; I just want to see the impulsive reaction of someone else and be amused. Sometimes it just feels funny. In truth, I have good friends from all over the world; many ages, ethnicities, and the 3 genders are represented somewhere in my social network. They’re not my friends because of any of those physical characteristics.
Do I ‘have the right’ to engage in this edge-lordy speech behavior in America or China, both, or neither? In China, sure no problem. Especially if it’s in English. No one cares that much. Is it guaranteed by decree, or Law, or the Elders? Not applicable or relevant. It’s merely a cultural difference. They don’t care about words like that; spoken words often do not act as a magic spell that triggers emotional or egoic response in others. In America, I simply do not have the ‘right’ to engage in those behaviors. I can say one sentence in pure humor, with zero hate in my heart, but may risk losing my job, reputation, or much worse. Practically speaking (in Reality), I don’t have that ‘right’. Of course, it’s not a right anyway, because rights don’t exist at all (as we colloquially use that term today). More on that in this article’s twin brother;
-There are No Rights 1.2b (coming soon)
These days (2026) in the West there is one topic that can get you into more trouble than alleged racism, sexism, genderism, etc. That is IsRael. I shouldn’t type it correctly for security reasons, please try to understand. The Reality is that they are comitting a geNocide, and that is bad. Actually, it is eviL. The unique thing about this is that many of these demoNic, barBarian, inhumaN acts are recorded and shared in high resolution video format, all the time, worldwide. That this is happening and there is not more outrage about it does not surprise me. We had this thing called cOviD, remember? We (humanity) have definitely not learned our lesson from the planDemic, and thus, are doomed to repeat similar events and movements in the future. I highly doubt humanity has healed or acknowledged the truth of WW2, what to speak of any major events in my lifetime.
Intermission
Recently I heard Roger Waters (Pink Floyd co-founder) talk about the israEl situation. He said the usual things; it’s real and it’s bad, blah blah. But, why is it bad? Why are ‘those’ people so deMonic and the rest of us are not? The reason that he mentioned is ‘human rights’. ‘We believe in it. We believe you can’t kiLl children and geNocide others because we are all equal.’ I’m paraphrasing, because it’s a simple point most all people in the contemporary English speaking world are familiar with and believe in.
Waters, like so many others, says a term like ‘human rights’ as if it’s a magic spell and just by saying it there’s all these juicy feelings that will affect change. I have no emotional response whatsoever to those words and phrases. Hinting back to ‘the Chinese Way’ of words, I truly do not emotionally care about any of these words.
I care about the Reality that the words point to.
GeNocide isn’t bad because it violates human rights. It’s bad because of the Law.
Law is how Reality Works.
It is a direct and flagrant violation of the Law. One of the laws that is part of ‘the Law’ is causality. The law of karma. Bad actions lead to bad reactions. Very good actions beget very good reactions. GenoCide is not just directly bad to the people who are being slaughtered, their extended families and nations… GeNocide has massive consequences outside of the local regions too. How can I explain something so simple? Why do I feel the need to explain these simple and common sense points?
There is another exceedingly simple law with relevance; inertia. Every single day that goes on where we as a collective species do not acknowledge instances of insanity, wickedness, etc. adds ‘fuel to the fire’ of inertia. That is, when we do get to that future point in time of seriously trying to stop these things, it will be more difficult. Furthermore, the results we might achieve would be less significant/impactful. That future world we’d be trying to save will be more degraded than the one at present is. Even if we ‘save the world’, that former world of glory that is saved would not be the current one; it would be a slightly or severely more degraded one than we have today. That future world may merely be less degraded than the one further in the future that made us finally wake up and act as One is. This is a guarantee; not a promise or prediction or prophecy, it is mathemtically guaranteed because laws like inertia work alongside all other laws, including mathematics. Time works in cycles. The dark age must get more dark until it is done.
This macro-level guarantee (a truth claim based on Law) on what will/would happen in reality corresponds to an example of micro-level reality we can all understand. Obesity. Is it easier for a 300 pound person or a 500 pound person to get back to their ideal weight? If we assume all other variables are constant, there is a definitive answer; the former. Also, even when the excess weight is lost it takes an additional amount of time to get back to a natural equilibrium (the actual goal of maintaining an ideal weight). Manifestations of that equilibrium not yet achieved include excess/flappy skin, abnormally high appetite, old thought patterns too and many more. If such a person is focused on ‘the Law at hand’ (maintaining an ideal weight for the sake of health and happiness) and they maintain the ideal weight long enough, all those symptoms will disappear. Equillibrium returns. They acquire an increased freedom of movement, energy levels, flexibility, and a multitude of other positive benefits. Again, this is just the Law doing its thing. Health is good. Unhealthiness is bad. Karma.
What happens in China when I gain weight? I don’t even mean obesity, I mean one level lower than that; an above-average weight that is less than healthy but noticeable. People start telling me. Sometimes they joke about it, “you really like rice huh?” or they don’t joke about it; “you look fat”. Or they say the truth but in a caring way. It doesn’t matter. One point here is, many cultures don’t have the obesity rates we do, and it’s not just because our food is less healthy. We do not ‘have the right’ to tell the truth to our neighbors, friends and family members. Even if we say it gently from a place of genuine care for their wellbeing, we are conditioned to avoid this topic and many others. We ‘gave that right’ away. My argument here is that we never had that right, or we always have that right; either way it’s irrelevant. Karma and inertia will continue, regardless of what we do or think.
You can redefine obesity as a personal choice that is ‘guaranteed by human rights’, and then say that we are not allowed to describe other people as obese because it can hurt their feelings. You can do that. We have done that, as a mainstream culture in the modern West. What karmic fruits have fallen from this tree? Increased insanity. Probably increased obesity rates too. Karma. ‘Rights’ are irrelevant and childish compared to Laws like karma.
You can redefine a GeNocide as ‘a war’. Or ‘a retalliation against a terrorist attack’. That’s what you get with the ‘right to free speech’. You get to use words that don’t matter, to trick people, to justify continued wickedness. How many Laws are broken here? Any system of Law that allows innocent lives to be killed, truly innocent lives (children), is no longer a system of Law. Most people and nations in the world today see this as a violation of basic Law, but then again, humanity is not vegetarian yet either! GeNocide, AborTion, Slaughterhouses…these are long multisyllabic words that do not seem to be related at all. That’s on purpose. If you say what it Really is; ‘different kinds of killing’, those magic words start to lose their power.
I do not want the right to speak freely. I simply tell you all, I do speak freely and I will continue to speak freely.
I live and travel where I choose to. I naturally choose to live in places with other people like me. People who think; maybe telling the truth and hurting people’s feelings is better than ignoring the truth and not hurting anyone’s feelings. People who know that living in a society that not only lacks truth, but actively cultivates ignorance and anti-truths is not a society worth living in. I’m not talking about mundane lies that every society engages in. Every society has ‘enemies’ and uses propaganda to get their citizens united against their ‘enemies’. That’s natural, and while not ideal, I really don’t care. On the other hand, when the leaders of a society say a geNocide isn’t happening when we see it happening and punish people for bringing Light to obvious Darkness; this is insanity. It’s not free speech or lack of free speech, or rights or no rights. It’s eviL. It’s far beneath human decency. It’s Sodom and Gomorrah begging for the proverbial ‘Big Daddy’ to wipe it out again.
Let’s end with a prayer. A secular prayer.
May I have the ability to do the needful. May I have the potential to follow my excitement. May I know the Law and 1desire to 2respect it.
‘Desire’ because if in the future I lose respect for the law, if I still have a desire to respect it, there is Hope.
‘Respect’ and not the commonly spoken ‘follow’ because ‘following the law’ it seems does not actually work in practice. Breaking the Law is common, and should not have any feelings of shame. Shame and guilt get in the way, psychologically and practically. The law doesn’t need to be just followed. It needs to be Known and respected. The fruits of our deeds, ‘our karma’, we get that regardless of our following or not following the Law. But when we respect the Law, we gain the strength to endure the bad reactions to our actions. By Respecting the Law, we can actually follow it, without losing Hope.