Monday, November 16, 2009

response to Obama's speech in my hometown

When Obama visited my hometown Shanghai, he was saying that we all share some basic values, and of course he was alluding to human rights including freedom of speech. That sound ridiculous to me. I remember my Math professor complain often that these days students of mathematics often neglect to check the conditions before they apply a theorem, and the result--mistakes! I found it surprising how pertinent this phenomenon is when it comes to social science. If one reads the literature on human rights when it was developed,like the Second Treatise on Civil Government by John Locke there is almost no exception that every single philosopher justified human rights on the grounds of religion--A god created the mankind and in creating them, he gave them rights! If one is to argue that people evolve from apes, how do u expect he/she to come to the same conclusion as those christians? We the people in China are no Christians, and mostly buddhists, and we do not buy that story! Mr. Obama, how do you expect us, the people who employs reasons instead of believing in oratory, share with you the definition of what is human rights, when we do not even share in our philosophy the origin of human rights? For students of mathematics, can you accept the conclusions from Euclidean geometry, when you are working on manifolds?