“Individual Rights Must be Sacrificed for Societal Needs”

“Individual Rights must be sacrificed for societal needs”

The 48 survivors of a plane crash that tore apart in mid-air in the television show “LOST”, are forced to live with each other and work together to survive on a remote island. The decision to work collectively on an isolated island emphasizes the need to sacrifice one’s rights and interests to fulfill social needs to achieve stability, security and prosperity. For example: rather than searching for food, building shelter and protecting oneself from other survivors and invaders on their own, survivors established a sense of society that can work collectively. A society is formed when individuals, group of individuals with common interests and government socialize with each other. They all have their own needs that they fulfill by appealing to certain rights, but a society; as a single entity also has its own priorities, distinct from rights of individuals. The government and laws of a particular society could either promote individualism or socialism. During the reign of individualism, every person would selfishly try to fulfill his/her self interests, resulting in chaos. On the other hand when socialism is promoted individual have to forgo his/her rights and work as team for welfare of whole society. Hence a society needs to move from individualism towards socialism. As a result, in order to achieve stability and prosperity for everyone, social needs should take precedence over individual rights. Although subjugating individual rights of expression and cultural rights might appear irrational in a modern society, nevertheless societal need for protection of environment and its citizens, cultural uniformity and public safety cannot be neglected because a society should move in one direction and achieve a common goal of social prosperity rather than achieving individual goals.

The freedom of expression entitles an individual the right to express his/her ideas and thoughts through different mediums but freedom of expression also conflicts with other rights, give rise to hate speech and may harm others. One of the mediums to express views is media; with the advancement of print media and technology, freedom of press has allowed an ordinary person to protest against politicians, celebrities and institutions, often invading their privacies. As Robert Skidelsky writes in China Daily, “…the tabloid press has become increasingly intrusive, claiming the right not just to expose corruption… but to titillate readers with scandalous revelations about the private lives of the famous.” (Skidelsky, 9). For example: Pakistan’s Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer was reported to be drunk and dancing in parties in several news channels. Moreover the cause of his death was his personal beliefs about blasphemy laws rather than mismanagement or misconduct as agovernor. This example show how freedom of press, if not controlled can negatively impact the lives of important people i.e. by attacking their private lifestyles which do not have to do anything with their professional lives. Furthermore, Freedom of speech is another form of freedom of expression which may give rise to offense, lies and hate speeches. Freedom of speech is often wrongly used to defame racial and religious groups. For example Pakistani Muslims are all over the world characterized as terrorist after the 9/11 New York attacks, this hate speech is not only an offense to all Muslims but also a lie. Such freedom of speech creates resentment and may even lead to revenge and violence, disturbing the normal functioning of a society. Thus by limiting the usage of freedom of expression for the well being of a society only, a society can prosper as John Stuart Mill states in his Harm Principle that an individual can enjoy his/her rights only till the point where he does not harm anyone else (Mill,1).