Life

The truth about life | theage.com.au

THERE is nothing like the prospect of a radical life change to concentrate the mind on the things that really matter. I want to identify, if I can, the most important thing that I have discovered. I refer to love. Love for one another. Love for our community. Love for others everywhere in the world. Love transcends even scholarship, cleverness and university degrees. It is greater than pride and wealth. It endures when worldly vanities fade.

Love exists at different levels. Last week, in Australia and the world, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was brought into effect by an Australian, Dr H. V. Evatt (a past justice of the High Court of Australia) and president of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 when the declaration was adopted.

Over the ensuing six decades, it became the foundation for the worldwide movement to express the fundamental freedoms that inhere in all human beings, simply because they are human. Of course, there are people and interests with unchecked power who hate such notions. These are ideas to put limits on their power. To uphold the dignity of the powerless. To put a brake on the hegemony of the rich and influential.

The essential underpinning of fundamental human rights is love. Love for one another. Empathy for fellow human beings. Feeling pain for the refugee; for the victim of war; for the prisoner deprived of the vote; for the child dying of cholera in Zimbabwe. We can imagine what it must be like to be a victim because, as human beings, we too feel, and yearn for, life, freedom and justice.

Australians must be voices for the voiceless and protectors of the weak and vulnerable. With our privileges and gifts go duties and obligations. Australian democracy is not merely a rule of majorities. Don't believe it when public figures say otherwise or when sections of the media, revelling in their power, say that everything can be safely left to parliament, which will quickly fix things up. Majorities can certainly err. They have done so in the past. They will do so again. Basic human rights afford the means to remind majorities of the love they owe to all human beings, both at home and abroad.