civilized people

I feel civilized people understand some very basic facts, sometimes without necessarily being able to clearly explain these as such.

Human rights include the right to clean healthy normal air, water, food, a place to safely sleep, and a safe, private place to expel wastes in an appropriate fashion.

These rights are continuous and so cannot be ristricted for any time periods, such as for the convenience of structuring a society or working around or solving a problem.

Further, I feel civilized people understand the responsibility to help others on top of not doing harm to others. So for example, beyond, not burning fuels or otherwise polluting the environment because of the yet unknown possible effects of it on others (in the future), it's important to help others understand the importance of this, and to learn and do whatever possible about wars or starvation in other parts of the world. And although accepting the responsibility is important, that doesn't mean having to try and handle/fix/resolve everything personally. It just means there should be the pressure should be there, and that should be leading to growing efforts, spreading in various areas, and so on.

One analogy I use in my thoughts, is just imagining someone who falls in water somewhere and is obviously drowning. What then. Respond like an animal - don't go in the water and watch the show, or be civil and do everything possible to save that person?

Unfortunately, these days most people, or almost all, choose the animal response. I suspect most of those in the u.s.a. do so at the advice of their lawyer to avoid lawsuits. And of course if that someone is in the middle east, and has a turban on their head, most people in the u.s.a./west would be happy to watch them drown, because they just save a bullet in the effort to get cheaper gasoline (and other oil products). (That is to say, one more target they don't have to shoot to kill...)

(I see a video game in here somewhere... shooting people in a river with turbans on, and then a barrel of oil pops up, and the game scores by the price of gasoline going down a notch after so many kills.)
(Oh, wait, excuse me... no need for a video game I guess, we have it already in real life.)