Kofi Annan has died | Hacker News Reader

Kofi Annan has died

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"Human rights are what make us human. They are the principles by which we create the sacred home for human dignity." (Kofi Annan)

So for the vast majority of history we weren’t human?

Ever hear of the phrase "Man's inhumanity to man?" Yeah that's been a thing since, well, humans have been around.

I wouldn't consider this a static property.

Back in the days it was humane to make many children because most of them would die. Today it may be more humane to make only a few but to invest more time into each.

That's doesn't make it more humane.

Government protects your rights, it doesn’t create them or give them to you.

I guess that depends on how you like to define humanity, doesn't it? If it's simply being a general sort of shape, or having a particular set of DNA, then perhaps being human is a simple yes/no. This creature isn't human, that creature is.

If you like to define humanity as an ideal, or a process, or a goal, or some other such, then it becomes much more of a spectrum.

All that said, anyone who does think in terms of binary when it comes to humanity needs keeping an eye on.

> So for the vast majority of history we weren’t human?

For any definition of "human" that is objective and universal, yes.

If you swore fealty to the wrong lord, worshiped the wrong god, were born into the wrong clan, ethnic group or state, you were considered something less than human. And of course, nobles claimed descent from divinity, making them more than human.

The concept of a common humanity with inalienable rights is relatively modern and in many places still controversial.

This is very true in Indian caste system. In fact in indian caste ladder system, one become lesser human as one takes birth in the lesser caste hierarchy. Except the Brahmin community in the indian caste system others castes are denied education as per the vedas. During the british rule everone got access to education and every one is trying to be a equal human fighting the caste system.

He saved Kenya from an election that everyone agreed was rigged and manipulated by all sides. That is really tough to do!!

Annan facilitated the formation of the grand coalition government. A lot of the election reforms came out of that. May he rest in peace.

He is the first top-level official that I heard advocating for drug reform. Well remembered.

A good man. RIP

meta: interesting to see here on HN after the announcement of Aretha Franklin's death was removed from the FP this week.

I think it’s to do with him being a political figure vs a pop culture figure, but I could be mistaken.

I sometimes see political news on HN, I don’t think I’ve ever seen pop culture news.

It just hasn't been flagged hard enough yet, but give it time.

I see political news flagged faster and harder. Was David Bowie's death flagged?

IMHO, despite all the work done here on censorship and topic management, I've experienced a greater level of meanspiritedness and unkind comments here than on any other comment forum I've frequented.

Perhaps that's >why< there is such a presence and the need to shut down check potentially conttroversial topics. It begs the question of what is different on this forum.

If you look at the comments for the Aretha thread as well as this thread, it seems not to provoke any interesting discussion.

I am happy to keep such main stream news off the FP.

How does that relate to what I said?

You seem to suggest these threads have been 'shut down' ( in reality, user flagged into submission ) due to controversy.

I am suggesting these threads were not controversial and were flagged down because they are boring.

Not what I was intending to suggest. I was merely noting that it is part of a singular, and heavy-handed, approach.

>Was David Bowie's death flagged?

I know I flagged it, I flag every death thread I see.

Some of these threads generate interesting discussion, but most of them just descend into maudlin nonsense, nostalgia or a cesspool of political or pop-cultural references. If these people weren't worth discussing on Hacker News when they were alive - and let's be honest, most of them haven't been, then their deaths shouldn't be worth discussing either.

Users flagged that and users will probably flag this as well.

Just so we have data in the future : post was on the 2nd page at around 15:56CET. Took about 3 hours to reach FP and fall out of it.

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