The idea of human rights is first premised on a collective "we"-a world where free and equal humans voluntarily come together in a group, articulate shared values, and use those values to collectively form and reform the rules they will live by, but also remain able to leave the group and its power-to have a way out-if they wish. Today, the "we" this model implies, its first normative premise, is used constantly and universally. But the reference rarely has meaning. Making "we" coherent, or the practice of cooperative consent as free and equal persons, requires rethinking how we all have children and value Nature, and balancing the former against our fundamental human right to the latter. Becoming us means, in part, restoring the nonhuman world that makes us who we should be. Doing so will complete a form of political evolution we began in the 17th century but never finished, one that is designed not only to prevent our species from degrading its own environment, but to make us all more free and equal than ever before.
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