“Inalienable Obligations” = “Geologic Obligations” and both are > “Inalienable Rights”

(This chapter was first published on Medium on 5/13/2026 at https://medium.com/@t.higginson/inalienable-obligations-geologic-obligations-and-both-are-inalienable-rights-ab9b3fdeba3b)

In Chapter 1, I introduced the concept of “inalienable obligations.”

As part of that introduction, I explain why “inalienable obligations” are how nature has always worked, from eons before homo sapiens evolved.

In that sense, the term “Geologic Obligations” may better frame what “inalienable obligations” are.

Geologic time encompasses time stretching back to the formation of the planet earth, back to the formation of our sun and onwards back.

Geologic obligations are obligations that are at the foundation of everything that has evolved, both animate and inanimate (they are essentially inseparable) throughout that time.

The term I use in Chapter 1 to make inalienable obligations actionable is “harmonious biodiversity.” Basically, geologic obligations are the obligations that everything in existence owes to everything else that has time (is in existence) to maintain on-going evolutionary biodiversity.

The framework of “obligations” is diametrically opposed to “rights,” and the timeframe of geologic is diametrically opposed to the timescale of any individual animate or inanimate object.

The term “inalienable obligations” is not intended to imply a correlation with the way “rights” arise from and are owned by an individual entity. However, the phrase sufficiently parallels, draws from and evokes “inalienable rights” that it might be perceived that way.

In contrast, “geologic obligations” does not evoke “inalienable rights” at all, and, instead, expressly draws from the concept of geologic time and alignment with both animate and inanimate creatures.

I propose using “geologic obligations” and “inalienable obligations” interchangeably to convey in the most powerful way the diametrically opposed difference from “inalienable rights” altogether, and to convey that “inalienable obligations” arise directly from the way everything (animate and inanimate, together) has evolved and needs to evolve. The need for an affirmative commitment to inalienable obligations arises from, at least, homo sapiens’ hubris that they are somehow unique creatures. The astonishing hubris that homo sapiens are somehow uniquely unnatural (in the sense that the rest of nature is beneath them in some critical and inherent to homo sapiens sense) has been used by powerful segments of homo sapiens to empower an extraordinarily destructive path resulting in using “inalienable rights” to validate political structures and world views that more property reflect George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, whether in the form of Stalinist Soviet Union, American capitalism or otherwise.