Dignity (Human or otherwise)

[Michael Chui]

So I'm in the middle of mucking around with political theory and I'd like some help in describing the concept of Dignity. Basically what is it, what has it, what is it based on (if anything), why is it important. I have some answers to this, but nothing really coherent. Perhaps most significantly, how can you tell when dignity is being violated.

I know that different people here have different opinions on things like animal welfarism (what a weird term, btw) or biosphere consciousness. I'm fine with this, and being inclusive of these views (without being exclusive of views like human elitism) is part of the reason I'd like help on this description.

[Michael Chui]

Oh, and something I assumed, but shouldn't have:

Is dignity a good thing? Do you value it?

[supertom]

This is hard, all i can come up with is.

Undignified - Treated someone so that they felt bad about being themselves.

[Mynder]

If an action of yours impacts the other person's perception of their self-worth in a negative way, that might be one example of violating their dignity.

One example from torture. If you take away somebody's clothes with the intention of making them feel uncomfortable, their dignity is only impacted if they perceive this as degrading. If they are perfectly comfortable being naked in front of anyone, and wouldn't perceive this as in any way degrading them, then the torture wouldn't work, and their dignity would be intact.

In your own eyes, however, you may feel that you have extraordinarily demeaned this person, and put them in a very undignified situation (depending on how much YOU would perceive this as demeaning and taking away your dignity if you were in their place).

[Angela]

I think that Dignity is a state of being: the state of being present to who you are as whole and complete.

Dignity can't be taken away from you without your permission; for you to not be present to yourself as whole and complete, you must agree to not experience yourself that way.

That said, some people whom, I believe, are not present to their own wholeness and completeness, will do actions that attempt to rob others of their sense of w&c, for the purpose of trying to either *get* it from those people or to feel more normalized. If others don't feel whole and complete, then it's more ok. (but not really, because it's like trying to fill a bottomless pit.)

The more *reasons* a person has for not feeling whole and complete -- that is, the more conditions that must be met before you're willing to be present to your wholeness and completeness -- the more power you give away.

For instance, if you have it that you won't feel dignity if people make fun of you, it's like installing a big red button that says "PUSH HERE!" for people to ridicule you. Funny how that works!

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by supertom

This is hard, all i can come up with is.

Undignified - Treated someone so that they felt bad about being themselves.

Don't feel bad about the challenge. I scoured the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy before I posted here, and all I found were hints.

[Michael Chui]

All of the descriptions put forward so far suggest that self-awareness is a prerequisite for having dignity. Am I reading too far into the focus we're putting on how you violate someone's dignity? Dogs are not self-aware, for instance, so putting them in clothes isn't undignified (perhaps just bad taste ). Does that sound agreeable? How about very young infants, as human beings don't develop self-awareness until a particular age?

Building on self-awareness, it seems to be that violating one's dignity is basically creating dissonance in people's minds about themselves. How about supporting dignity? Is decreasing dissonance a way of helping someone else's dignity?

[sorter]

In terms of politics, anything that supports the individual and his/her quest for a fulfilling life, as long as it doesn't interfere with another's quest.
Of course, that's the tricky part.

Current corporate law is undignified. It encourages profit for its own sake, corruption, manipulation, getting bigger for its own sake, invasion of privacy.
Corporations do much better with groups of sheep, not individuals, and they spend billions on hype trying to appeal to sheep.
100 million watch the Superbowl? Uh, why?

Dunkin Donuts sets up across the street from a mom-and-pop bakery.
The bakery has better product. The owners care about their customers but the hype infected sheep go to Dunkin.
They might only care about price and not the dignity of the the society they create by where they spend their money.
They hand money over to a disgruntled underpaid uncaring cog in a corporate machine.
They are undignified.
Dignity might be a little more expensive. So what? It's important.
.

[Mynder]

Do you have to be aware of what sadness is to feel sad?

You can feel without dignity without even being aware of what it is, or why you feel that way. You may construe it as guilt, shame, or whatever.

You don't even need to be conscious about it to feel dignified. If people try to ridicule you, but you are not in any way negatively touched by it, you retain your dignity even though you might neither be aware of what that even means.

You might just say: "What happened with these guys that seems to have got them all resentful and stuff?"

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Mynder

Do you have to be aware of what sadness is to feel sad?

You can feel without dignity without even being aware of what it is, or why you feel that way. You may construe it as guilt, shame, or whatever.

You don't even need to be conscious about it to feel dignified. If people try to ridicule you, but you are not in any way negatively touched by it, you retain your dignity even though you might neither be aware of what that even means.

You might just say: "What happened with these guys that seems to have got them all resentful and stuff?"

I wasn't saying that you can't have dignity without being aware of what it is. I was saying that you can't have dignity without being aware of who you are. Words like "self-worth" connote the ability to measure that worth, which requires some introspection: if you can't figure out what you're worth, even if it's as simple as "I'm above doing X", you don't have a self-worth to be impacted by things like ridicule.

Btw, I found this old-ish article on the subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/op...ooks.html?_r=1

The dignity code commanded its followers to be disinterested — to endeavor to put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.

Not sure I agree, especially since it doesn't feel like the same dignity we mean when we say "human dignity", as is found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other legal documents, or Catholic philosophy and other religious thought, or even arguments in bioethics.

But it is something that hasn't come up in this thread yet.