All posts tagged dignity

Let me first say that I’m answering this question for myself.  I believe that the things I write here are, for the most part, fairly common among progressives, but I’m sure that there will be individual exceptions.

As a progressive, I understand that the world does not remain static.  We live in a complex and dynamic world, where change is constant.

As a progressive, I believe that our responses to a dynamic world must not remain static.  The best answer yesterday may not be the best answer for today.  We may need last week’s answer, the answer from 150 years ago, or a completely new answer. 

As a progressive, I believe that “This is how we’ve always done it” is not sufficient reason for our response to a dynamic world.  This isn’t automatically the wrong response, but it isn’t automatically the right response, either.

As a progressive, I believe that progressives need conservatives.  Truly, we need those who are more reluctant to change their responses to the world because they hold us accountable for persuading them that a different response is the better response.

Similarly, I believe that conservatives need progressives.  It is so very easy to fall into the “This is how we’ve always done it” trap, to become comfortable and complacent while Rome burns around us.  Progressives help conservatives see other options that may — or may not — be better.

As a progressive, I believe that all persons have value.  No human being should be diminished or harmed intentionally by another.  I know that this is impractical, because we aren’t perfect, but this is an ideal that we try to live up to.

As a progressive, I believe that all persons are deserving of dignity and respect.  No person deserves vilification, manipulation, or abuse.  All persons deserve consideration, compassion, and kindness.

As a progressive, I understand that “all persons” includes those who live at the margins: those who live in poverty, who have no home, who lack meaningful employment, who are ill or disabled, who were born in a nation that lacks for basic resources, who look different from the majority, who follow a different faith than the majority. 

As a progressive, I also understand that “all persons” include those with whom I disagree.  This means that no person with whom I disagree deserves to be mocked, vilified, harmed, abused, or diminished as a person.  Those with whom I disagree deserve respect, dignity, consideration, compassion, and kindness.

As a progressive, I believe that religion is important.  The ideas that underlie our faith lives shape us deeply as persons, whether we identify ourselves with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, or any other faith tradition.

As a progressive, I believe that rights are important.  There are fundamental rights that we share as part of our personhood, such as the famous life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I believe that one of the most important roles of government is to protect and promote human rights, understanding that this is not always simple or easy in a complex and dynamic world.

As a progressive, I believe that human rights include the right to continue living, the right to choose a faith tradition and to practice it, the right to have sufficient nutrition, the right to have sufficient shelter and protection from the elements, the right to meaningful employment, the right to basic care for body and mind, the right to freedom and integrity of mind and heart, and others that I may not have enumerated here.

As a progressive, I believe that life is a precious gift.  War should only ever be a last resort, never the first.  Violence is wrong, whether it is physical or not, whether it is perpetrated by an individual or by a government.

As a progressive, I also understand that decisions involving the balancing of one life against another are necessarily complex and may not have a “correct” answer.  This includes questions of self-defense (both individually and corporately), medical care for the terminally ill, saving the dangerously suicidal, medical abortion, capital punishment, and many others.  I do not know if there are any universal solutions to any of these questions, but I know that each one must be undertaken with proper care and discipline.

As a progressive, I understand that not all responses to our dynamic world are simple.  There are many simple (not necessarily easy) guidelines for us, like the bold-faced statements I make here.  In practice, though, the ways in which we live these out are usually quite complex.  Balancing the rights of all citizens, for example, is a complex proposition, and it does require some sacrificing of individual rights for the good of all.

As a progressive, I recognize that government is sometimes the most effective agent.  Yes, I agree that individuals and communities should support those who live at the margins, providing food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and protection for human rights.  However, we humans often become caught up in our own struggles, and we can forget such important responsibilities.  Thus, it is not inappropriate for us to empower our government to take on some of this work, recognizing the government’s unique economies of scale and of scope.

As a progressive, I believe that civility and respect in political discourse should be highly valued, and that we must hold our leaders accountable for this.

As a progressive, I love my country, while recognizing that it doesn’t have all the right answers.  It is possible — and probably necessary — to recognize the flaws in my country without diminishing love or loyalty to my homeland.  No person, faith group, political party, or other community has an exclusive hold on patriotism.

As a progressive, I understand that diversity is a gift that enriches any community.  Great value lies in cherishing the unique perspective and gift that each person brings to the community.  The disabled man sees the world differently than the female athlete, who sees the world differently than the retired military officer, who sees the world differently than the foreign students at the local university.

As a progressive, I also believe that we must celebrate the things we all share in common.  We may be diverse in ethnic heritage, faith tradition, education, career, physical and mental ability, and any other quality; at the same time, there are many aspects of human life — especially life together in a community or a nation — that we hold in common.

Of course, there are many other things that I know, believe, and/or value.  Not all of them define me as a progressive, but I believe that these do.

Last night, I encountered a person on twitter who is a very angry liberal.  He believes that conservatives are evil, demonic, and non-persons.  He believes that they should be attacked fought without any pretense to fairness, that they have abandoned their personhood and their basic rights to respect and dignity.  I disagree, and overnight I found myself reflecting on what it means to be a progressive, and why I was bothered so much by his vilification and abuse.

I believe that progressives have a responsibility to model progressive values, even when this may come at the cost of winning elections.  It is our inherent duty to rise above petty unfairness and bickering, to eschew unethical or immoral tactics, to refrain from diminishing the personhood of our opponents. 

Progressives need to demonstrate that there is a better answer, a better way to live together and to “do” government.  Yes, governing a nation will necessitate conflict, disagreement, and compromise.  No, this does not mean that disrespect, indignity, manipulation, vilification, abuse, or any other diminishment is desirable or necessary.

Progressives understand that we’re all in this together.  So let’s try to get along, so that we can work for the very best for our community, okay?

Nothing makes me angrier than to see one person call another (or a group of others) a piece of shit.  Let me make this very clear: no person is a piece of shit, and no person deserves to be called this.

To equate a person with excrement is an insult beyond the pale in ordinary discourse.  It is dishonorable.  It is reprehensible.  It is hate speech. And no person should ever be called this, not even people I disagree with.

That’s right.  I mean it.  Not you, not me.  Not Glenn Beck, not George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, not Al Franken, not Nancy Pelosi.  Not the Marquis de Sade, not Benito Mussolini, not Josef Stalin.  Not a single person who has ever lived, who lives now, or who will ever live.  Ever. 

Even if you are not a Christian, I hope you agree with me that all persons should be treated with dignity and respect.  Yes, even Osama bin Laden.  Even that seditious leader of guerrillas and terrorists — what’s his name? oh, yeah! — George Washington. 

Undercover Nun does not tolerate this language in her physical presence.  I am not sure I can tolerate it in my online presence any more, either.  When I see this language pop up in public discourse online, I’m going to say something about it publicly.  I’m not afraid to use shame: if you equate a person — a beautiful and unique child of God, your brother or sister in this world — to a pile of stinking poop, then you should be ashamed!

You’ve been warned.  Undercover Nun is on the rampage.

Love one another.  And act like it, for heaven’s sake!

In the August 29 story “A no-show for 12 years, worker in Norfolk still paid,” the Virginian-Pilot reports a baffling story of an employee who remained on the payroll – receiving benefits and regular performance raises – without a record of ever being present at the workplace.  This story made the national spotlight, being covered by CNN. 

It is incredibly tempting to put on our Analyzing Glasses: to start digging for the details, to try to figure out what happened and when, to begin assessing blame, to consider consequences.  We can throw around words like fraud and criminal and negligence.  Instead, I see a deeper story than what appears on the surface.

So far, this employee’s name has not been published, but we know that the employee is a woman.  We have seen nothing yet in the media that grants this woman personhood: no name, no hometown, no job title, no family.  And yet, we know that this woman has all of these things.  She has a mom and a dad; she may have a husband, children, grandchildren.  Maybe she has an older brother or a younger sister; maybe she has nephews and nieces.  Maybe she goes to church every Sunday without fail, wearing her best dress and her best heels and always a hat.  Maybe she knits.  Maybe she blogs.  Maybe she has laughed about this every day for the last twelve years.  Maybe it has eaten at her soul like a cancer.  We don’t know.  We have trouble seeing this woman as a person.

From what I see, moreover, the Norfolk Community Services Board has had the same trouble.  This employee was not a person there, not a woman with a mom and dad, with a home and a garden and a needlepoint sampler.  This was not a young lady just graduated from college, eager to help people, living on her own for the first time in her life.  This woman was no more than a social security number, an employee number.  She lost her personhood in bureaucracy, and will forever be known now as the Norfolk No-Show.

It becomes so easy, in the grind of quotidian business life, to become a nonperson.  You can punch the time-clock, sit quietly in your cubicle, answer calls from irritated customers, eat your bag lunch, and drive back home without a feeling that anyone at work would notice or care if you just didn’t bother to show up tomorrow.  You can be promoted to management, full of wonderful ideas, and be ground down by cut budgets and lay-offs, to the point where you’re supervising four times the employees you were a year before, you don’t know their names, and you laugh bitterly when trying to write performance reviews and dole out raises.  This can be true in both public and private sectors, and especially during a time of economic uncertainty.

After punching out at the time clock, or submitting your daily time log online, you may drive back home in a daze, wondering Did I accomplish anything today?  Is the world any better now than it was this morning?  Why am I doing this?  Is this really what I’m here for?

The teachings of the Judeo-Christian West tell us that each of us has dignity and worth, simply by virtue of being a person.  But so much of our culture in a so-called developed nation deprives us of our dignity and worth, of our very personhood, and we all suffer from it.  To express this in terms that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. used in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, an institution that is not rooted in eternal truth and natural truth is an unjust institution. Any institution that uplifts human personality is just. Any institution that degrades human personality is unjust.  A workplace that robs us of human dignity and worth is unjust and unhealthy.  Any workplace where an absent employee can go unnoticed for twelve years is one that degrades the personhood of its employees.

This is the underlying sickness at the Norfolk Community Services Board – and at many places of work around the country.  This is an unjust institution that is willing to turn its employees into nonpersons.  As a Christian, an Episcopalian, and a Dominican Sister, I name this injustice and sickness as sin.  Because Christianity is about relationship, sin is a breach in relationship, a separation or an alienation.  By compromising the dignity and worth of this woman, by failing to accept her personhood, the relationship between employer and employee is degraded and broken, which causes a chain reaction that affects a number of relationships.  How can any man live to his potential as a nonperson?  How can a woman find and live the true vocation of her heart when her personhood is denied?  And as a nonperson, how can anyone live in authentic relationship with co-workers, friends, or family members?

To be sure, I don’t have all the facts yet.  It is entirely possible that this woman contrived to bilk the Community Services Board, and thus the taxpayers of the City of Norfolk, out of thousands of dollars over the last twelve years.  Because the Virginian-Pilot account tells us that the investigation “is nearly complete and will soon be turned over to the Norfolk police,” I surmise that this woman is probably not an innocent victim.  By no means should it be inferred that fraud or similar misdeeds are excusable based on the underlying theme I see here.

Instead, let me give you a challenge.  Tomorrow, when you go to your place of work – or stop by the DMV, or call your insurance company, or try to make heads or tails of an application for SNAP benefits – pay attention to the people around you.  Consider that each man and woman is an individual who possesses dignity and worth, who has his or her own family and home and story.  Think about your personhood.  And remember to respect the personhood of those around you.