Why Dignity Matters

When I tell people that I have written a book about dignity, the response is always the same:
They pause for a moment and say "that is so important." When I ask them to tell me why they
think it's important, the most common response is that "we all want that feeling of self-worth."
While it is true, my experience is that in spite of its universal appeal, it's a topic that rarely gets
discussed. We may not have words to describe it, but we all have an internal experience of it.
We know how great it is to be seen, heard, and acknowledged for who we are and treated as if
we mattered. Who doesn't enjoy the praise of being recognized for doing a good job or being
honored for going beyond the call of duty? We also know what it feels like to be treated as
inferior, discriminated against, ignored, misunderstood, criticized and excluded. There is little
worse than being in a situation where you are treated unfairly and can do nothing about it, or
being excluded from something that means a lot to you. We are all too well aware of the feelings
that accompany these violations of our dignity. What is not common is to bring them up for
discussion. It is often too embarrassing to admit that we have been treated so badly. It is why I
decided to focus my attention on matters of dignity and to give us a language to bring these
issues to the surface so that we can legitimize the suffering that accompanies these painful
human experiences and do something about them. We don't have to just live with them. The
dignity model has ways to address them.
Matters of dignity are at the heart of every interaction we have on a daily basis and the time has
come for us to pay attention to them and to give them voice. They show up in the workplace, in
schools, at home, in intimate relationships-everywhere human beings come into contact with one
another. Although most of my career has been spent working on repairing relationships at the
international level-between warring parties all over the world where dignity violations abound-I
have been spending a lot of time recently in the corporate world where there is also no shortage
of indignity. One of the major issues I have uncovered in the workplace is that employees often
feel that they are not treated well, but have no way to "speak-up" for fear of retribution. They tell
me it would be career suicide to go to their bosses and tell them that they have violated their
dignity. The end result is that there is a lot of resentment on the part of employees and little
desire to extend themselves beyond what their job requires. It is infuriating to them that they are
being mistreated and that there is no way to give voice to it. Conflicts over dignity are an
everyday experience but very few people feel skilled in handling them. They reach the core of
our humanity-injuring that part of us that wants nothing more than to be valued and seen as
significant.
This is why I have focused my attention on matters of dignity. The time has come to shed light
on something that we may not have either the courage or language to discuss. The shame that
accompanies being treated badly prevents us from doing the very thing we need to do to recover
from violations of our dignity: bring them out into the open, validate them, and give them the
attention they deserve. We wouldn't think twice about getting help when we have a physical
injury. When we have a wound to our dignity-there is nowhere to go; no 911 call, no emergency
room. Bringing the issue to light can help us all heal from the many subtle and not so subtle ways
that indignity has found its way into our lives. Everyday I remind myself that "we can do better
and we can do it with dignity."
Your reputation is something that you carry with yourself for the rest of your life. That is what
you are remembered for after your days are gone, and that is the way people will always think of
you- what type of character you were and how you decided to live your life. This of course
comes down to your decisions in life, which builds up your reputation, yet at the same time can
ruin it with just one poor decision.
Sure we are all human and we all make mistakes but we all do as well posses the concept of
perception, and in our eyes we know right from wrong at the moment it is presented to us. The
problem with our society currently is that we dont care about consequences anymore. We live
for the moment and would rather take the poor decision over the smart decision.
We are so much more concerned with what people will think about us if we dont do something
rather than thinking about what they will think if we do it. Of course peer pressure plays a big
role in this as well as many people not being able to think for themselves.
Your dignity and character is what you will always be remembered for and what people will
think of you as when they hear your name or see you. Do you really want to be the girl that is
considered a slut for her whole life because in college she decided to bang 5 guys in the
bathroom. Or do you really want to be the guy that decided to scam people out of money and
always be known as a scumbag who should never be associated with.
This is all stemmed from your decisions. As we always say it is important to do what you want
and not worry about what others think about you, it comes down to your perception of the
decision you are making. If you are making a decision that feels right to your gut then know your
reputation can never be affected. But when it feels shaky inside and uncertain of the course
needed to be taken, there will be consequences to face afterwards.
The biggest problem our generation faces is that just like athletes we like to take the easy way
out and not think for ourselves. Athletes all followed each other and took steroids in the early
90s, because everyone was doing it so it had to be the right thing to do. We have the same issue.
Whenever we see many doing the same we decide to follow the critical mass rather than give a
small bit of effort into thinking for ourselves.
When we stop thinking for ourselves and making our own decisions that are not influenced by
anyone else, that is when our character, reputation, and dignity stay in line with everything we
believe in. The one that has no shame in anything and is constantly doing wrong will always
have a terrible reputation and be remembered for being a gypsy or a scumbag instead of a
respectable businessman.
The worst thing about reputation is that once you lose it you can never really get it back- unless
you decide to move to Mars and start over.
There are no reset buttons in life and the decisions that you make now will stick with you
forever. Have the courage to think for yourself and do what you feel is right rather than letting
others influence you to be something youre not, which only leads you to live an artificial life.
Your character lives on forever. It is always going to be there like a terrible case of the herpes,
giving you a reputation of being dirty. We truly cant express to you how important your
character really is. It is what your life will be remembered for and it is how you will be perceived
by others.
Its about being seen as the best possible you in the eyes of others- not because you care what
they think about you, but because it is far greater to be respected and feared than it is to be loved
by many.
Make your choices wisely and know that you are suppose to be a functioning adult. Your choices
now will have some sort of affect on you later in the future. When Lance took his steroids in
1991 he did not think that in 2013 he would be exposed for them. The skeletons always come out
of the closet.
Dignity is more important than wealth. Everyone needs enough. But once we have enough
(and enough may be less than you think), what we crave and want is dignity. Given a choice
between dignity and more, most people choose dignity. Respect matters. Respect in all
thingsfor your employees, coworkers, and customers alike. The ultimate gift you can give, the
one that will repay you today and tomorrow and heal our world, is that gift. The gift of
connection, of art, of loveof dignity. - See more at: http://mindfulnext.org/a-day-with-
dignity/#sthash.yg7hejkT.dpuf
Can wealth give happiness? Look around and see, what gay distress! What splendid misery! Whatever
fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.
To ask what it means to live with dignity may sound strange in an age like our own, when our
frantic struggle to make ends meet hardly allows us the leisure to ponder such weighty matters.
But if we do pause a moment to give this question a little thought, we would realize soon enough
that it is not merely the idle musing of someone with too much time on his hands. The question
not only touches on the very meaning of our lives, but goes even beyond our personal quest for
meaning to bore into the very springs of contemporary culture. For if it isn't possible to live with
dignity then life has no transcendent purpose, and in such a case our only aim in the brief time
allotted to us should be to snatch whatever thrills we can before the lights go off for good. But if
we can give sense to the idea of living with dignity, then we need to consider whether we are
actually ordering our lives in the way we should and, even more broadly, whether our culture
encourages a dignified lifestyle.
Though the idea of dignity seems simple enough at first sight, it is actually fairly complex. My
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (1936!) defines dignity as "elevation of character, intrinsic
worth, excellence... nobleness of manner, aspect, or style." My Roget's Thesaurus (1977) groups
it with "prestige, esteem, repute, honor, glory, renown, fame" evidence that over the last forty
years the word's epicenter of meaning has undergone a shift. When we inquire about living with
dignity, our focus should be on the word's older nuance. What I have in mind is living with the
conviction that one's life has intrinsic worth, that we possess a potential for moral excellence that
resonates with the rhythm of the seasons and the silent hymn of the galaxies.
The conscious pursuit of dignity does not enjoy much popularity these days, having been
crowded out by such stiff competitors as wealth and power, success and fame. Behind this
devaluation of dignity lies a series of developments in Western thought that emerged in reaction
to the dogmatic certainties of Christian theology. The Darwinian theory of evolution, Freud's
thesis of the Id, economic determinism, the computer model of the mind: all these trends, arisen
more or less independently, have worked together to undermine the notion that our lives have
any more worth than the value of our bank accounts. When so many self-assured voices speak to
the contrary, we no longer feel justified in viewing ourselves as the crowning glory of creation.
Instead we have become convinced we are nothing but packets of protoplasm governed by
selfish genes, clever monkeys with college degrees and business cards plying across highways
rather than trees.
Such ideas, in however distorted a form, have seeped down from the halls of academia into
popular culture, eroding our sense of human dignity on many fronts. The free-market economy,
the task master of the modern social order, leads the way. For this system the primary form of
human interaction is the investment and the sale, with people themselves reckoned simply as
producers and consumers, sometimes even as commodities. Our vast impersonal democracies
reduce the individual to a nameless face in the crowd, to be manipulated by slogans, images, and
promises into voting this way or that. Cities have expanded into sprawling urban jungles, dirty
and dangerous, whose dazed occupants seek an easy escape with the help of drugs and loveless
sex. Escalation in crime, political corruption, upheavals in family life, the despoliation of the
environment: these all speak to us as much of a deterioration in how we regard ourselves as in
how we relate to others.
Amidst these pangs of forlorn hope, can the Dhamma help us recover our lost sense of dignity
and thereby give new meaning to our lives? The answer to this question is yes, and in two ways:
first, by justifying our claim to innate dignity, and second, by showing us what we must do to
actualize our potential dignity.
For Buddhism the innate dignity of human beings does not stem from our relationship to an all-
mighty God or our endowment with an immortal soul. It stems, rather, from the exalted place of
human life in the broad expanse of sentient existence. Far from reducing human beings to
children of chance, the Buddha teaches that the human realm is a very special realm standing
squarely at the spiritual center of the cosmos. What makes human life so special is that human
beings have a capacity for moral choice that is not shared by other types of beings. Though this
capacity is inevitably subject to limiting conditions, we always possess, in the immediate present,
a margin of inner freedom that allows us to change ourselves and hereby to change the world.
But life in the human realm is far from cozy. To the contrary, it is inconceivably difficult and
complex, rife with conflicts and moral ambiguities offering enormous potential for both good
and evil. This moral complexity can make of human life a painful struggle indeed, but it also
renders the human realm the most fertile ground for sowing the seeds of enlightenment. It is at
this tauntingly ambiguous crossroads in the long journey of being that we can either rise to the
heights of spiritual greatness or fall to degrading depths. The two alternatives branch out from
each present moment, and which one we take depends on ourselves.
While this unique capacity for moral choice and spiritual awakening confers intrinsic dignity on
human life, the Buddha does not emphasize this so much as he does our ability to acquire active
dignity. This ability is summed up by a word that lends its flavor to the entire teaching, ariya or
noble. The Buddha's teaching is the ariyadhamma, the noble doctrine, and its purpose is to
change human beings from "ignorant worldlings" into noble disciples resplendent with noble
wisdom. The change does not come about through mere faith and devotion but by treading the
Buddhist path, which transmutes our frailties into invincible strengths and our ignorance into
knowledge.
The notion of acquired dignity is closely connected with the idea of autonomy. Autonomy means
self-control and self-mastery, freedom from the sway of passion and prejudice, the ability to
actively determine oneself. To live with dignity means to be one's own master: to conduct one's
affairs on the basis of one's own free choices instead of being pushed around by forces beyond
one's control. The autonomous individual draws his or her strength from within, free from the
dictates of craving and bias, guided by a thirst for righteousness and an inner perception of truth.
The person who represents the apex of dignity for Buddhism is the arahant, the liberated one,
who has reached the pinnacle of spiritual autonomy: release from the dictates of greed, hatred,
and delusion. The very word arahant suggests this sense of dignity: the word means "worthy
one," one who deserves the offerings of gods and humans. Although in our present condition we
might still be far from the stature of an arahant, this does not mean we are utterly lost, for the
means of reaching the highest goal is already within our reach. The means is the Noble Eightfold
Path with its twin pillars of right view and right conduct. Right view is the first factor of the path
and the guide for all the others. To live with right view is to see that our decisions count, that our
volitional actions have consequences that extend beyond themselves and conduce to our long-
term happiness or suffering. The active counterpart of right view is right conduct, action guided
by the ideal of moral and spiritual excellence. Right conduct in body, speech, and mind brings to
fulfillment the other seven factors of the eightfold path, culminating in true knowledge and
deliverance.
In today's hectic world humankind is veering recklessly in two destructive directions. One is the
path of violent struggle and confrontation, the other that of frivolous self-indulgence. Beneath
their apparent contrasts, what unites these two extremes is a shared disregard for human dignity:
the former violates the dignity of other people, the latter undermines one's own dignity. The
Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path is a middle way that avoids all harmful extremes. To follow this
path not only brings a quiet dignity into one's own life but also answers the cynicism of our age
with a note of wholesome affirmation.