Civic Dignity
This is the second in our month-long series on dignity and democracy.
Deciding for ourselves
Dignity is the word we give to that special quality that marks our humanity. It’s what distinguishes us from all other life forms on earth and certainly from beings that are not sentient. For some, it is attributable to our creation in the image of (a) god, for others, it is because we alone have “reason and conscience” as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says.
Whatever its source, human beings have the unique capacity to self-reflect, to create mental images of ourselves and then to change them, to imagine other ways of being. We can imagine falling in love, or moving to another city and starting over. We imagine other worlds through literature and song, paintings and film.
We also do it when we engage in political action, when we march for rights or against oppression, when we run for office or vote for a candidate. We’re choosing the course we believe will make our lives better.
In Latin America, we see frequent references to the dignity right to control one’s “life project,” as in this case from Mexico: “The individual, whoever he is, has the right to choose, freely and autonomously, his life project, the way in which he will achieve the goals and objectives that, for him, are relevant.” (Acción de Inconstitucionalidad 2/2010 (Supreme Court of Mexico 2010)).
The dignity of political participation
When those actions are done in community with others, repeated across a population, it’s not just a personal action but a civic one. Participation in civic life is how we concretize and share our dream of a better life or a better world, and hope to see that vision compounded and reinforced by others who share it.
That is why democracy and dignity are so closely related.
Democracy is the structure of a society that enables people to imagine a better world for themselves. It asks people what world do you want to live in? And then, a few years later, it asks again: do you like the choice you made last time? Do you want to keep going in this direction or do you want to change your mind and create a different world?
Equal dignity
For these questions to make sense, and for the answers to have meaning in a population, all voices and all choices must be respected equally. No one should be able to drown out another’s voice, no one should be able to decide that some voices are more important or more valuable or more entitled to respect than others. No one should make you feel that your decisions don’t matter.
As South African Constitutional scholar Albie Sachs wrote when he sat on his nation’s constitutional court: “The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and of personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts.” (August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others 1999 (3) SA 1 (CC)).
It is in this sense that equality matters. It is not a formal equality, or a legal right to equal treatment. It is an existential equality in that every person in a democracy has the same human capacity for self-definition and re-definition. Every person is equally entitled to choose what kind of country they want, and which political options are most likely to lead us there, because that power to make decisions for ourselves, individually or in community, is not a privilege that we have to earn or a right that can be granted or taken away, but an entitlement rooted in the fact of our humanity.
Express your dignity!
This is why “we the people” resonates throughout the world. Everyone, everywhere should feel that they have the authority to make decisions about their lives, to engage in political action, to express their dignity. Right now, the simplest way to express your dignity is to vote.
