Dignity and Civility
When I ask people what dignity means to them, one of the most common responses is linked to how we talk to each other – as individuals, and in society. Many people decry the lack of civility in our public discourse: according to a 2023 poll by Weber Shandwick, “94% of all Americans consider the general tone and level of civility in the country today to be a problem, with approximately two-thirds believing it is a “major” problem (65%).” In fact, the Dignity Index tracks civil discourse on the premise that “Our disagreements aren’t causing the divisions in our country; it’s what we do when we disagree. Do we treat the other side with dignity, or do we treat them with contempt? The first brings us together; the second drives us apart.” The Dignity Index then invites people to take the “Dignity Pledge” to “treat people with dignity, not contempt.”
But what does how we talk to one another have to do with the concept of dignity we use in human rights? How can one word describe, on the one hand, conversational etiquette and, on the other, the foundation of “freedom, justice and peace,” and a “just rule of law,” to quote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the American Bar Association (2019), respectively?
The answer lies in why the drafters of the Universal Declaration chose the concept of dignity as the foundation of the new world order at the end of World War II. The members of the UN Human Rights Commission, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, looked around their ashen world and saw that the destruction that men had wrought – man’s inhumanity to man, as it were – was rooted in a simple attitude: that some people see themselves as better than others.
This premise has a very important corollary: if A thinks he is better or more valuable than B, then A must have judged B’s value and found it wanting. Depending on the law, A might have the power and the right to determine exactly how much value B has and what rights B has. A can decide that B has a lot of value, a little, or none at all. Unlike inherent worth, value can be quantified, commodified, and monetized. So A can decide not only how much value B has, but also what that value is good for, and then A can deny rights to those he deems to have lesser value. A can then justify discrimination, exploitation, and abuse, be it sexual, economic, physical, or otherwise. At the extreme, if A can adjudge B to have no value and no rights, A can justify killing or disappearing another human being.
Of course, demeaning another person doesn’t necessarily have fatal consequences: a school-age bully can decide that someone doesn’t have a right to sit at the lunch table, a narcissist in a relationship can decide that someone’s feelings don’t matter, a racist or a misogynist can decide that someone isn’t worthy of equal pay or equal respect. And so on.
But at the extremes, this moral view can be catastrophic.
The drafters of the UDHR believed that to end “the scourge of war,” (as the UN Charter says), they had to set the world on a different moral course and the course they chose was equal human dignity. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” they declared in Article 1. In this logic, every human being is inherently worthy, not because they are useful for someone else’s purposes, but just by virtue of being born a “member of the human family.” Because everyone has value as a human being, every human being’s value is the same, and every human being’s value is inherent – just because. This not only establishes moral equality but it denies the power to devalue another person’s worth: literally, it withdraws the power to “degrade” or “debase” or “dehumanize” another person.
This has implications large and small. In a democracy, equal worth means that every person within the democratic polity has an equal say and an equal vote. In a community, it means that every person is subject to the same rules; “equal justice under law,” as it says on the front of the Supreme Court building. And in a conversation, it means that every person has an equal right to contribute, that every person is treated with respect, not with contempt.
The commitment to the inherent and equal dignity of all people is the antidote to war, and the key to civility.