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It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that the cold war was settled amicably in hundreds of bedrooms in Moscow and Washington years before the diplomats realized it was over.”
Spotting what you’re in search of is like detecting a whisper amid a din. It’s very easy to put off taking that whisper seriously, much less hear it.
“Every time your interests change,” Rowan continued, “you’ll run into resistance. Others want you to stay the same, and each time your focus shifts you have to claw your way past their skepticism as well as overcome your own doubts.”
English, India’s second language.
A back room was full of comics of epic Hindu myths.
You are both warm, sentient, lovable creatures. And you do not stand apart from the cosmos. On the contrary, you are part of it.”
“Do you have feelings?” he asked. “Do you have heart?” Adam and Malika nodded affirmatively. “Then how can the universe lack them? Its heart beats in your breast.
that doctrinal distinctions serve primarily to bolster the solidarity of the groups that adhere to them, and provide rationales for preying on others. He maintains that our age-old strategy of picking on the weak can take us no further. That globalization heralds either the end of human predation or the end of our species.
Getting there was better than being there. That’s true in life as well.
People’s circumstances, once you’re aware of the details, are rarely comparable, so it’s important not to impose your beliefs on others.”
The golden rule of relationships is “Cause no indignity.” A loving relationship is one in which both partners take care to protect each other’s dignity. A wounded soul heals more slowly than a wounded body, so it is as important to avoid indignity as it is to avoid outright harm.”
All around Darjeeling lay the plantations whose tea made the mountain town known to the world.
topic they returned to again and again was the notion of “making a difference.” The cliché held questions for them both. Was it vanity to insist on making a difference? What proof could there possibly be that the difference that was made was beneficial in the long run?
“So, what can outsiders do? How can one make a positive difference?” “There are a million other ways to do good, and they’re right under our noses. Most people who say they want to make a difference actually want to be heroes. I don’t trust do-gooders who don’t acknowledge what’s in it for them.”
“People are drawn to social issues that reflect their personal problems. But often they present themselves as altruistic. There’s nothing wrong with working on a societal problem that mirrors a personal issue. It’s often better than discussing it with a shrink. But is it too much to ask that do-gooders acknowledge what they themselves get out of their work?”
“Clarity comes from bringing into focus what’s already in plain sight,” Élodie said.
The Pakistani-Chinese border crossed the highest paved highway in the world. That
Quixote came to see his romantic ideals as sadly misplaced, his heroic striving as desperately misguided. The message in that, Adam was coming to believe, was that striving to “make a difference” or “do good” was like trying to fall in love; you just have to recognize it when it happens.
Before the train could cross into Russia, however, it had to undergo a “wheel transplant.”
His holy grail was dignity.
But out here no one cares about my status or my résumé. I feel unseen, but not unworthy. There’s a place for me and I’m in it. That’s the crux of dignity.
dignity, like everyone else’s, will come under attack. Why do we accept this state of affairs? What would it take to secure dignity for all? To make everyone’s dignity inviolable, as sacrosanct as life itself? I intend to find out.
“Humiliation, remembered and imagined, fuels most conflict,” Rowan continued. “It goes on until someone breaks the cycle.
one of those people who don’t converse; they just wait for their chance to talk. That’s how it was dancing with Michael. The moment he ceased to be the center of attention, he lost interest.
But until we break the cycle of indignities that fuels terror, the threat will remain.”
A leader must stake out a position and hold the torch high in the hope that people are drawn to the light. Then, they either make your cause their own, or blame you for leading them astray.
Or would the predatory cycle of indignity, resentment, and revenge continue?
Future King, T. H. White’s retelling of the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. In my teens, at a time when I was troubled over a girl, she reminded me of the tale of “Sir Gawain and Lady Ragnell,” which turns on the answer to the question, “What do women want?” As I grew up, Gawain’s question morphed into a more general one: What do people want?
At bottom, dignity means belonging, membership, a secure place in the “tribe.” Quite simply, dignity means “in”; indignity “out.”
Psychologically, dignity means inclusion and recognition. Socially, it means equal opportunity to contribute. Materially, dignity means having the essentials required to pursue happiness—health, education, income sufficient to live securely, and a voice in governance.
We blind ourselves to it because we don’t want to admit that our relative success is mostly due to unfair advantages.
White privelege
Our challenge, from here on out, is to identify and root out every instance and every kind of unfairness, as if unfairness itself is our enemy. Because it is. Unfairness is experienced as indignity and indignity breeds indignation. No wonder that angry protests ensue. They can be violent or non-violent. Either response is disruptive.
If the dispossessed cannot live in dignity, they increasingly have it within their power to see that no one else does either. The price of social peace and economic prosperity is equal opportunity and equitable recognition for everyone in the global community. In short, an end to the indignities that are still the daily lot of many. The issue is whether we’ll invite those who are currently taken for nobodies into the human family or force them to crash our gates.
People want dignity for themselves more than they want to humiliate their oppressors. In this proposition lies hope for humanity. If it’s right, the poor will choose an escape from relative poverty over the fleeting satisfaction of bringing down the privileged.
Every act of indignity can be traced to a prior indignity, but it’s rarely possible to identify the first link in the chain. So we have to start, not with the first indignity, but with the most recent one, and work backward until we’ve identified as many precursors as possible. Then, we survey the entire sequence, from initial acts of brigandage to indentured servitude to the form indignity takes today—subsistence labor maintained by chronic poverty—and acknowledge the lot, without blame or guilt.
Like in feuds like the Hatfields and McCoys
The slate is wiped clean, but only insofar as future indignities are scrupulously disallowed and rigorously eliminated.
The guiding, inviolate principle is dignity for all. Since most manmade indignities stem from abuses of power—rankism—the operational recipe for building a dignitarian society is to disallow rankism (in much the same way that building a multicultural world required that we dismantle racist institutions and disallow racist practices).
Examples of previous realignments of power include
whites and blacks in the United States;
Then, when a broad social consensus is in place, a worldwide institutional base will have to be built to secure dignity at all levels of human interaction.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC,
Some saw it as a Trojan Horse intended to undermine traditional gender roles. In public, Gwyneth always denied the accusation; in private, that’s exactly how she described Dignity Now!.
Indignities and injustices will surely still arise, but they will not persist, because they will be diagnosed and treated as curable maladies, not used as pretexts for hostility and war.”
Then on to Dhaka to make the case to the prime minister of Bangladesh. As one of the first nations to make dignity an explicit constitutional right—at its birth in 1971—Bangladesh
and stimulate joint consideration of the subcontinent’s future role in global governance.
In the forest near their Siberian hideaway were trees with hard crimson berries that the natives identified as rowan trees.
Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
Dignity for All: How to Create a World Without Rankism
Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship?
