Dignity

 A few quick stories on dignity: 

One

We had a really interesting talk about the nostalgia for the Soviet times in Eastern Europe at Hertie School last week. The context was the fifth Henrik Enderlein Fellowship Lecture and subsequent panel, with incoming Fellow Corina Ajder (of Moldova) and outgoing Fellow Marija Golubeva (of Latvia). The resentment for the present is real, yet objectively they have a far better standard of living now. We came to the conclusion people felt they had more dignity under the old system even if they had less stuff. Which meant essentially they felt less far behind their neighbours economically in the past, which apparently matters more than what we have absolutely. This is often blamed on the national government that has not performed as well (or helped your local region perform as well) as some other region you feel comparable to.  This feeling of being failed by your government leads to significant security challenges as well as lack of well being, since you can be persuaded to work against them, often benefiting someone else's.

Two

That they latched onto the term "dignity" stood out to me, because years ago when the Google ATEAC debacle was unfolding, I published a blogpost Bullying and shunning are problems, not solutions. I mentioned in a different blogpost some weeks later that someone had told me that they thought bullying and shaming were the entire point of the important democratic activity of protest. They don't ordinarily feel that way to me, though I do sometimes see very angry people e.g. at the "No Kings" protests, but as I said at the time "Personally I think of protests as political communication of better estimates of citizens' costs & values" – by which I meant how strongly we felt about what, how many of us would devote how much time and effort to a particular cause.

I guess there is no reason not to say that "someone" was Cathy O'Neill. She invited me out to her apartment in NYC (quite a trip from Plainsboro, NJ) to tell me I was wrong about my blogpost. It was weird, and I'm not entirely sure why I went. I don't think people invite each other over to their houses enough these days, so I guess that made it seem worth the trip. She said she was working on a new book about bullying, I'm not sure what came from that. But she did say at some point "when I think of you, I think of … dignity, yes that's it." Which was interesting, because it's not a word you hear very much, but it seemed definitely very flattering. But I've never been sure what about me got that response from her.

Three

I just read a poem by Audre Lorde that somehow reminded me of both my bullying post and my conversation with Cathy. Actually, it's titled Need: A Choral of Black Women's Voices But one stanza, attributed to "I" (Lorde) says:

I am wary of need

that tastes like destruction.

I am wary of need that tastes like destruction.

Who ever learns to love me

from the mouth of my enemies

walks the edge of my world

like a phantom in a crimson cloak

and the dreambooks speak of money

but my eyes say death.

The choral is about women and child victims of male violence, but it reminds me of all kinds of violence that are happening now, and maybe somehow the money part makes me think also about the insanity coming from the AI companies alleging violence against their models in their unending quest to avoid liability for their products. Their need also tastes very much like destruction to me. To say nothing of our president's needs.

A Berlin No Kings protest from earlier this year, organised by American Voices Abroad