Sunday, January 8, 2006
“We
affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” This is the first of the seven Unitarian
principles. I know that some of us
embrace this principle wholeheartedly, but I also know that others of us have
difficulty accepting it. Unitarians,
generally, don’t see the principles as some set of divinely inspired absolutes
or irrefutable statements of fact that require us to suspend our own thoughts
and actions to reconcile ourselves with their infallible truth. These principles are not like the religious
texts of many other faiths. We don’t
think of them as laws or believe that analyzing every word is required to lead
good and proper lives. Instead, I think
Unitarians, generally speaking, see the principles as guidelines -- fallible,
cultural artifacts of human reason that are subject to change. As Unitarians, we are free to disagree, so I
feel quite safe in confessing that I have had my own struggles at times with
accepting this first principle.
I
imagine the intent behind writing this principle was to make a statement about
gender equality, race relations, disability, sexual orientation, age, social
status, and so forth. I expect that the
authors of this statement wanted to send a message that Unitarians value both
women and men, people of every skin colour, those with and without physical and
other challenges to everyday life, young people, old people, married, single,
poor, and so on…you get the idea. And
within these four walls, I expect we have consensus on this. Age, sex, or race cannot be the basis on
which to assign differences in worth among people. Over the last few decades in particular, a public consciousness
has developed to focus on the central role that power plays in our lives. Some people in this world have less power
than others. Women and First Nations
peoples, for example, are still underrepresented in the workforce; in
particular, they are noticeably absent in the highest paying jobs. Power differences are everywhere. Even within this congregation, some voices
get heard, and others are overlooked.
Some intentions are enacted, others are not. The inherent worth and dignity of every person seems to be a
statement that acknowledges that these power inequities exist, but recognizes
that this situation is not ideal.
I
feel that giving up power is an essential part of what it means to admit the
worth of others. Sharing power implies
ascribing worth to another. Why do
power inequities exist? Perhaps
resistance to giving up power is simply human nature. Perhaps it’s rooted in the instinctual drives that evolutionary
psychologists would claim to have evolved in order to preserve us. We want to retain our power for our own
survival. But as cognitive and moral
beings, we are not simply at the mercy of evolutionary processes. The humanist perspective tells us we have
autonomy. We construct our own
realities, and we have a degree of control over them. So then, we are responsible for power relationships in society.
Part
of the way in which we construct our own realities and control power is through
language. The structuralists regard
language as consisting of binary oppositions: man/woman, white/black,
foreground/background, industry/nature, love/hate, and so forth. They regard words, not as labels that
identify things, but as constructions that point out differences among
things. We could say that words have
meaning only because they create a divide between what is and what is not. Without the notion of evil, we would have no
word for the concept of good. Belief
has no meaning without the idea of doubt.
Poststructuralists
critique these binaries of language.
They argue that the divisions between the included and the excluded
produced by these language binaries necessarily produce power
relationships. An individual who does
not satisfy the criteria to be in the “in crowd” is excluded and is denied the
power of the in-group. The dominant
group has no identification, no label, no sense of self, unless it is contrasted
with the Other – the ones who do not identify with the dominant group. So Unitarians, then, in this first principle
are championing the worth of the Other.
The first principle implies that we should de-emphasize these
constructed, power-laden, false dichotomies, and instead exercise a balance, a
distribution of power to all. While a
distinction exists in language between for example, settlers and aboriginal
peoples, we have a degree of control over the power difference ascribed to
these two groups through language.
But
what does it really mean to champion the worth of the Other? Judith Butler, a poststructuralist
philosopher, argues that this redistribution of power to all, this not giving
in to the dichotomies of language requires a dissolving of the self of the
dominant group. It doesn’t matter which
dominant group we’re talking about, her idea is that as the dominant group
continues to invest in its own identity, equality cannot be achieved. To dissolve the identity of being
able-bodied might be difficult for someone who has never spent time confined to
a wheelchair. To dismantle the identity
of being non-aboriginal might be difficult when someone uses their wealth to
choose to live in the safer parts of our city.
Some have argued that the dominant group needs the Other to maintain its
identity; to be identified as belonging to a superior group depends on the
continued existence of another group perceived to be inferior. No wonder there is resistance to accepting
the inherent worth of all people.
I
read an article recently about some Mexican women who immigrated into the
southern United States. The researchers
who wrote the article compared how these Latinas view themselves as immigrants
with how they are viewed by the host community into which they move. As soon as the Mexican families arrive in
the US, social workers make contact to try to develop in them proper parenting
skills so the children will be raised correctly. Educators try to teach the women through adult learning programs
to raise their education to an acceptable level. Other professionals try to help the women understand that various
practices are not good for meeting health needs. In short, the community sees these women as people who need help,
people who are a burden to American society, people whose standards are
inferior.
But
the researchers who interview these women, received a very different picture
from the women themselves. The women
see themselves as highly educated because they believe morality is the test of
an educated individual. They see
themselves as possessing good child-rearing practices, as protectors, as women
in safe families who love their children.
These women have self-concepts very different from the concepts of those
around them. There are two different
stories happening here: the grand narrative of the inferior immigrant, and a
narrative of dignity as told by the women themselves.
Our
first principle claims that every person has worth and dignity. But the immigrant Mexican women can have
dignity only if their story is heard.
Denying the immigrants the power to tell their stories denies them their
dignity and sense of worth. What we
need to consider, therefore, is that part of living out this first Unitarian
principle is listening to the stories of others, considering what they say,
spending energy to empathize, and of course, engaging in action that proves our
commitment to understanding others.
Here’s
another example that relates how institutional structures fail to account for
the inherent worth and dignity of people.
The example is taken from an article I read for a course I completed in
the fall. I learned that since the
1980’s the Hawaiian educational system has brought back native culture to be
taught in classrooms and has lifted a ban on using the Native Hawaiian
language. Retired natives have been
brought into classrooms to teach traditions to the children. Sounds pretty good. However, these natives are overworked and
underpaid. They are also required to
prepare children for the annual Lei Day celebrations, a pageant performed by
the children. Preparations take so much
time that other topics of Hawaiian history, such as the brutal colonization of
the islands has no time to be explored.
Further, the supposed tradition of the Lei Day pageant for which the
children spend much time preparing, a tradition believed to be an old native
Hawaiian practice, even by native Hawaiian, was actually begun in 1912 by a man
from Kansas who immigrated to Hawaii after being taken with a hula dancer he saw
in a traveling show. Critics have also
pointed out that education of the children in native Hawaiian culture simply
serves to maintain the commercialization of the culture through tourism, which
typically underpays the natives who are involved in it. So, institutionalized practices, even those
of the educational system just described uphold the power differences between
groups. The worth of all is not easily
borne out in practice.
We
wouldn’t need this first principle about the worth and dignity of all if it
were some provable, or self-evident truth that everyone accepted. There are some people in this world that
make it very difficult to accept that worth is inherent, that it resides
within. What is it about being human
that necessarily gives us worth? It’s
easy to say that we have worth
by virtue of being human – simply being a member of the human race affords us
all equal worth. It’s perhaps romantic
even…we are all a part of a large family because we all have worth by virtue of
our humanity. Perhaps we need to
believe this to feel good about ourselves, or because we think we’re supposed
to see value in everyone. Nevertheless,
there are reasons why some people have difficulty with this first principle.
I
taught for a number of years in various federal prisons in Ontario. My very first day working in the Kingston
Penitentiary I was sitting with an inmate who I later came to believe was
Joseph Fredericks, one of Canada’s most infamous child molesters and murderers. He described to me that day how he butchered
a small child and buried parts of the body in the Ontario countryside. He didn’t seem remorseful to me. He showed no emotion, except that he seemed
a little proud of what he’d done. It
seemed important to him that I know about his accomplishment. I felt at the time that there was no hope of
rehabilitation for Mr. Fredericks, who was killed shortly thereafter by other
inmates in the institution.
Something
had gone terribly wrong with the notion of evolutionary progress in the case of
Joseph Fredericks. Whether he began
life being incapable of ever developing empathy, or whether his childhood
circumstances dictated his adult egocentrism, he apparently had no ability to
exercise the adult human quality of empathy.
As I heard details of this horrendous crime, I was forced to ask myself
the question, “of what worth is this violent, untrustworthy, and apparently
unchangeable person?” Did he really
have equal worth with us? I have
struggled because I have always attempted to locate the worth of a person
within the person. In other words, a
person has worth simply by virtue of being human. At times, this is difficult to accept. Whether people choose or whether they are compelled to be cruel,
to take innocent life, to torture, to be evil (whatever evil means to you), to
be incapable of empathy, it can be difficult to locate equal worth within
them. Is there an alternative way of
looking at the idea of worth? Yes,
there is.
In
essence, our first principle says, “We believe in the inherent worth of
everyone.” Well, what is worth? Worth has multiple meanings. It is important to understand which of these
is appropriate to our understanding of the principle.
One
dictionary defines worth as “the value of something measured by its qualities or
by the esteem in which it is held.” [repeat] “Qualities” and “esteem” suggest
two very different ideas. “Qualities”
suggests that worth resides in the person.
“Esteem” suggests that worth is ascribed to someone through relationship
with another. The first suggests worth
is imputed; the second that worth is imparted.
For
those of you who accept the former, that worth is a quality – that it is the
quality of humanness that gives everyone worth, that everyone has equal worth
simply by virtue of being human, regardless of their actions and attitudes,
hang on to that. That quality, for you,
may be the physical complexity of the body, the mystery of the mind, or the
indwelling of a human or divine spirit that gives us all worth. For those who sometimes do struggle, let’s
explore the second of these two definitions.
Rather than the qualities of the individual, let’s look at worth as
esteem, as the relationship between individuals.
One
definition describes worth as that which renders something useful to another
person. This is what I might call instrumental
worth. It tells us that worth
depends on what the outcome is. Worth
is a variable and dependent on circumstance.
For example, a spade has worth when you’re harvesting a crop of
potatoes, but not when you’re trying to type a letter. The value of something is connected to its
usefulness.
Should
we apply this idea to people? We
certainly do all the time. It helps us
function in our day-to-day world. When
we have a job that needs to be done, we ask for help from the person who is
equipped with the necessary skills.
That person is worth more to us in that particular situation than
someone who doesn’t have the skills. We
don’t all have the same worth to an organization. People get fired. Some
people donate more money, give more time, and contribute more ideas, even in
this organization. When some people
leave, they leave a bigger hole than others.
I can recognize that I’m not worth much to a terrorist organization -- I
have absolutely no interest whatsoever in being a suicide bomber. There are definite differences in
instrumental worth. But is this the
type of worth between people that the authors of the principle intended? I doubt it.
If
worth is found in the relationships among people, perhaps it exists, not as an
attribute, but as the act of attribution.
Perhaps it is not the power one has, but the act of empowering
another. We have the choice to ascribe
worth or not, and some may argue, the responsibility to do so. How do we ascribe worth? Through our actions; how we behave toward
others. We can work to ensure power is
distributed to all. If we act in ways
that withhold power, we get the “isms”: sexism, racism, ageism, and so on, and
we end up with oppression in society.
But more than that, forgiveness becomes impossible. How can we forgive others when we don’t deem
them worthwhile - worthy of our forgiveness?
How can we notice our own injustice toward others when we believe they
don’t deserve to be treated well?
So
this view of the worth of another is based, not on the qualities of that
person, and not on whether they somehow deserve our ascription of worth, but
rather on a decision on our part to act in ways that count them as
worthwhile. The reverse, of course, is
also true. If we are not prepared to
accept the equal worth of all, we must accept that there are others worth more
than ourselves. So this view requires
others to view us as worth just as much them.
Maybe
you are not convinced of this approach, and if you were the mother of that
child murdered by Joseph Fredericks, I couldn’t blame you. I certainly can’t claim to understand what
losing one’s child at the hands of an evil person means. I have been hurt, of course, like all of
you, by others. Because of my sexual
orientation I’ve had hurtful words scribbled on my car, I’ve been verbally
abused and I’ve been rejected even by family members. So how do I respond? When
I’m hurt, I can try to defend my own dignity and worth by taking away the
dignity and worth from those who hurt me.
If I deny those who hurt me their worth, it makes me feel better. But how productive is this? Do I want to live in world where people
everywhere are denying the worth of others?
No. I want to live in a world of
equality, hope, and the worth of all. I
feel I need to do my part in valuing even those who make my life difficult, to
forgive those who hurt me. And I can’t
do this if I don’t see worth in the other person. Any kind of transformative change in the world must begin with
recognizing the worth of all.
I
think about the Reverend Lang, father of the teenager killed in the Taber,
Alberta high school shooting a few years ago.
I think about how, just a few days after his son was shot in the throat,
he conducted his son’s funeral service and prayed for forgiveness toward the
young killer and his family. Rev Lang
earned the respect of many, for he acted to ascribe worth to even the one who
killed his own son.
Michael Werner is a former president of the American Humanist
Association. He wrote “Each person counts no
matter what is her or his behavior or utility to society or ourselves…the idea
[of inherent worth and dignity] should be interpreted as prescriptive not
descriptive.” His statement points to the
world as it should be, not how it is.
It is true that we tend to medicalize people who don’t live up to the
“normal” standard of physical and mental health. We criminalize people who don’t live up to the “normal” standard
of behaviour. We “Other” people who
don’t live up to the criteria of being that we set for ourselves. But just imagine a world where we could find
it within ourselves to ascribe worth to all, to act in ways that allow each
individual to maintain dignity. What
actions might we take today to demonstrate the worth of others, even those whom
we may struggle against?
Written
and presented by Andrew Quackenbush
Unitarian
Fellowship of Regina, January 8, 2006