Human Dignity

Some wounds don’t heal.

My understanding of Human Dignity is that it is a fundamental level of Human Rights; a person has the right, even at birth, to be respected. Today, many people discriminate and reject others based on ethnicity, skin color, and other forms. For example, the Holocaust, Hitler rounded up all the Jews in Germany because of their eye and hair color. Here is another example, the Civil war, it wasn’t just about states rights, it was, for the South at least, to keep slaves. Slaves back then were African American people because they had a different skin color. Schools were segregated along with drinking fountains, bathrooms (not like boy girl), and many other things. I was rejected from a small group of kids because they didn’t want to have to hang around a “fatso.”You and I can help by setting an example for others to follow, by not judging people.

When the Dignity of a person is disrespected, they feel discarded and worthless. That’s how I felt when the aforementioned kids called me “fatso.” Have you ever heard the phrase “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”? The person who wrote that has to be an unfeeling, emotionless person. People may not think of it, but a person can be hurt more, and the duration of the pain is longer, by just injuring their dignity. The effect of it can last for many years, possibly longer than that. If we want to eliminate pain in the world, it starts via refraining from injuring others’ pride.

The relation ship between human dignity and human rights, they are both easy to jumble up. But both are essential for everyday life. Here in the U.S, we have many rights, more than the basic level. But in some places, like China, people have little or no rights. If they have no freedom, they most likely won’t be able to be aware of dignity if they were raised in that environment for so long. They probably don’t have the freedom of speech we boast, they should, but the government uses threats and punishments to make sure no one does what they don’t want them to do. They want to control every aspect of their lives. Dignity is akin to water, it’s abundant in some places, but devoid of it we can’t live. If there is a lack of dignity, or a drought, it isn’t long until we cave in and commit suicide because we can’t stand it. Without rights, we would just be pawns in a grand chess game called life. Rights give us an opportunity to speak up, they give us a voice. We need to learn to respect both.