Dignity is not negotiable.
– Vartan Gregorian

Dignity on the March

Across North Africa and the Middle East to South and East Asia, the hunger for dignity is driving unrest and heralding social transformation. Everywhere, people are refusing to be taken for nobodies; they’re demanding to be treated like somebodies.

A new dream is taking hold. Around the world, people are sensing the possibility of building societies in which dignity is universal and secure. Life is hard, yes, and we remain vulnerable to natural catastrophes, but couldn’t we disallow the indignities to which we subject one another?

Our Predatory Past

Skeptics are quick to point out that our species has a long predatory history. Archeologists report that, as a result of population growth outstripping local resources, prehistory was the scene of constant battles. Other tribes had just what we needed—food, water, land, child-bearers—and preying on the weak improved our tribe’s chances of survival.

Our histories are full of war, slavery, colonization, and tyranny. Many countries are still in the clutches of self-serving dictators. Human trafficking, child slavery, abuse of women, and the exploitation of subsistence labor persists. In developed countries, predatory lenders and bankers, politicians beholden to special interests, and abusive religious leaders put personal gain over the public interest.

The predatory strategy our species has pursued for millennia has brought us dominion over the earth. But that strategy appears not to be working as well as it used to—for two reasons.

An End to Predation?

What has changed is that, first, the weak are not as impotent as they once were. Using weapons of mass destruction and strategies of mass disruption, the disenfranchised can bring modern life to a stop. Humiliation is a time bomb; non-violent protest is more revolutionary than armed insurrection.

And, second, the power that dignitarian groups can mobilize exceeds that of groups driven by fear and force. When everyone has a respected place, everyone is aligned with his or her own interests as well as with group purpose. That’s why “dignity for all” is a more effective organizing principle than intimidation. It makes for closer cooperation. Recognition and dignity are not just “nice”; they’re a formula for success.

This portends an epochal shift in the balance of power in favor of the formerly disregarded, disenfranchised, and dispossessed. Opportunistic predation has reached its “sell-by” date. Going forward, the strategy of “dignity for all” trumps that of “preying on the weak.”

Why Dignity Is Fundamental

We know dignity through its absence—indignity. With our first taste of indignity, we begin a lifelong vigil to shield ourselves from putdowns, ridicule, and exploitation. Yet indignities are still widely condoned. Humiliation is the staple of television entertainment. For many viewers, watching the degradation of others helps them cope with the daily dose of indignity they are putting up with themselves.

Most people have no trouble recalling the taste of humiliation. Many spend decades nursing the wounds of teasing, bullying, and rejection.
For those on the margins of society, denigration never stops. These “nobodies” are seen as legitimate targets; on them, it’s always “open season.”

Dignity matters because it shields us from being seen as potential prey. It declares (so we don’t have to), “I belong, you belong. We acknowledge each other’s rightful place.”

Dignity is inclusive. There are no nobodies in a dignitarian society. Rather, dignity is democratized. It’s everyone’s birthright. It’s also everyone’s responsibility—to stop putting others down, however indirectly or subtly, and to affirm their dignity, regardless of their role or rank.

A barefoot boy selling popcorn on the congested streets of New Delhi gave me an image of dignity I’ll never forget. At a stoplight, he poked his arm through the open window of our taxi waving a little bag of popcorn. Our host passed him a ten-rupee note, but before the boy could hand her the popcorn, our taxi sped off.

Two blocks later, the boy ran up alongside the car and thrust the bag of popcorn through the window. With that gesture, he refused a hand-out and claimed his dignity.

Denying people their dignity sends the message that their membership in the “tribe” is in jeopardy. Indignity is a precursor to second-class citizenship if not banishment. Since for most of our history, banishment meant death, it’s no wonder that we are super-sensitive to insinuations of low regard.

The Dignity Movement

With few exceptions, our systems of governance have soft-pedaled dignity. Why? Because human societies the world over still bear the stamp of our species’ predatory origins. People no longer dispute that slave-based societies were exploitative. Better disguised, however, is that today’s minimum-wage workers have little choice but to subsidize the rest of us. When missing a paycheck means the indignity of homelessness, we toe the line.

Enter the Dignity Movement. To succeed, a movement must know two things: what it’s for and what it’s against. It’s obvious that the Dignity Movement is for dignity, dignity for all, no exceptions. But what exactly is it against?

Since indignities are usually perpetrated by those with a power advantage, one might jump to the conclusion that differences of power are the problem. And, since power is attached to rank, we might think that if we could eliminate rank, we could minimize indignity.

The reason this logic has not worked—the failures of communes and communism come to mind—is because egalitarian ideologies have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Rank is an indispensable tool of organization. Without it, groups soon become ungovernable and uncompetitive, and, not infrequently, rank reappears in a storm-trooper’s uniform.

The truth is, we admire—we may even love—people of high rank who have earned it and who serve us wisely and well. We want the professor to teach chemistry, not the freshman. We want the surgeon to perform the operation, not the nurse. We want the pilot to fly the plane, not the flight attendant. We admire George Washington for rejecting the crown and for not hanging on to power. The source of indignity is not rank itself, but rank abuse. To effectively combat this abuse, we must pin a name on it.

Rankism: What the Dignity Movement Is Against

To have a name is to be.
– Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractals

Rankism is what people who consider themselves somebodies do to people whom they regard as nobodies. Think of it as a degrading assertion of rank.

Examples of rankism include a customer demeaning a waitress, a boss humiliating an employee, a teacher mocking a student, a religious leader abusing followers, a doctor patronizing a patient, a coach shaming a player, executives using the powers of their office to enrich themselves or prolong their tenure. Prototypical forms of rankism are bullying, corruption, cronyism, and insider trading. The world got a look at rankism’s ugly face in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and in the degradation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Although it’s often taken for granted and overlooked, rankism is everywhere. Blacks demean and exploit other blacks of lower rank. Whites do the same to whites, and women to women, all with confidence that such behavior, since it does not cross a color or gender line, will escape censure. Now, we can label it “rankism,” and de-legitimize it.

Rankism is the primary source of the indignities we inflict on one another. It’s what the Dignity Movement is against. Once the malady has been diagnosed, we’re in a position to seek a cure.

Rankism, Malady of Hierarchies

Rankism occurs when rank-holders use the power of their position to secure unwarranted benefits for themselves. It typically takes the form of self-aggrandizement: for example, higher compensation for executives than the market requires, and perpetual job security. It is the opposite of service. Good leaders do not tolerate rankism; bad ones indulge in it and their example infects the organization.

Rankism occurs in families, in the workplace and the boardroom, in schools, and in the doctor’s office. It can be especially hard to confront in nonprofits, whose leaders may blur the distinction between saving the world and saving their own jobs.

Rankism differs from the familiar “isms” in that most of us are both victims and perpetrators. This is because rank is relative. You can be a nobody in one context and a somebody in another. You can be a somebody one day and a nobody the next.

Rankism poisons relationships and saps the will to work and to learn. The attention that students give to defending their dignity diminishes that available for learning. Rankism takes years off lives and it incites revenge. Yet it’s hard to imagine a world without it, just as, not long ago, it was difficult to imagine an America without racism and sexism.

But Isn’t Rankism Human Nature?

Racism and sexism were long regarded as human nature, but in more and more places, these “isms” are losing legitimacy. To be racist or sexist today is to disqualify yourself from professional advancement, if not to forfeit your job.

If we can learn to stop putting people down on the basis of race, gender, or disability, we ought to be able to stop putting people down, period, for any reason. Overcoming rankism does not mean doing away with rank any more than overcoming racism and sexism mean doing away with race or gender. Rank itself is not the culprit; rankism is.

Past movements hold valuable lessons for confronting rankism. In the early years of the modern women’s movement, Betty Friedan famously described “the problem without a name.” A few years later, the problem had acquired one—sexism— and the movement had a target. Likewise, putting “rankism” in the lexicon will help us oppose abuses of power.

As in the long fight against sexism and the other ignoble “isms,” getting rid of rankism is a multi-generational task. It can take a half-dozen generations to discredit an “ism.” That’s a long time, but it’s not forever.

Overcoming rankism is an inclusive, unifying goal that reduces the injunctions of political correctness to just one: “Protect and defend the dignity of others as you would have them protect and defend yours.”

This does not and can not mean countering one indignity with another. We can only bring about a net reduction of rankism by interrupting the rankism-begets-rankism cycle. This means protecting the dignity of the perpetrators even as we reject their rankist behavior. While this Is not easy to do—because it means stifling the impulse to get even—it does prove possible.

The familiar “isms” are not gone, but they are on the defensive. The next step is to make rankism as uncool as racism and sexism. Granted, that’s a tougher challenge. But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Once people stand up for their dignity, it is not long before they’re marching for justice.

The Dignitarian Era

Rankism is the residue of predation, and as we recognize that predatory uses of power are counterproductive, we’ll put it aside, like the toy soldiers of childhood. We’ve been inching away from our predatory past for millennia, and the twenty-first century finds us on the threshold of a dignitarian era. We’ll know we’ve claimed that future when rankism is considered indefensible.

In building a dignitarian world, the only thing as important as how we treat the Earth is how we treat each other.

[Expanded Version of TEDxBerkeley Talk, Feb 19, 2011, by Robert W. Fuller]

Dignity on the March

Everywhere you look, people are rising to demand dignity. No longer willing to be treated like “nobodies,” they’re demanding to be treated like somebodies. And once people stand up for their dignity, it’s not long before they’re marching for justice.

From North Africa and the Middle East to South and East Asia, the quest for dignity is driving unrest and bringing transformation. In January of 2011, I keynoted a conference on dignity in Bangladesh that was hosted by that nation’s president. He understands better than the autocrats of the Middle East that it’s better to lead the parade for dignity than scramble to catch up.

We are beginning to sense the possibility of building societies in which everyone’s dignity is respected and secure. In such a world, man-made indignities will be the exception, not the rule.

Our Predatory Past

Ours species has a long predatory history. Archeologists report that prehistory was constant battle, the result of population growth outstripping local resources. Other tribes had just what we needed—food, water, land, child-bearers—and preying on those tribes before they preyed on us improved our chances of survival.

Of course, we didn’t invent predation. We absorbed it imitatively from our ape and hominid ancestors. A case can be made that it has served us well; none of us would be here if our own ancestors had not been relatively successful predators or skilled at evading the predations of others. It has been said that all family dynasties can trace their histories back to some act of brigandage. But, if we’re to claim a different future, we must first acknowledge how we got where we are.

War, slavery, colonization, and corruption fill the pages of our histories. Many countries are still in the clutches of self-serving dictators. Human trafficking, child slavery, abuse of women, and de facto servitude persist. In developed countries, predatory lenders and bankers, businessmen, and even religious leaders have made headlines picking on the weak.

The predatory strategy our species has pursued for millennia has brought us dominion over the earth. But that strategy cannot take us much further.

The End of Predation

Predation isn’t working as well as it used to for two reasons:

First, the weak are not as weak as they used to be. Using weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, the disenfranchised can bring modern life to a stop. As Thomas Scheff has pointed out, humiliation is more dangerous than plutonium. Moreover, non-violent protest is more revolutionary than armed insurrection.

And, second, (and everything depends on this) the power that dignitarian groups can marshal exceeds that of groups driven by fear and force. When everyone has a respected place, everyone is fighting for himself as well as for the group. That’s why “dignity for all” is a more effective organizing principle than fear. It facilitates closer cooperation. Recognition and dignity are not just “nice;” they’re a formula for success.

This heralds an epochal shift in the balance of power in favor of the formerly disregarded, disenfranchised, and dispossessed. From here on, the dignitarian strategy—dignity for all, regardless of role or rank—will prove the better strategy. Opportunistic predation has reached its “sell-by” date.

Why Dignity Is Fundamental

We know dignity through its absence—indignity. With our first taste of indignity, we begin a lifelong vigil to shield ourselves from putdowns, exploitation, and ridicule. Yet indignities continue to abound and are still widely accepted. Humiliation is the staple of television entertainment. For many viewers, watching the degradation of others helps them cope with the daily dose of indignity they are putting up with themselves.

Most of us have no trouble recalling the taste of humiliation. Many spend decades nursing the wounds of teasing, bullying, and rejection. As a “geek” in the decades before geekiness became cool, I can testify that the epithet stung.

For many on the margins of society, indignities never stop. These “nobodies” are seen as legitimate targets; according to their tormentors, it’s always “open season.” I distinctly remember a humiliating incident that I witnessed in second grade. I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep such things from happening ever since.

Arlene lived on a farm and wore the same dress to school every day. When she spoke, it was in a whisper. Our teacher began the day by inspecting our fingernails. One day Miss Belcher told Arlene to go to the hall and stay there until her fingernails were clean. I wondered how Arlene could clean her nails out there, without soap or water. Later, filing out to the playground, we snuck glances at her. She must have heard the snickering as we passed—hiding her face against the wall, trying to make herself small. A nobody.

In graduate school, it happened to me. I soon realized that higher education was less about the pursuit of truth than about establishing a pecking order. In teatime games of one-upmanship, I often felt like a nobody, and avoided probing questions by slipping away into the “hall” … where I ran into Arlene’s ghost.

Emily Dickinson spoke for Arlene and me in her “nobody” poem:

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

As Emily notes, nobodies are on the lookout for allies, and on guard against banishment.

Dignity matters because it shields us from being classified as prey, from banishment. It declares (so you don’t have to), “I belong. You belong. We belong. We each have a place, and together we thrive.”

What Is Dignity?

Dignity is inclusive. There are no “nobodies” in a dignitarian society. Rather, dignity is democratized. It’s everyone’s birthright. It’s also everyone’s responsibility—to stop putting others down, however indirectly or subtly, and to affirm their dignity, regardless of their role or rank.

A barefoot boy selling popcorn on the congested streets of New Delhi gave me an image of dignity I’ve never forgotten. At a stoplight, he poked his hand through the open window of our taxi waving a little bag of popcorn. Our host passed him a ten-rupee note, but before the boy could hand her the popcorn, the taxi sped off.

Two blocks later, the boy ran up alongside the car and thrust the bag of popcorn through the window. With that simple gesture, he refused a hand-out and claimed his dignity.

Denying people their dignity sends the message that their place in society is precarious. Indignity, then, is a precursor to second-class citizenship and exploitation, if not banishment. Since for most of our history, banishment meant death, it’s no wonder that we are super-sensitive to insinuations of low regard.

Conversely, dignity means belonging, full membership in the “tribe.”

The Dignity Movement

Until now, human governance has downplayed dignity. Why? Because our economies still bear the stamp of our species’ predatory origins. People no longer dispute that slave-based societies were built on exploitation. Better disguised, however, is that today’s minimum-wage workers have little choice but to subsidize the rest of us; miss a single paycheck, and low-wage workers are on the street. As Rev. Jim Wallis says, “Poverty is the new slavery.”

Enter the Dignity Movement—or, as I sometimes think of it, the Nobody Liberation Movement. (The idea came in a dream in which I heard someone yelling, “Nobodies of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our shame.”)

To succeed, a movement needs to know two things: what it’s for and what it’s against. It’s obvious that the Dignity Movement is for dignity, dignity for all, no exceptions. But what exactly is it against?

Since indignities are usually perpetrated by those with a power advantage, one could easily jump to the conclusion that power differences are the problem. Since power is attached to rank, we might think that if we could eliminate rank, we could eradicate indignity.

The reason this logic has not worked in real life—the failures of communes and communism come to mind—is because egalitarian ideologies have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Rank is an indispensable tool of organizations. Without it they soon become ungovernable and uncompetitive, and, not infrequently, rank creeps back in, wearing a uniform and jackboots, carrying a baton and tear gas.

The truth is, we admire—we even love—people of high rank who have earned it and who use it wisely. We want the professor to teach chemistry, not the freshman. We want the surgeon to perform the operation, not the nurse volunteer. We want the pilot to fly the plane, not the flight attendant.

Simultaneously, we admire George Washington for rejecting the crown and for not hanging on to power. The source of indignity is not rank itself, but rank abuse. To effectively combat this abuse, we must pin a name on it.

Rankism: What the Dignity Movement Is Against

To have a name is to be.
– Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractals

Rankism is what people who consider themselves “somebodies” do to people whom they regard as “nobodies.” Think of rankism as a degrading assertion of rank.

Examples of rankism include a customer demeaning a waitress, a boss humiliating an employee, a teacher mocking a student, a religious leader abusing followers, a doctor patronizing a patient, a coach demeaning a player, long-serving presidents hanging on to power. Prototypical forms of rankism are bullying, corruption, cronyism, and insider trading. The world got a look at rankism’s ugly face in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and in the photos of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Rankism is everywhere—although it is often seen as business as usual and goes unchallenged. Blacks insult and exploit other blacks of lower rank. Whites do the same to whites, and women to women, all with confidence that such behavior, since it does not cross a color or gender line, will escape censure. Now, we can call it by name—rankism—and condemn it as such.

Rankism is the source of most man-made indignity. It’s what the dignity movement is against. Once the malady has been diagnosed, we’re in a position to seek a cure.

Rankism, Malady of Hierarchies

Rankism occurs when rank-holders use the power of their position to secure unwarranted benefits for themselves. It typically takes the form of self-aggrandizement: for example, higher compensation than the market requires, and perpetual job security. It is the opposite of service. Good leaders avoid rankism; bad ones indulge in it.

Rankism occurs in families, in the workplace and the boardroom, in schools, and in your doctor’s office. It can be especially hard to confront in nonprofits, whose leaders may blur the distinction between saving the world and saving their own jobs.

Rankism’s Victims

Rankism differs from the familiar “isms” in that most of us are both victims and perpetrators. This is because rank is relative. You can be a nobody in one context and a somebody in another. You can be a somebody one day and a nobody the next.

I found this out when I left my position at Oberlin College. As president, it had been easy to get a meeting with almost anybody; without a title, I was “Bob who?”

Rankism ruins relationships and saps the will to work and to learn. The attention that students give to defending their dignity diminishes that available for learning. Rankism takes years off lives and it incites revenge. Yet it’s hard to imagine a world without it, just as, not long ago, it was difficult to imagine an America without racism and sexism.

But Isn’t Rankism Human Nature?

Racism and sexism were long regarded as human nature, but in more and more places, these “isms” are losing legitimacy. To be racist or sexist today is to disqualify yourself from professional advancement, if not to forfeit your job altogether.

If we can learn to stop putting people down on the basis of race, gender, or disability, we ought to be able to stop putting people down, period, for any reason. Overcoming rankism does not mean doing away with rank any more than overcoming racism and sexism mean doing away with race or gender. Remember, rank itself is not the culprit; rankism is.

How Can We Overcome Rankism?

The first step to overcoming rankism and creating a dignitarian society is learning from successful movements of the past.

In the early stages of the women’s rights movement, Betty Friedan wrote of “the problem without a name.” A few years later, the problem had acquired a name—“sexism”—and suddenly women had a label for what they were against. That’s why pinning a name on rank abuse is a vital step in ridding ourselves of it. Within a few years of naming “sexism,” reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, and “Title IX” had become law.

For the dignity movement, the lesson is clear: naming “rankism” is the first step in defeating it.

As in the long fight against sexism and the other ignoble “isms,” getting rid of rankism is a multi-generational task. I’ll use my family history to illustrate how our perspective on race changed over the course of the twentieth century:

• My great-grandparents regarded racist slurs as self-evident truths.
• My grandparents didn’t parade their racism, but revealed it in the use of the N-word.
• My parents eliminated racism from their speech, but not from their hearts.
• I grew up committed to Civil Rights, but I was initially perplexed by slogans like “Black is Beautiful.”
• My children dated interracially.
• My grandchildren are of mixed race.

As a rule of thumb, it takes about a half-dozen generations to defang an “ism.” That’s a long time, but it’s not forever.

Overcoming rankism is an inclusive, unifying goal that reduces the injunctions of political correctness to just one: “Protect and defend the dignity of others as you would have them protect and defend yours.”

But remember: overcoming rankism does not mean countering one indignity with another. Most of my own rankist behavior takes this form: I reflexively respond to a perceived indignity with one of my own. I’m continually rediscovering that rankism cannot be cured with rankism. We can only reduce the rankism in the world by interrupting the rankism-revenge cycle and, difficult as it may be, protecting the dignity of perpetrators themselves even as we show them a better way. This is not easy, but it is precisely the task of the generation now coming into power. On the outcome depends nothing less than a peaceful, prosperous twenty-first century.

Recent generations have put a sizable dent in the familiar “isms.” They’re not gone, but every one of them is on the defensive. The next step is to make rankism as uncool as racism and sexism. Unquestionably, overcoming rankism is a tougher problem, but history is on our side. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” The time for the Dignity Movement has come.

The Dignitarian Era

As we recognize that predatory uses of power are counterproductive, we’ll put rankism aside, like the toy soldiers of childhood. We’ve been inching away from our predatory past for centuries, and the 21st century finds us muddling towards a dignitarian future. We’ll know we’re getting close when rankism is considered indefensible.

In creating a dignitarian world, we’ll find that the only thing as important as how we treat the Earth is how we treat each other.

1. Recognize that no one is a nobody.
Avoid “n-words.” There’s another one now and it’s “nobody.” Parents and teachers who listen, and who do not belittle, are preparing the young to inhabit a dignitarian world.

2. Adopt a “No Nobodies” policy in the workplace and the schools.
Make a list of all the forms that “nobodying” takes and see if others will agree to toss them out in favor of a “No Nobodies” policy. More important than a policy, however, is having a plan for dealing with slip-ups. Old habits die hard and how you go about correcting relapses is more important than noble resolutions. Remember, you can’t cure rankism with rankism. When somebody “nobodies” someone else, it won’t improve things to shame the perpetrator. To make the transition from a rankist environment to a dignitarian one, you have to protect the dignity of perpetrator and victim alike as new habits are established. So, the real meat and potatoes of a “No Nobodies” policy is not the policy itself—adopting it is the easy part—but rather getting people to agree on what’s to be done when violations of the policy occur, which they most certainly will. For starters, the person who is nobodied can gently remind the perpetrator how it feels. Doing this periodically in a public forum is a remedy that often suffices to change what is deemed acceptable behavior by the group. Without a safe way to deal with policy transgressions, a “No Nobodies” policy lacks the teeth to make it self-enforcing.

3. Honor your Inner “Nobody” and your Inner “Somebody” alike.
If you’re “just” you, don’t be ashamed of the nobody within. It’s actually your genius. Your inner somebody is dependent on it for new ideas, so don’t let your somebody put your nobody down. Remind your somebody that despite all the attention it gets, it’s a plagiarist and in danger of becoming a stuffed shirt. Our somebodies are all guilty of stealing intellectual property from our nobodies. Likewise, if you disparage your inner somebody, you’re trashing your meal ticket. It’s best to remember that your somebody and your nobody thrive or starve together. Their proper relationship is like that of the masculine and feminine principles we carry within us—peaceful coexistence and mutual respect. As our internal nobody and somebody make peace and each gets the recognition it deserves, we typically find ourselves better able to extend to others the dignity we’re granting ourselves.

4. Break the taboo on rank.
If you run an organization, make it safe for everyone to question the rightful role of rank, the authority vested in specific positions, and the prerogatives associated with various ranks. Explain that you do not mean to unleash hostility or incite jealousy, but rather to create fairness, and that this may well take multiple “passes,” spread over several years. Transparency, particularly in the form of open budgeting, is a valuable tool for reducing rankism, which thrives in dark places. Freedom to speak up or “blow the whistle” without fear of retaliation is essential to dignitarian organizations. Mutual accountability—everyone to everyone else—is their hallmark.

5. Understand the roles of others and support equitable compensation.
Wherever you find yourself in the ranks, take responsibility for knowing what others do and understanding how their job fits into the whole. Then recognize their contributions and support compensation structures that acknowledge the part they play in fulfilling the organizational mission. There aren’t adequate rules yet for determining the monetary worth of one job as compared to another, but clearly rankist self-dealing over the years has produced an excessive gap between richest and poorest that is incompatible with the values of a dignitarian society.

6. Keep your promises to everyone regardless of their power.
One way to tell if you are using the somebody-nobody distinction invidiously (as a rationalization for rankist behavior) is to notice to whom you keep your promises. In a post-rankist world, we’d all feel as obliged to keep our promises to those whom we outrank as we do to those who outrank us. If you’re not sure you’ll keep a promise, don’t make it.

7. Recognize that servers are people too.
If you’re patronizing a store or restaurant, avoid the mistake of thinking that because “the customer is king” you can be a tyrant. The majority of servers and clerks are doing their jobs as best they can, often under trying conditions and a great deal of pressure. If you’re a salesperson waiting on a customer whom you find unacceptably rude, you may be able to persuade your boss to back you in refusing service. The halo goes to the server or salesperson who can devise a dialogue that will induce rankist customers to become aware of their own damaging behavior and change their ways.

8. Be aware that rankism begets rankism.
If you humiliate those who are abusing rank, they’re likely to take it out on their subordinates—perhaps family members—so there will be no net reduction of rankism in the world. If someone insults your dignity, see if you can break the cycle wherein rankism begets rankism. Every situation requires a tailor-made solution and they may not be easy to devise on the spot. Coming up with something after the fact is not in vain. There will almost certainly be a chance to use it on another occasion.

We picture the political spectrum as a line running from Left to Right, liberal to conservative, Democrat to Republican. For much of our history, the middle was inhabited by conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. By forging a compromise with centrists, one party or the other could muster enough support to legislate and govern. Achieving a political compromise was often slow and frustrating, but, until recently, it was not impossible.

Now, for a variety of reasons, the middle of the spectrum is depopulated. Compromise is seen as a betrayal of ideological principle.

Instead of searching in vain for policies that include some liberal elements (to mollify Democrats), and some conservative elements (to appease Republicans), we could look for a new synthesis of Right and Left that is fundamental enough to generate policies that satisfy deeper concerns they share.

Upon what human value could we build a synthesis of liberal and conservative principles? A brief detour into the history of the Left-Right dichotomy provides a clue as to what’s wrong and how to fix it.

Even as the French Revolution unfolded, there were signs that its rousing slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was a flawed formula for change. Initially in France, and subsequently in a variety of settings, reforms achieved under this banner have often come at the price of misery, mayhem, and murder.

“Equality” has been the watchword for many Leftist political movements, but egalitarian values have also provided ideological cover for oppressive regimes. Though the ideal of Liberty has served as a midwife to democracy, it has also served Rightists intent on pursuing predatory forms of capitalism.

Political reformers who make either Liberty or Equality preeminent have usually been disappointed by the dividends for justice or chastened by blood spilled in what at the outset seemed a noble cause.

Given the dysfunctional state of American politics, the need for a path that Right and Left can travel together is urgent. If conservatives and liberals cannot subordinate their partisan agendas to the common good, world leadership will pass to nations that do manage to transcend this obsolete ideological dichotomy.

I shall suggest here that if a political party were built on the notion of Dignity, instead of on Liberty or Equality, we could forge a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics that incorporates the truths that sustain each of these traditional ideologies.

There is broad consensus that dignity is a fundamental human right. I will suggest here that Dignity trumps Liberty and Equality.

What Is Dignity?

As with liberty, dignity is most readily defined in reverse. We know at once when we’ve been ”indignified.” To suffer an indignity carries the threat of being deprived of social and material resources essential to well-being, even to life itself. The need for dignity is more than a desire for courtesy or respect. To be “nobodied” is an attack on one’s status in the tribe, and carries an implicit threat of exclusion that, not long ago, amounted to a death sentence.

In proclaiming a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Founding Fathers came tantalizingly close to recognizing dignity as a fundamental right. By liberty they meant freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control. Thus, the right to liberty affords a large measure of protection to our dignity. Likewise, the right to pursue happiness is undermined by the indignities of second-class citizenship. It’s not much of a stretch to find in the Founders’ intentions an implicit right to dignity.

More than anything except life itself, people want dignity. They will compromise both their liberty and equality to get it. By identifying actions that insult our dignity, we can, step by step, protect and extend both liberty and equality. A vast edifice of law has evolved to protect human liberty by proscribing behaviors that limit it. Building a dignitarian society will require a comparable, generational effort to develop a body of law that, by setting limits to indignities, protects dignity.

Since indignity is caused not by differences in rank per se but rather by abuses of rank differences—what elsewhere I have called rankism—the task of building a dignitarian society can be understood in terms of disallowing rankism (much as the task of building a multicultural society is one of disallowing racism).

Once you have a name for it, you see rankism everywhere, and it’s revealed as the source of much of the dysfunction now plaguing American democracy. But this is no cause for despair. Time and again, we’ve proven that once we take aim at an ignoble ism (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, heterosexualism, or homophobia), we are capable of delegitimizing it.

What Would a Dignity Party Stand For

All abstract political ideals, pushed to extremes, can be dangerous, and Dignity is surely no exception. The Founding Fathers were too shrewd to entrust “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to good intentions. They realized that reliable governance must be grounded in the assumption that power-holders will inevitably be tempted to interpret any ambiguities in their writ to their own advantage. Accordingly, they drew up interlocking constitutional procedures to protect liberty by making political leaders accountable to each other and the citizenry.

Only as the powers inherent in rank are spelled out and circumscribed are abstractions like liberty, equality, and dignity rendered benign. Absent detailed procedures that come into play when things go wrong—which they invariably do—slogans, no matter how grandiloquent, are empty promises or worse—Orwellian doublespeak.

How would a society in which dignity is preeminent differ from ones shaped by ideologies in which the organizing principle is liberty or equality?

In contrast to a libertarian society, a dignitarian society is one in which economic power is not allowed to confer educational or political advantages on those who have it. For example, you wouldn’t have to be rich to go to college or command a fortune to stand for office.

Much as church and state are separated in modern democracies, economic and political power will be separated in a dignitarian society. This means that publicly funded elections would replace the current practice of corporate and union campaign financing.

In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into impermeable classes, is unacceptable. If you apply yourself and work hard, institutional obstacles must not be insuperable. Thus, in a dignitarian society everyone has access to decent healthcare and is paid enough to work themselves out of poverty in a generation. The American Dream is a beacon lighting the way to a dignitarian society.

Rank itself may be unequal in a dignitarian society, reflecting undeniable differences in our talents, skills, experience, and levels of authority, but equal dignity is accorded everyone, regardless of role or rank, both interpersonally and institutionally.

Historically, conservatives are defenders of the rights of rank. They have fought to see that rank-holders are not hamstrung, that individual initiative and enterprise are not discouraged, that entrepreneurial activity is not stifled, and that, as a society, we keep our competitive edge.

In contrast, liberals see themselves as watchdogs against abuses of rank, the ill-effects of which fall primarily on the weak. We’ll know we’re living in a dignitarian society when conservatives condemn the corruption of power and liberals are willing to entrust rank-holders with the authority needed to lead.

In a dignitarian society, rank may change, but you’re assured of having a place. If you break the law, that place may be a prison. But it is a prison in which your dignity is secure. (Recent experiments show that the best way to reduce recidivism is to treat inmates with dignity while they are paying the penalty for their crimes.)

The politics of dignity spans the conservative-liberal divide. Martin Luther King, Jr. has a place of honor in a dignitarian society—for giving us his dream of dignity for all. So does Patrick Henry—for his immortal “Give me liberty or give me death.” In the economic realm, no institution does more to curtail abuses of power than the free market. On those occasions when the market does appear to have betrayed us, we invariably discover that human beings have interfered with its freedom by rigging it to their advantage.

As a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics, dignitarian politics offers the prospect of closing the ideological fissure that has paralyzed American democracy. Conflicts over liberty and equality do not disappear, but they are reframed and subjected to a higher standard: how do they impact dignity?

Our political history can be read as see-sawing between the ideological poles of Liberty and Equality. So long as the ideological spectrum had a middle, compromise was possible. But absent centrists, ideological polarization leads either to stagnation and decline or to unstable oscillations between the two ideological extremes.

Building a dignitarian society is not a utopian vision, but a natural evolutionary step for an America that can go nowhere so long as liberals and conservative are at loggerheads.

The answer to the impotence and irrelevance of the old parties is a new party—the Dignity Party.

The Dignity Party would draw support from all segments of the Left-Right spectrum. It would attract those who, while insisting upon dignity for themselves, are willing, in return, to grant it to others.

There is good reason to believe that a majority of Americans are ready to sign up for that deal. In any case, running against dignity doesn’t look like a winning ticket. Standing up for both liberty and equality—insofar as each extends dignity—could well be.

Rankism is an assertion of superiority. It typically takes the form of putting others down. It’s what “Somebodies” do to “nobodies.” Or, more precisely, it is what people who think they’re Somebodies do to people they take for nobodies.

It turns out that rankism is the source of most man-made suffering. So, if we could get rid of it, we would be a lot happier. Let me explain.

Before you conclude that rankism is human nature—that we’re like the apes, and they do it, so we have no choice—and dismiss the possibility of overcoming it, consider this list of specific kinds of “put downs” that, not long ago, were deemed cool, but have become a sure way to embarrass yourself:

1. Racism—whites putting and keeping non-whites down
2. Sexism—males limiting and disadvantaging females
3. Ageism—patronizing the young, condescending to the elderly
4. Anti-Semitism—discriminating against Jews
5. Classism—putting down people on the basis of differences in class (more prevalent in former aristocracies like Britain than in America, but also known here)
6. Homophobia—heterosexuals demeaning gays and lesbians
7. Ableism—humiliating people with disabilities
8. Colonialism—subordinating and exploiting another society or nation
9. Workplace and schoolyard bullying; sexual harassment, child abuse, and domestic violence; corporate, bureaucratic, and political corruption
10. …

The list goes on. Once you have a word for it, you see rankism everywhere.

Although all of these familiar isms persist, none of them has the force it did fifty years ago. Most of them are now regarded as distinctly uncool, even grounds for dismissal. The burden of proof, which formerly fell on nobodies, now falls on Somebodies. That’s historical change, and that’s why it is not utopian to think that we might be able to give up putting people down, not just people bearing a targeted trait (such as color, gender, age, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability), but give up putting people down period. For any reason. Period.

You’re probably thinking, What if they deserve to be put down? What if they have screwed up?

Even then, being put down is not what’s needed, nor is it justified. Correction, maybe; put downs, never. Indignity and humiliation have no place in human relations. That is where the above sequence—of no-longer legitimate putdowns—is tending. That is how humans are evolving behaviorally.

Some will think of this direction as long-prophesized. Isn’t this just the Golden Rule? they will say. Well, yes, it is the Golden Rule. But with a difference, a very significant operational difference. This Golden Rule has teeth. In this framework, “Do unto others …” becomes operative. Why? Because many behaviors that violate the Golden Rule can be understood as rankism. The perpetrators of these behaviors are rankists. Once you put a label on ignoble behavior, it is much harder to get away with.

In the same way that sexism and sexists rapidly lost legitimacy once they were named, so, too, will rankists find themselves in untenable positions once a label can be pinned on them. Not overnight. It has taken decades to delegitimize sexism and the other isms, but once the process of de-legitimizing indignifying behaviors begins there is no stopping it until we reach an equilibrium characterized by equal dignity for all.

The title to this piece promised an explanation of WHY we practice rankism. If we look at the kind of “reasons” used to justify the familiar isms, we see that they are now all regarded as specious. Not one of the “reasons” that people trotted out fifty years ago flies today.

So, there must be some hidden reason, something other than the traditional ones, that causes humans to behave in ways prejudicial and inimical to others. Why do we demean, marginalize, and disenfranchise others? Why do we subject others to indignity? Why do we do to others what we would not want them to do to us?

In short, why do we put others down? Or, in this language, why do we tolerate rankism? You’ve probably sensed where this line of questions is going: Why do we sometimes engage in rankism ourselves?

Rankism is a residue of predation. Our species, Homo sapiens, has a long history of predation. We’re not only good at it, we’re the top of the food chain. Of course, we do more than prey on animals and on each other. We also cooperate with each other, we love each other, we have shown ourselves to be capable of living in peace and harmony.

But through recorded history, we have preyed on other tribes, other states, religions, classes, races, etc. Everyone alive today has predatory ancestors and, what’s equally important, ancestors who managed to avoid becoming the prey of other human predators.

The twentieth century may go down as the bloodiest of all centuries, but it will also go down as the century in which many millions of human beings threw off centuries of colonial exploitation by a handful of relatively small nation states. And what is colonialism but one group putting another group down for purposes of exploitation.

Colonialism was long justified (as we once justified racism) in terms of a “superior” people ruling an “inferior” people. Colonialism was an example of people who regarded themselves as “Somebodies” putting down people they took for “nobodies.” And once one group has got another down, it can exploit it until its victims—the nobodies—organize and marshal a commensurate, if not surpassing, power.

We “do” rankism to institutionalize and normalize predation. THAT is why we “do” all the subspecies of rankism (racism, sexism, etc.). We practice rankism to put ourselves in a position to prey on others without exposing ourselves to risk. Predators all target the weak, and humans are no exception.

The reasons we’ve given to justify the familiar isms are bogus. They’re actually not reasons at all, they are excuses. They are excuses for putting people down and keeping them down so we can more safely exploit them in future. Or, so they will not compete with us. Or, simply to feel superior.

When I was a student at Oberlin College in the 1950s, the student body was one percent black and there were virtually no women majoring in math or physics. I’d not have made the basketball team if the college had accepted African-Americans in numbers anywhere near their national percentage. The competition for places in graduate school would have been stiffer if women had been encouraged to pursue careers in science. I was the unwitting beneficiary of a number of rankist practices.

Discrimination disadvantages targets by denying them equal opportunity, and it advantages those not targeted. THAT is why we do it—to give ourselves an advantage. THAT is the real reason. We’ve kept it a secret because it diminishes our achievement to admit the game was rigged in our favor.

Fixing the game is the real reason for rankism. If we can handicap or eliminate the competition, we improve our chances of coming away with the spoils.

But isn’t that just what any animal has to do to survive? Isn’t rankism just “survival of the fittest” at work? In short, isn’t rankism nature’s way?

Yes, rankism is what we’ve done through recorded history—one person to another, one group to another, one tribe to another, one nation to another. Until recently, the gains were judged to exceed the costs. But rankism has now become counterproductive. Instead of giving groups or individuals an advantage, rankism backfires in the same way that racism, sexism, and homophobia do. It undermines group solidarity and hampers cooperation. Rankism stifles creativity, inhibits learning, and taxes productivity. Rankism causes unhappiness and illness. Rankism corrodes organizations and societies that condone it.

This is not just another moment in history. We stand on the threshold of an epochal change. Humans are on the verge of giving up intra-species predation. Not just because preying on other people is bad and causes suffering. No. We are giving it up, wherever we can identify it, for a more compelling reason. Rankism is no longer working. Wars aren’t being won anymore. Trade wars hurt more than they help. Slavery is universally condemned. Wage slavery will not for long outlast its brutal antecedent. Nations that disallow rankism will outperform and out produce those that do not, and lead the world in the 21st century.

As we target rankism, we create a world of dignity for all, not just for some at the expense of others. As we disallow rankism, we build a dignitarian world, a world in which, regardless of rank, everyone experiences equal dignity.

Rankism wins, wins, wins, and then one day it loses. In the end, it loses because organizations and societies grounded in dignity for all trump those driven by the threat of indignity.

Dignity is our destiny. Why not embrace it?

Let’s stop hurting each other. You go first. – Alta

The twentieth century saw many nations consumed by their own enmity. Hatred is inflammatory, and it has now reached a level where to stoke it, from either the Left or the Right, is incendiary. Beyond a certain level, public hatred sours personal relationships. In societies such as prewar Spain, wartime Germany, Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s, hatred in the public sphere had catastrophic consequences in the private.

There are worrisome signs that comity is losing ground to enmity in America. As enmity displaces comity, pride suffers from disunity.

Recently, hatred showed its face in the vituperation unleashed by President Obama’s Nobel Prize. Not only did the president’s detractors seize the opportunity to revile him; they derided anyone who did not share their contempt. Both the president and those who supported the award were casually compared with the most villainous figures of the twentieth century.

This piece is not about Obama-hatred. The response to his Nobel is merely another sign that hate is out of hand. President Bush was also compared to Hitler and Stalin. Before that, the Clintons were execrated. No one party has a monopoly on malice.

Calls for civility have not worked, either with the public or the partisan commentators who model disdain and contempt for their followers. Why is hate resonating with the American public?

Though its cause appears to lie outside ourselves, hate has a secret accomplice within. Its name is Fear. “Hate is the consequence of fear,” Cyril Connolly notes. “We fear something before we hate it.”

Anger congeals to hate when people fear domination and experience the indignity of being discounted. No one, conservative or progressive, likes being taken for a nobody. Hatred takes root when fears remain unaddressed and dignity is disregarded. Imagined indignities can feel as injurious as real ones, and suffice to incite people to commit mayhem and murder.

What’s needed to initiate the winding down of enmity is for at least one party to the recriminations to stop returning indignity in kind and start allaying the fears of its opposite number. This means talking over the heads of media demagogues straight to those whose fears have left them vulnerable to hate-mongers. The epigram notwithstanding, it does not put one side at a disadvantage to “go first” in extending the olive branch. Then, it must be willing to meet indignity with dignity, for however long it takes, while not subtly compromising the process by taking pride in its own forbearance. Maintaining civility doesn’t mean giving in to others’ demands, but it does mean dealing with them respectfully.

With even a modest diminution of fear, we re-conceive our enemies as adversaries. With a hint of mutual value, adversaries become rivals—a term acknowledging each party’s role as a teacher of the other. Finally, by recognizing their mutual dependency, rivals begin to see themselves as partners. By this time, comity has replaced enmity, and incivility is out of fashion.

A second line of defense against hatred is to recognize that when real indignities do occur—and they are inevitable—a flash of righteous anger or a sharp verbal riposte preempts the slow burn of hate. As fear subsides, and we gain confidence to protest against the indignities that befall us and apologize for those we ourselves commit, we deny hate the hothouse required for its gestation.

As we remove hate from the public discourse—either by eliminating the causes of indignity or by restoring agency to indignity’s victims—we give comity a chance. Nothing we could do, at home or abroad, would do more to enhance our safety than putting the “We” back in “We the people.”

Some will say that Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize is premature. “What has he done?” they’ll ask.

Obama got the prize not for doing, but for being. Not for making peace, but for exemplifying something new on the world stage–the politics of dignity.

The Nobel Committee has simply made explicit what many have sensed. President Obama is the herald of dignitarian politics. Not libertarian, not egalitarian, but dignitarian.

Dignitarian politics represents a modern synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics. War between these two battle-scarred, exhausted ideologies shaped both national and international politics throughout the twentieth century. Obama is the first politician of world stature to identify and model an alternative that can meet the challenges of the twenty-first. Awarding him the Nobel Prize is an expression of the hope that our best chance for world peace lies in the dignitarian politics of which Obama is an exemplar.

What is dignitarian politics? It is the recognition that people the world over actually want dignity more than either liberty or equality. In policy terms, it means ensuring dignity for all–within and among nations.

Obama’s dignitarianism manifests in his inclusiveness, his style, and his manners. Domestically, dignitarian politics supercedes identity politics to embrace blacks and whites, men and women, gays and straights, young and old, rich and poor, immigrants and the native-born. The president has also made a point of reaching out to those who disagree with him both domestically and internationally.

The Nobel Prize will put pressure on Obama to make explicit his reasoning for what has been, up till now, a largely instinctive pursuit of the politics of dignity. Dignitarian politics means not condescending to Americans or citizens of other countries. It means not treating political opponents, whether at home or abroad, with indignity. It also means extending dignity in concrete ways, both political and economic, throughout the world. In programmatic terms, the quest for dignity is usefully conceived of as overcoming rankism–the abuse of a power advantage to demean, hold at a disadvantage, or dehumanize those with less power.

Globally, Obama’s politics of dignity makes Americans safer, in contrast to policies that, by humiliating others, leave us vulnerable to retaliation. Indignities inflicted on others make them indignant and so predispose them to side with our enemies, if not turn against us themselves. President Obama understands that part of a strong defense is not giving offense in the first place. He realizes that in an interdependent world, muscular exceptionalism is a losing strategy.

Dignitarian politics has a host of immediate, practical consequences for international affairs. If President Obama is seen as reacting defensively to indignities served up by his opponents, he will appear weak. But if he goes on the offensive, not against those opponents themselves, but rather in favor of the emergent politics of dignity, at which he is a natural, he will prevail. Awarding President Obama the Peace Prize is a bet on the Nobel Committee’s part that the honor will support him in implementing the politics of dignity that he heralds.

Q: What do you mean by “somebodies” and “nobodies”?
A: “Somebodies” are the relatively powerful and successful, “nobodies” the relatively weak and vulnerable. Somebodies with higher rank and more power in a given context can maintain an environment that is hostile and demeaning to nobodies with lower rank and less power in that context. Taken together, those of low rank vastly outnumber those of high rank. If they were to stand together against rank-abuse, they could overcome it. But it’s not that simple because nobodies may also abuse their rank by putting down those of still lower rank. There is usually someone weaker on whom you can pull rank, even if it means kicking the dog.

Q: How can “nobodies” stand up for their dignity?
A: The same way women did in the 1960s. They broke the taboo on discussing gender and initiated a process of consciousness-raising about gender issues. In the process they coined the term “sexism,” which served to identify their grievances and put men on the defensive. In like manner, we must (1) break the taboo on discussing rank, (2) give a name to rank-abuse, and (3) replace the prevailing social consensus, which tacitly sanctions abusing and exploiting the weak, with a new consensus in which rank-abuse is regarded as uncool.

Q: What shall we call rank-based abuse and discrimination?
A: When discrimination and injustice are race-based, we call it racism; when they’re gender-based, we call it sexism. By analogy, rank-based abuse and exploitation are rankism. We won’t be able to confront rankism until we overcome our fear of seeming uppity by using the word in public. Following in the footsteps of uppity women, expect to see more uppity nobodies as the dignity movement gains momentum.

Q: Are you proposing to do away with rank?
A: Not at all. When earned and exercised appropriately, rank is a legitimate and virtually indispensable tool of organization. We rightly admire and respect those who attain it. But when those of higher rank abuse their authority, those of lower rank experience indignity not different in its material and psychological effects from the indignities we now disallow when victims are black, female, elderly, gay, or have a disability. People do not object to legitimate differences in rank, only to rank abuse. Overcoming rankism does not mean doing away with rank any more than overcoming racism and sexism mean doing away with race or gender.

Q. Isn’t rankism human nature?
A: One of the hard-earned lessons of the twentieth century was that racism and sexism are not immutable. While it is virtually inevitable that a power advantage will be exploited initially, it is just as inevitable that such abuse will eventually be resisted. In this sense, rankism, of whatever sort, is no more part of human nature than are racism or sexism. If anything is human nature, it’s that human beings resist abuses of power. Racism, sexism and rankism may be hard to uproot, but they are not immutable. The first two were put on the defensive in the late twentieth century, and rankism itself is no more likely to survive scrutiny than the now-familiar isms.

Q: Why focus on rank instead of class?
A: In modern democracies we interact with authority in terms of rank, not class. In contrast to aristocratic societies, it no longer matters whether your superior has blue blood or blue collar ancestry. What matters is that he or she is your boss, your professor, your doctor, a police officer, or a president.

Q: What are the dynamics of rankism?
A: Rankism occurs when rank-holders use the power of their position to secure unwarranted advantages or benefits for themselves at others’ expense. It typically takes the form of self-aggrandizement and demeaning and exploiting subordinates. It is the opposite of service. Good leaders eschew rankism; bad ones indulge in it.

Q: Where is rankism found?
A: Although it is not necessary to abolish rank to eliminate the abuse of rank, it is true that hierarchies are breeding grounds for rankism. When authorities are not held accountable to those served by the hierarchy, rankism invariably develops. Thus, rankism can be found in bureaucracies, corporations, businesses, workplaces, families, schools and universities, as well as religious, nonprofit, and healthcare organizations. It can be especially hard to confront in non-profits, which see themselves as “doing good,” and may become blind to malpractice within their ranks. Rankism, however, is an equal opportunity malady, and will infect any organization where accountability is lax.

Q: What are the effects of rankism?
A: Rankism distorts personal relationships, erodes the will to work and to learn, taxes productivity, fosters ill-health, and stokes ethnic tensions.

Q: Who are the victims of rankism?
A: Although racism and sexism target specific identity groups, we are all potential victims of rankism. This is because rank is not fixed, but relative. You can be a nobody in one context—and as such vulnerable to rankism—but a somebody in another—and thus a potential perpetrator. Likewise, you can be a somebody one day and a nobody the next. Like racism in the era of segregation, rankism is pervasive and enjoys the support of a tacit social consensus. Rankism afflicts no group more than the working poor, whose hand-to-mouth subsistence makes them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich makes a compelling case that the working poor are in effect unacknowledged benefactors whose labor subsidizes the better off.

Q: What are some examples of rankism?
A: Examples include a boss harassing an employee, a customer demeaning a waiter, a coach bullying a player, a doctor humiliating a nurse, a teacher disparaging a student, a parent belittling a child. The civil rights and women’s movements have managed to put racists and sexists on notice. But there has been no corresponding outcry against abuses that occur within a race or gender, in part because until now we haven’t had a name for them. Blacks insult and exploit other blacks of lower rank, whites do the same to whites, and women to women, all with confidence that such behavior, which does not fit the definition of racism or sexism, will pass for business as usual and escape censure.

Q: Do we really need another “ism”?
A: Yes, but rankism, which includes the other ignoble isms as special cases, is the last of the lot. Identity politics, because of its exclusive focus on the rights of particular groups, can foster resentment in those who feel that its concerns and protections don’t extend to them. But no one is immune to rankism. Everyone has experienced it in some context or other (and most of us have dished it out). So overcoming rankism is an inclusive, unifying goal that reduces the myriad injunctions of political correctness to just one: Protect the dignity of others as you would have them protect yours. Sound familiar? The concept of rankism puts teeth in the golden rule.

Q: Does the dignity movement have a slogan?
A: To succeed a movement needs to know what it’s for and what it’s against. The dignity movement is for dignity and against rankism. Imagine the bumper sticker. Better yet, design one.

Q: What would a dignitarian society look like?
A: A dignitarian society would provide universal healthcare, equal access to quality education and retraining, an equitable tax structure, affordable housing, campaign finance reform that prevents vote-buying by special interests, and compensation compatible with living in dignity. In short, a dignitarian society does not tolerate a dignity gap, as created and maintained by rankism, and that, in turn, will require us to make good on the promise that the Founding Fathers imprinted on the American psyche—liberty and justice for all.

I’m gonna live forever.
I’m gonna learn how to fly – high!
I feel it comin’ together.
People will see me and die. Fame!

I’m gonna make it to Heaven.
Light up the sky like a flame; fame!
I’m gonna live forever.
Baby, remember my name.
– From the musical Fame

I hope to persuade you that the seemingly frivolous title question holds a secret with the power to reshape human relations. That a wish for fame belies the existence of a crippling, undiagnosed malady, one rather like malnutrition, except that it’s a disease of the self, not the body. Let me explain.

In a world that sees people as Somebodies and Nobodies, indignities abound. The primary source of man-made indignity is rankism. By analogy with racism and sexism, rankism is defined as what somebodies do to nobodies. To be sure, not all somebodies abuse their power advantage. We’ve all known somebodies who are devoted to serving others and wouldn’t think of abusing their rank, just as prior to the civil rights and women’s movements there were whites who weren’t racist and men who weren’t sexist. On the other hand, most of us, even quasi-somebodies, have gotten a taste of the indignities routinely visited upon those taken for nobodies.

Rankism is now appearing on the radar screen. To do so, it needed a name, and at last it has one. (If it’s new to you, google “rankism” and see where the meme is taking hold.) But, many victims of rankism are still in the position of women before the word “sexism” elbowed its way into the language. Rankism’s victims know that the indignities to which they are subjected are unjustified, but as yet they have few tools with which to resist their tormentors.

So long as rank-based abuse is regarded as business-as-usual, humiliation and indignity will remain unchecked. There are two ways to deal with this. We can either follow the example of identity politics and de-legitimize rankism (as the civil rights and women’s movements have de-legitimized racism and sexism, and as the gay and disability movements are doing to overcome homophobia and ableism). Or, we can attempt to acquire enough power to place ourselves squarely in the Somebody camp and so enjoy the relative security that status provides in a society saturated with rankism. Everyone knows that it’s imprudent to indignify a somebody. Who hasn’t fantasized getting even with those who put us down when we were vulnerable by shoving our Oscar, Emmy, MVP award, Pulitzer, Nobel, or simply our promotion, in their faces? Accrue enough fame in life and you may even attain immortality and, in the words of the song, “live forever.”

It should be noted that avoiding rankism by seeking status and fame is the same strategem employed by victims of identity groups who sought to blend into the dominant group. Passing as a somebody is like passing as a white or a straight. Until we can dismantle rankism, this is an understandable recourse for sidestepping its cruel injustice.

Dignity assures belonging. It’s more than respect or courtesy. To live in dignity affirms, nurtures, and protects. Dignity is the social counterpart of interpersonal love. In the West Side Story ballad Somewhere, when the lovers sing “There’s a place for us,” they are claiming a right to the dignity of inclusion. Contrariwise, in her famous “nobody” poem, Emily Dickinson captures the indignity of exclusion:

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
The there’s a pair of us—don’t tell.
They’d banish us, you know.

Nobodies are marginalized to the point of invisibility. Since humans are social creatures, banishment carries a threat of being deprived of social and material resources critical to health and happiness, and sometimes to survival itself. No wonder we’re so sensitive to indignity. It poses an existential threat.

Fame promises an escape from whatever ghetto we’re in, real or imagined. It deters detractors and may even squeeze a few crumbs of recognition from those who have begrudged us a smile while we were clawing our way out of Nobodyland. It’s no coincidence that Oscar-winners enjoy better health and longer lives than runners-up.

Like liberty, we’re often unaware of dignity until we lose it. A hint of disrespect may be a test of our resistance to subservience, or a reminder of our place in the hierarchy. A slight is often a precursor to pigeon-holing us as a nobody.

When strangers ply us with questions like “And you are?”, “Who are you with?”, or “Where did you go to school?” they are likely sizing up our power as belied by our affiliations.

The more recognition we can amass, the less likely it is that anyone will dare to nobody us. Fame is a bulwark against indignity. It proclaims our worth to anyone tempted to put us down and threatens retaliation if they persist. It even helps to quiet the critical voices we have internalized—of parents, classmates, and teachers—that echo in our heads long after these naysayers are gone.

The Miasma of Malrecognition

But alas, as everyone knows, there is not much room on the Red Carpet. Acquiring fame is like winning the lottery: many are called; few are chosen.

What then can we do until the dignity movement has garnered the support to put rankism in the doghouse with the other ignoble isms? Fortunately, there is an antidote to indignity more accessible than fame. It is called recognition. We gain recognition through the contributions we make to others and from their acknowledgment. These contributions need not be Oscar-worthy to gain us the dignity we need to thrive. In fact, they can be quite humble in conventional terms. But they must be accurately understood and acknowledged by all involved.

Genuine recognition must be differentiated from both false and inflated praise. The self-esteem movement fell into disrepute because the respect it offered was often disingenuous and exaggerated. What is required instead is a precise understanding and appreciation of each person’s role, and the contributions he or she makes to others. These contributions can be anything into which time, effort, and care have been put—a home, a theory, a dance, a business, a garden, a pie, a blog, any job well done.

Children sense insincerity in exaggerated praise, and soon learn to discount it. The extreme adulation visited upon celebrities and superstars can be deadly. Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Di, and Michael Jackson were first lionized and then destroyed by their responses to celebrity. The situation is reminiscent of the grotesque distortion that ordinary bees impose on their queen by force-feeding her royal jelly.

Recognition is to the self what food is to the body. And like food, too little or too much can be harmful. We must understand the effects on those who suffer from either a deficit or a surfeit of recognition and take steps to avoid malrecognition, much as we now guard against malnutrition. Seeking fame to preempt indignity and heal the wounds of malrecognition is like overeating to protect against malnutrition.

Rankism and its counterpart—the miasma of malrecognition—lie at the source of much of the social dysfunction that now vexes human societies worldwide. Effective policies to overcome school failure, poverty, chronic disease, criminality, discrimination against women, terrorism, and war require a redistribution of recognition and the de-legitimization of rankism.

In a subsequent post, I will describe a dignitarian society, one in which rankism has lost its bite, dignity is secure, and, although some people are better known than others, we seek salvation not via the vain pursuit of fame, but through service.