…there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. – G. K. Chesterton, from The Man Who Was Thursday

As the debate on same-sex marriage intensified, The New Yorker ran a cartoon showing an old couple in their living room, the husband holding a newspaper. “Gays and lesbians getting married,” he muses, and then adds, “haven’t they suffered enough?”

The punch line brings a knowing smile to anyone who has experienced the bonds of marriage. Why do people pair off? And when they do, why not settle for the looser ties of friendship or partnership? Why seek the freighted marriage bond?

As one-half of a couple, each person is matched by one other, so neither can be out-voted. In any group larger than two, allies can be sought to break a tie and settle a disagreement. Put more than two people together, and politics enters the picture.

In contrast, neither party in a couple has a right to the mantle of impartiality. Absent agreement, there’s stalemate. Grandstanding is of no avail–the stands are empty. Theatrics yield to inner certainty, which, as it develops in one party, has a way of drawing the other towards common ground. In a group, politics intrudes, and the goal of politics is consensus. But, as one person in a twosome, we’re forced to articulate our personal truth. In so doing, we define and create unique adult selves.

A relationship with just one person is therefore a place to grow up. “The point of the sword is hard to find,” and many who might not find it on their own, or as part of a larger group, do so as one half of a couple. This may be an underlying reason that the institution of marriage has not been displaced by more communal arrangements. Partnerships promote individual maturation better than the geometries of larger groups.

The stronger the walls of a container, the more pressure it can hold. Given its universality and history, marriage has stronger, higher walls than alternative vessels. Nothing quite holds our feet to the fire like marriage. That’s why, when it comes to relationships, it’s deemed the gold standard.

In most long-term relationships there are moments when we hate our partner’s behavior. In the heat of battle, we may even believe we hate the partner him- or herself. By taking a stand against specific behaviors, partners expose the false in each other. Romantic love gives way to married love as partners negotiate this rocky road together. A formal, socially-sanctioned partnership can contain disagreements long enough to allow us to discover that our apparent antagonist is, in the larger game of life, our ally.

Will gender equality, control over reproduction, and financial independence of women and men alike transform the institution of marriage into something new? Or, will leveling the conjugal playing field simply raise the level of the games played thereon? No one knows, but regardless, it won’t give any person or group the right to reserve unto itself the most durable crucible of personal transformation. That crucible is marriage.

I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow.
– John Keats, from a letter to Charles Brown (1820)

A friend of mine hates good-byes and says so when it’s time to part. Eager to dispel the awkwardness that seems to grow as farewells are prolonged, I sometimes ere on the side of abruptness. What can our feelings about leave-taking tell us about ourselves?

Our distaste for good-byes is a reminder of our unfathomable mutual dependence. An individual self cannot come into being, let alone endure, absent the recognition of others. We depend on others not only to nourish our material persons, but to sustain our immaterial personas.

Recognition is as essential to the self as nutrition is to the body. That humans are social animals, understates the case. We are existentially interdependent—body and soul. Deprive us of human contact and we begin to disintegrate. That’s why solitary confinement is torture.

Malnutrition cripples a child. Similarly, malrecognition—a diet of indignity—warps the psyche. Chronic indignity sows indignation. Turned inward, indignation makes us ill. Turned outward, it erupts in Columbine, Virginia Tech, and in other violent rampages.

Emily Dickinson wrote:

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.

Emily knew that what stands between us and exile is affiliation. Autonomy is a myth and exposing it as such has political implications that we are only now beginning to comprehend.

Have you noticed that old folks tell the same stories over and over? They are desperately trying to shore up identities that, because of a paucity of recognition, are breaking down. By telling us their stories, they are staving off the disintegration of self, one day at a time. You can’t really blame them—their struggle is at once heroic and tragic. That you’ve heard it all before is a measure of their need to repeat themselves. One day you’ll need a comprehending ear to offset the recognition deficiencies that plague old-age.

Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. … this is the magic glass … .

So spoke Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby Dick. Without that “magic glass,” we gradually cease to be. I see you seeing me and I exist. I see you seeing me see you and we exist. Mutual re-cognition is the glue that holds us together, not merely as friends, but as individual selves. In co-creating and exchanging a blizzard of signals, verbal and non-verbal, we are reinforcing the synapses that form the neural nets that encode our very selves.

Good-byes are poignant preludes to the leave-takings and withdrawals that deprive our psyches of the sustenance they need to maintain our selfhood. As such, every good-bye is a premonition of disintegration, a foretaste of death, another step on the path to “adieu.”

No wonder we’re not fond of good-byes.

[This Q/A pair is one of a series of short answers to life-long questions, collected from friends and strangers alike. Other questions include: Why do we seek a partner? Why do we exaggerate? Why do we want to travel? What is enlightenment? Why do some prefer dogs, others cats? Why do we lie? Is there a better game than war? Must love end? Why is life hard? A tagline for the series might be Emerson’s observation: “It is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another." If my answers provoke you to come up with answers of your own, they’ve served their purpose. There is no gift like a good question. Moreover, a question can be re-gifted endlessly. If you have one you’re willing to share, please leave it here.]

We were quick to look at the Gates Affair through the lens of race. But it soon became clear that race was not the whole story. To bring things fully into focus, we needed a second lens—that of rank. The lens of race highlights the well known injustices of racism. The lens of rank reveals the less well recognized indignities of rankism.

Rankism has not received the attention that racism has, but perhaps its time has come. Before looking through the lens of rank, a common misconception must be cleared away. Rank, in itself, is not the problem. Like race, rank just is, a fact of life. Rank tells us who’s in charge. Used properly, it’s a useful organizational tool. The problem lies not with rank per se, but in rank abuse. By analogy with racism, sexism, and ageism, abuse of the power signified by rank is rankism. Once you have a name for it, you see it everywhere.

Rankism is the principal cause of manmade indignity. As indignities accumulate, it becomes harder to repress the indignation they seed. Beyond a threshold that varies according to personal history, indignation erupts. It is not hard to understand why Professor Gates felt humiliated by treatment he interpreted as another instance of the racial profiling that has long dogged African-Americans and others lacking the protections of social rank. On top of that, a pillar of common law has it that “a man’s home is his castle.” Homeowner Gates might reasonably have assumed that he outranked a law enforcement officer on his home turf. While giving vent to his indignation can be questioned, it’s not difficult to understand his anger.

Now turn the lens of rank on the attending police. Police are trained to assume command of unruly situations. While on duty, the understanding is that our guardians outrank us, precisely so they will have the authority they need to stabilize volatile situations. As public servants, we expect the police to exercise their authority according to strict rules that safeguard individual rights and the public interest. On those occasions when our guardians do abuse their rank, victims’ only resort is to take the matter to higher authority. That minorities and the poor, more than others, must pursue justice in this way is evidence that rankism falls disproportionately on them.

The Gates Affair, and the discussion it has provoked, were incubated in America’s racial history and aggravated by confusion about rank and its proper use. To reach a judgment on the Gates Affair, one must decide whether or not Professor Gates improperly attempted to assert his rank—as a Harvard professor or as homeowner—over the policeman. It is equally germane to ascertain whether or not Sergeant Crowley overstepped his legitimate authority in arresting Professor Gates. My purpose here is not to rehash, let alone try to pass judgment, but rather to find, in our obsession with the incident, a clue to the crux of the matter. The Gates Affair is that rarest of teachable moments—one that provides an opportunity to drive home an old lesson while offering us a new one.

The Gates Affair reminds us of our sorry history of racial profiling and gives new impetus to ending it. It also suggests that we’re more likely to eradicate profiling if we show our guardians the same dignity that we seek for ourselves.

But, more important than assigning blame in the case is turning the lens of rank around and seeing what it tells us about ourselves and our relationships. The clash between Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley grips us because it mirrors our own struggles with rank and its rightful use.

How much deference is due our boss, our spouse, elders, children, teachers, doctors, religious leaders, and elected officials? Where does the proper use of rank end, and rankism begin? When it is we who are outranked, do our superiors treat us respectfully? If not, why not? In those areas where we hold rank over others, do we protect their dignity as we would have them protect our own?

At long last, we’ve got racism in our sights. But rankism is still largely below the radar. Like racism and sexism before they were identified, rankism is endemic, ubiquitous, and seemingly impregnable. It’s an unrecognized source of dysfunctionality in families, schools, the workplace, religious institutions, and heathcare. Like the more familiar isms, now finally on the defensive, it too will have to be rooted out of our social institutions if we are to perfect our union.

The Gates Affair offers an opportunity to widen our lens so as to take in all varieties of rank abuse and to recognize the indignities that arise therefrom. The professor and the policeman will have served us well if the incident with which they are identified is seen as a milestone towards an America in which, without exception, everyone—the public and the police, employees and employers, students and teachers, blacks and whites, young and old, gays and straights, everyone—is held in equal dignity.

Epilogue to All Rise–Things You Can Do For Dignity

America is broken. Even if we pull through the current economic crisis, recovery won’t last absent an overhaul of our primary institutions.

• One out of ten Americans is now unemployed and the recovery is expected to be jobless.
• Fifty million Americans have no heath insurance; two million, no home.
• Two million Americans are in jail.
• Our public schools have fallen behind those of most developed nations.
• Higher education is priced out of reach of the middle class.
• Our infrastructure is in an advanced state of disrepair.
• We rank first in greenhouse gas emissions.
• Immigration, once our pride, is now our shame.
• We’re living on credit and leaving the debt to our children.

The crisis is compounded by corruption of the democratic process. Politicians who owe their seats to private and corporate money are not easily persuaded to put the public interest over the special interests of their benefactors.

If our predicament were one in which there was an emergent consensus about the proper remedy, President Obama might be able to orchestrate an epochal makeover–as President Johnson did in the civil rights crisis. Most Americans knew then that African-Americans were victims of racism and that segregation was wrong. But today, reformers are themselves divided and many of the issues are of such complexity as to defy broad public comprehension.

Despite his formidable rhetorical gifts, President Obama has yet to tell us how to repair our broken institutions. But he may be doing something even better. He may be showing us the way. America’s problems run deep, and solutions will have to be grounded in a new politics–the politics of dignity.

President Obama is a herald of the politics of dignity. He’s an instinctive dignitarian. Not libertarian, not egalitarian. Dignitarian. It matters not when and how he acquired his dignitarian manner, or that he may not conform to it one hundred percent of the time. What matters is that in his personal relations and political positions he sets an example of respecting human dignity, regardless of role or rank.

It was Obama’s inclusiveness that first brought him to national attention. As the keynote speaker of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then Illinois State Senator Obama struck a dignitarian note. In asking us to see ourselves not as citizens of red states or blue states, but rather as citizens of the United States, Obama gave us a preview of a new politics of dignity that can extricate us from our current crises. The dignitarian politics that seems to come naturally to President Obama represents not a compromise, but a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics, and in doing so provides an analysis that reconciles conservatism and liberalism.

Dignity for whom? you ask. Dignity for all. For blacks and whites, for men and women, for gays and straights, for young and old, for rich and poor, for immigrants and the native-born, for conservatives and progressives. Obama is also trying to engage friend and foe alike in a global dignitarian dialogue. Dignity for all.

What is the politics of dignity that President Obama exemplifies? It goes far beyond good manners, respect, and civility, though it includes these. Dignity is achieved by methodically eliminating indignities–interpersonal, institutional, societal, and international.

The American people know that indignities their nation has inflicted on the world have diminished America’s stature. And, they know that the daily humiliations that they and their fellow citizens are enduring are incompatible with lives of dignity and signify institutional failure.

How could Obama’s presidency address the indignities that manifest as unemployment, corporate corruption, failed schools, no health insurance, foreclosure, homelessness, recidivism, and the subversion of our democracy by moneyed special interests?

To combat indignity, we need to be clear about its cause. The cause of indignity is not power, nor is it power differences. It is rather the abuse of power. To oppose indignity, we do not have to eliminate differences in power, nor the differences in rank that merely reflect them. Persons of high rank who treat their subordinates with dignity are admired, if not loved.

Rank, in itself, is not the culprit. The problem is rank abuse, and it has grown to epidemic proportions. Abuses of rank have no place in a dignitarian world. Taking a page from the women’s movement, if we are to combat rank abuse effectively, we must give it a distinctive name, preferably one that puts perpetrators on the defensive. By analogy with racism, sexism, and ageism, abuse of the power inherent in rank is rankism. Once you have a name for it, you see it everywhere.

The outrage over bonuses for failed Wall Street executives is indignation over rankism. The power of lobbyists to override the democratic will of the people is rankism. The deregulation of the financial industry, which made a virtue of self-aggrandizement and facilitated predatory loans and Ponzi schemes, led to the financial ruin of millions and created the worst recession in four score years.

As racism denigrated and disadvantaged blacks, and sexism disenfranchised and restricted women, so rankism marginalizes and exploits the working poor, keeping them in their place while their low pay effectively subsidizes everyone else. As class membranes become less permeable, resignation, cynicism, and indignation mount.

An America in which the American Dream has become a mirage is not an America worthy of the name. The achievability of that dream is what made this country the envy of the world and made us, its citizens, proud. Making that dream good again is a challenge comparable to overcoming the second-class citizenship that has limited blacks, women, gays, and others. Building a dignitarian society is democracy’s next evolutionary step.

A dignitarian society will naturally conduct itself differently on the world stage. Nowhere is rankism more dangerous than in foreign relations. International terrorism has multiple, complex causes, but one factor over which we do have a say is rankism between nations. There is no fury like that borne of chronic humiliation. President Obama’s demeanor suggests that he understands that a vital part of a strong defense is not giving offense in the first place. His speeches abroad have begun to restore good will toward the United States, and while good will alone does not constitute a national defense, it surely beats the ill- will that we have garnered in recent years.

President Johnson, following his personal instincts, led his fellow countrymen through an about-face on segregation. Much as overcoming a legacy of racism is the work of several generations, so too is the task of building a dignitarian society. President Obama knows that solutions won’t arise out of politics as usual. His personification of dignitarian politics resonates not only with Americans but around the world. The next step is to turn from exemplifying the politics of dignity to enunciating its policy implications and molding them into a legislative agenda for a dignitarian America.

Help make “rankism” a household word—by using it—so those who are dismissed as “nobodies” can pin the label “rankist” on their abusers.
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The only thing as important as how we treat the Earth is how we treat each other. Ending rankism brings dignity to all and to Mother Earth.
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End Rankism! Don’t Put Up with Indignity! Dignity for All! 20 things you can do: http://bit.ly/bJa2r
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Looking for allies to use social media to grow a movement dedicated to the proposition of equal dignity for all. http://www.dignity4all.org
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Malrecognition usually takes the form of too little recognition. Idolization is rarer form, but it too can be fatal—Jackson, Presley, Monroe.
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Malrecognition is too little, or too much, or unwarranted recognition. Recognition is to the self what food is to the body.
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Michael Jackson died of “malrecognition.” Everyone knows what malnutrition is—and that you can die of it. But what is malrecognition?
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“Without a theory, the facts are silent.” – Friederich A. von Hayek “Without the facts, theories are dreams.” – Thomas J. Scheff
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Wherever you find a society that harbors a big income disparity between its richest and poorest, there is RANKISM. http://bit.ly/QgMxd
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Idolization does to humans what royal jelly does to a bee. It inflates and distorts and renders them vulnerable, dependent, even grotesque.
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To make change you must know 2 things: What you’re for and what you’re against. What Moms Are Rising Against at HuffPo: http://bit.ly/NDCb9
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Rank differs from class, and rankism from classism. Rankism—putting others down—is the wellspring of social inequality. http://bit.ly/deVqL
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Idolization is one form of malrecognition, which is as harmful (Jackson, Presley, Monroe) and as dangerous (terrorism) as is malnutrition.
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The idolization we foist on our troubadours is like the royal jelly force-fed a Queen Bee. Results are similar: distortion and grotesquerie.
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What is rankism? It’s what we’re seeing in Iran—it’s when one group uses power to put down, demean, discriminate against, or exploit others.
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The route from liberty to justice goes by way of dignity. As we stand up for dignity, economic justice becomes a realistic political goal.
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To secure dignity for all, we must target RANKISM—the source of indignity—as civil rights movement targeted racism.
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The original N-word is unspeakable. The new N-word is “Nobody,” a rankist epithet, & like its predecessor, headed for disuse.
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A dignity movement against rankism (humiliating, dissing, disadvantaging, or exploiting other people) is democracy’s next evolutionary step.
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When the word “rankism”—putting people down—is as well known as “racism” and “sexism,” it will be as indefensible as they are.
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At some point in this century, humankind will retire its old predatory strategy—exploiting the weak—in favor of protective strategy for all.
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We’ve tried Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity as keystones of human governance. If we added Dignity, wouldn’t the world work for everyone?
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The Ayotollahs don’t seem to understand Vartan Gregorian’s deep insight that “Dignity is not negotiable.”
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Rankism is what somebodies do to people they see as nobodies: they put them down. For 20 ways to combat rankism: http://bit.ly/B2tq6.
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If we can get “rankism” into the vocab. of regular folks, it will do for them what “sexism” has for women.
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Hard data from British team proves bleeding-heart liberals right: More Equal Societies Do Better. Explained at HuffPo: http://bit.ly/YPqwx
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New Community Model in prisons drops recidivism rate from 50 to 5 %. Pamela Gerloff blog at HuffPost: http://bit.ly/1myY8v
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Dignity works, even and especially, in prisons. A new program drops the recidivism rate from 50 to 5 %. http://bit.ly/Tzs26
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War is SO Over! (It simply doesn’t work any more. In our time, predation & indignity yield to protection and dignity for all.)
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Dignity is not negotiable. – Vartan Gregorian
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Dignity, YES! Rankism, NO!
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The Civil Rights, Suffragette, Modern Women’s, & Gay Movements are all campaigns that produced behavioral change on a national scale.
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An ass had the task of carrying the statue of Isis, & when the populace honored the statue, he thought the honor was his.–Georg Lichtenberg
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Aristotle could have avoided thinking women have fewer teeth than men by simply asking Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth. -Bertrand Russell
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Pres. Obama’s appeal comes from practicing the politics of dignity: Everyone is a somebody; no one’s a nobody. Rankism’s out; dignity’s in.
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Obama heralds a new politics of dignity. Dignitarian politics transcends libertarian & egalitarian politics to embrace equal dignity for all.
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Rankism is to mental health as pollution is to physical health. Living with chronic rankism is as bad as smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day.
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During the 21st century, humankind will retire its ancient strategy of preying on the weak & adopt a new survival strategy—dignity for all.
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President Obama is an instinctive dignitarian. More than most, he understands that dignity works and treats others without regard for rank.
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Dignity works in prison. A dignitarian community model in Virginia lowers recidivism rate from 50 to 5%. http://bit.ly/1aqE5E
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20 ways to combat rankism: http://bit.ly/B2tq6. Rankism is what somebodies may do to those they (mis)take for nobodies.
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Dignitarian politics is a synthesis of libertarian and egalitarian politics that can deliver on social justice. http://www.dignity4all.org
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The route from liberty to justice goes by way of dignity. As we stand up for dignity, economic justice becomes an achievable political goal.
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The only thing as important as how we treat the Earth is how we treat each other. Ending rankism brings dignity to all and to Mother Earth.
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What is rankism? Briefly: http://bit.ly/qz3yO. In depth: http://dignity4all.org. Rankism creates indignity & indignity creates indignation.
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What is rankism? It’s abuse of the power attached to rank. Typically, it’s what “Somebodies” do to “Nobodies.”
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“Somebodies and Nobodies” & “All Rise” & “Dignity for All” define rankism and call for dignity movement to overcome it. http://bit.ly/MysYQ
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If we establish the right to die with dignity, can we not also establish right to live in dignity: healthcare, higher ed, living wage 4 all?
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Dignity protected in constitutions of South Africa, Germany, Canada, Bangladesh.
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“To have a name is to be.”—B Mandelbrot (father of “fractals”). Likewise, calling abuses of rank “rankism” renders them real and resistible.
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Know you what it is to be a child? … it is to believe in belief … — Francis Thompson, British poet (1859–1907)
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Looking for fellow geeks who can figure out how to use social media to build dignity movement to fight rankism. HELP! http://dignity4all.org
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Imagine the Self not as singular and immutable, but as a superposition of selves-in-waiting, any one of which may someday take center stage.
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“Modern art [is a] cultural expression of a larger political gamble on the…possibility of living in change & without absolutes.”-K. Varnedoe
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A dignity movement that targets indignities by disallowing rankism in all its many guises is democracy’s next natural evolutionary step.
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Subspecies of rankism: racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, ableism, classism, corruption, bullying, torture, exceptionalism, one-upmanship.
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Genes encode bodies that reproduce & promulgate their genetic constituents. Memes encode selves that promulgate their mimetic constituents.
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Rankism is what “somebodies” may do to people they (mis)take for nobodies: presuming themselves superior or more important, they condescend.
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“War is a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.” —Wm. Cowper (18th c). We need to devise a better game than war.
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“Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself, and then comes to resemble the picture.” — Iris Murdoch (as quoted by Simon Leys in NYRB)
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A “dignitarian” society aims to equalize dignity regardless of role or rank. It disallows rankism, as now we deligitimize racism, sexism…9:58 AM Apr 28th from web
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Nobodies of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our shame.

One of the lessons of identity politics is that success requires knowing not just what you’re for, but also what you’re against. Blacks are for racial justice and against racism. Women are for gender equity and against sexism.

Moms are for ending discrimination against mothers (fair pay, flexible work, paid sick days, maternity and paternity leave, quality childcare and healthcare for all kids). But what is MomsRising against? Who or what could possibly oppose such laudable goals?

Unlike racism, sexism, and other familiar forms of discrimination, there is no group that defines itself as being against mothers. We don’t see politicians boasting that they have put mothers in their place. No, the opposition is subtler than that, and that makes the job of MomsRising, and other organizations that work for dignity and justice, harder.

Women and mothers are up against something invidious, pervasive, and formidable. It’s not just sexism, though that’s part of it. Neither is it racism, though of course racism makes things harder for mothers of color.

What mothers are up against is a tacit consensus that their jobs don’t matter as much as others’ jobs. Their work, their lives, their chance to fully realize themselves is held to be of secondary importance. Despite the love that most people have for their own mothers, on some invisible social scale, mothers rank low.

We need a name for discrimination of this sort, discrimination based on social rank. Absent a collective name, victims of rank-based abuse are in a position similar to that of women before the term “sexism” was coined. Writing in 1963, Betty Friedan characterized the plight of women as “the problem that has no name.” By 1968, the problem had acquired one—“sexism.” That simple word galvanized a movement that went on to de-legitimize a constellation of abuses linked to gender.

By analogy, the term “rankism” denotes abuse and discrimination based on rank. Put simply, rankism is what somebodies do to those they take for nobodies. To the degree that society still regards women and mothers as nobodies, they will be vulnerable to rankism. Of course, no one goes around calling mothers “nobodies.” But, relative to others, they are somehow deemed less worthy, they are taken for granted, their needs are assigned lower priority.

“Rankism” is a new name for an ancient impulse: the tendency to hold oneself superior to others, to pull rank, to put others down. Rankist attitudes are what women and mothers are up against. Rankism is the invisible obstacle that MomsRising faces in its campaign for dignity and justice.

Rankism is still below the radar. And it is still rampant. For example, when a boss humiliates a subordinate, a doctor disregards a nurse or a patient, a priest abuses a child, or a teacher or professor denigrates a student, that’s rankism. Somebodies with higher rank and more power can maintain an environment that is hostile and disadvantageous to those of lower rank, much as whites used to get away with mistreating blacks. Now, it’s mothers who, in all the ways described by MomsRising, must struggle to make a go of things in a society that, though it may praise them individually, puts them down collectively.

Apart from having gone nameless for so long, why is the malignancy of rankism hard to target and to treat? The reasons fall under two headings: institutional obstacles and interpersonal obstacles. Let’s begin with the latter.

Although we are all nobodies to someone, we are equally all somebodies to someone else. Unlike the traits that consign us to one identity group or another, rank is not fixed. We may be riding high one day, and be taken for a nobody the next.

Rank is also contextual. You can be a somebody at work, but a nobody at home, or vice versa. Because our society is predicated upon, and saturated with, rankism, our dignity is at risk if we lose rank, just as a gain in status makes us more secure.

Identity politics has functioned, until now, in arenas where victims are clearly demarcated from perpetrators. Victims have relatively clean hands, so it is easier to make accusations of prejudice stick.
In contrast, we are all victims of rankism, and truth be told, many of us are perpetrators. Accordingly, overcoming it is more complex than the campaigns against the trait-based isms. Complex, but not therefore impossible. The day we pin the label “rankism” on indignifying behaviors (as women pinned “sexism” on a range of disempowering behaviors), will mark the beginning of its demise.

Institutional barriers to a dignity movement against rankism are also high. Rankism is woven into the fabric of society as was racism in segregated America, and it won’t be any easier to uproot. But, rankism has an Achilles’ heel and it resides in this sobering fact: dignity works. The productivity gains—in the workplace and the schools—that will result from eliminating indignities and malrecognition will match, if not exceed, those that have resulted from eliminating corporal punishment and malnutrition.

For example, in the workplace the ill-effects of bullying, rigid work schedules, inequitable pay, and other abusive practices are now the subject of a growing body of research documenting the damage done not only to individual employees but to the companies themselves. It turns out that rankism is no better for the bottom line than racism or sexism. All the isms are self-inflicted wounds that limit the productivity and so drain away the life-blood, of enterprises harboring them.

Rankism is not merely unfair, it’s inefficient, counterproductive, and dysfunctional. Indignity and humiliation may have worked in societies where people had few options, but those days are gone. The young are increasingly unwilling to put up with rankist environments. A culture of dignity provides a competitive advantage because it means happier, healthier, and more creative and productive participants. What does it matter if employees work together in lockstep—so long as they get the job done?

To build a multicultural nation, we had to give up racism. So, too, to build a dignitarian society, we shall have to give up rankism. As women and mothers become aware of the rankism that pervades society, call it by name, and declare their unwillingness to put up with it, objections to their policy proposals will melt away. Embracing the broader goal of dignity for all goes hand in hand with securing dignity for a specific group because rankism is the hidden obstacle blocking them all.

Achieving equal dignity by rooting out rankism is the work of several generations, but the process has now begun. Mothers have always defended the dignity of their families. Now it’s time for us to stand up for the dignity of mothers. Once enough of us are on our feet, the demand for justice will be irresistible.

Bleeding-Heart Liberals Proven Right: Too Much Inequality Harms a Society

by Robert W. Fuller and Thomas Scheff

An important new book substantiates something progressives have long intuited. Published first in Britain and now headed for the United States, it’s by epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson and health researcher Kate Pickett, and its title conveys its message: The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

Since the French Revolution, belief in the social benefits of egalitarianism has been central to progressive thought. Now Wilkinson and Pickett have produced some hard evidence for this plank in the liberal platform. They show conclusively that the wellbeing of whole societies is closely correlated not with average income level but rather with the size of the disparity of income between the top 20% and the bottom 20%. Countries with smaller disparities like Norway, Sweden, and Japan (4 to 1) have fewer medical, mental, crime, and educational problems than countries like the Britain, U.S. and Portugal with higher disparities (7 or 8 to 1). France and Canada both have mid-range disparities (6 to 1) and place in the middle on health, education and psychological indicators. Even within American society, it’s not the absolute income level of a state that determines its social wellbeing, but rather the level of income disparity. Economic inequality and social dysfunction go hand in hand, and Wilkinson and Pickett have marshaled the evidence to make the case.

It’s one thing to demonstrate the social benefits of egalitarianism, and another to spell out the underlying political, economic, and psychological mechanisms that explain these findings. Only as we understand how the level of income disparity affects social wellbeing will we be able to generate the political will to undo the damage wrought by gross inequality.

Dignity and Its Enemy—Rankism

An explanation of the social dysfunction associated with large income disparities can be organized around the notion of rankism. Rankism is defined as a generalization of the familiar isms and encompasses them all. Specifically, in the same way that racism insulted the dignity of blacks, and sexism was an affront to the dignity of women, so, too, rankism is behavior that diminishes human dignity—black or white, female or male, gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, poor or rich, etc.

Rankism is the abuse of power attached to rank. A difference of rank alone does not cause indignity, but abuse of rank invariably does. Put simply, rankism is what somebodies may do to nobodies. But just as not all whites were racists, so too not everyone of high rank is a rankist.

Therefore, rankism, not rank differences, is the source of indignity. Indignity causes indignation, and indignation takes its toll either on the health of the individual who must contain it or it manifests as withdrawal or anger/aggression.

Rankism functions socially in the same way that racism does. No one doubts any longer that racism cemented in large, self-perpetuating income disparities between the white majority and black victims of slavery and segregation. In a parallel way, rankism marginalizes the working poor, keeping them in their place while their low salaries effectively make the goods and services they produce available to society at subsidized prices. This process, whereby the most indigent Americans have become the benefactors of those better off, is vividly described by Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed. In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David Shipler depicts the less fortunate as disappearing into a “black hole” from which there is virtually no exit. As class membranes become ever less permeable, resignation, cynicism, and hostility mount.

In the economic realm, the market mechanism, at least when it’s working, functions to limit abuses of power, but political arrangements can trump the market. Large enough disparities in economic power may be used to influence politics so that laws and regulations perpetuate the economic gap.

Once established, economic inequality, if it is steep enough, also perpetuates exploitation because it imprisons the poor in their poverty. When missing a single paycheck means homelessness, people are not likely to demand better wages or working conditions. As Rev. Jim Wallis says, “Poverty is the new slavery.”

There is another important reason that eightfold factors in wealth disparity cause more social distress than factors of four. When the top 20 % are eight times better off than the bottom 20 %, far more people are vulnerable to rankism because people in the middle quintiles are also separated from the top and bottom quintiles by significant differences in economic status and power. Instead of being confined within a narrower spectrum (characterized by, say, a disparity factor of four or five), people are spread out over a broader economic range. When the first (poorest) quintile is further from the top (richest) quintile, so, too is the second quintile further from the fourth, and the third from the first and the fifth. These larger differences in economic power make possible more abuse. Economic gaps soon become dignity gaps. As rankism gains ground, more people experience its indignities and humiliations, and these individual wounds compound into illness and social dysfunction.

Dignity is to the identity what food is to the body—indispensable. By confirming our identity and affirming our dignity, respect and recognition provide assurance that our place in the group is secure. Absent periodic and appropriate validation, our survival feels at risk. Without proper recognition, individuals may sink into self-doubt and subgroups are marginalized and set up for exploitation.

Dignity and recognition are inseparable. We can’t all be famous, but fortunately recognition is not limited to the red carpet. We can learn to understand the effects on those who are either denied a chance to seek it, or from whom it is otherwise withheld. Once aware of the deleterious effects of “malrecognition,” we can act against it as we now take steps to prevent malnutrition.

Like malnutrition, malrecognition lowers the body’s resistance to disease and reduces life expectancy. For most people, just the opportunity to contribute something of themselves to the world is enough to stifle the indignation that accumulates from exposure to indignities caused by rankism. This means that malrecognition, like its somatic counterpart, is a preventable and treatable malady. To increase the supply of recognition we need only discern people’s contributions, acknowledge them appropriately, and compensate them equitably. When the average compensation of the richest 20 % exceeds that of the poorest 20 % by factors greater than four or five, the poor experience this as unfair, unjust distribution of recognition. The deleterious consequences of malrecognition manifest in the familiar array of social problems tracked in The Spirit Level—mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity and teenage pregnancy, an elevated homicide rate, a shorter life expectancy, and lower educational performance and literacy rates.

More than either liberty or equality, people need dignity. In contrast to libertarian or egalitarian societies, a dignitarian society is one in which everyone, regardless of role or rank, is treated with equal dignity. The findings reported in The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better suggest that as societies become more dignitarian they will, in the words of the subtitle, “do better.”

A startling example of this proposition comes from, of all places, our prison population where indignity and malrecognition are endemic. Recent work done under the auspices of The Center for Therapeutic Justice in Virginia indicates that the recidivism rate for inmates who serve their sentences in a dignitarian community drops from 50 % to 5 %.

Social Isolation and Depression

In explaining their findings, Wilkinson and Pickett put the emphasis on the lack of trust fostered by large wealth disparities. Put the other way round, the connectedness experienced in dignitarian communities is the equivalent of social oxygen.

Some thirty years ago a physician (Wolf) and a sociologist (Bruhn) teamed up to explain why, in the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, there was a group of poor Italian immigrants whose health and welfare were vastly better than their neighbors. After a twenty year study of immigrant families in Roseto, and a comparable study in a nearby, non-immigrant town, they found that health and welfare were dependent on what they called cohesion, the opposite of isolation and the antithesis of distrust. As the younger generation adopted American ways of geographic and status mobility, their health and welfare levels decreased to the level of the neighbors.

In addition to directly affecting health and welfare, disconnection has an effect on the emotions. Just as being closely connected with others leads to authentic pride, so disconnection leads to shame and humiliation. The isolated person is apt to feel rejected, if not completely worthless, and live in a more or less permanent state of shame.

One way of defending against the shame of malrecognition is to withdraw, sometimes all the way into the isolation of depression. Such withdrawal then leads to further isolation, which in turn compounds the rejection by the community and accelerates the downward spiral. Again, malrecogntion compounds into social dysfunction as confirmed in this eye-opening book.

Conclusion

In addition to caring for the weak, humans are still capable of predatory behavior towards those lacking the protection of social rank. Rankism is the residue of more overt predatory practices of the past. Now that rankism has a name, the miasma of malrecognition is visible and we are in a position to begin rooting it out. Rooting out rankism, like overcoming racism, is a multi-generational undertaking. Despite the enormity of the task, we are likely to look back on the 21st century as marking an epochal transformation from a predatory to a dignitarian era. Disallowing rankism betters human wellbeing in the same way that disallowing racism and sexism improve the lives of blacks and women. The hard evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett have provided demonstrates the benefits of dignitarian societies and validates the egalitarian instinct that has long been a mainstay of the liberal creed.

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References

Bruehn, John G. and Stewart Wolf. 1979. The Roseto Story: An Anatomy of Health. Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press.

Fuller, Robert W. 2003. Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank. British Columbia: New Society Publishers.

Scheff, Thomas. 2009 A Social Theory and Treatment of Depression. Journal of Ethical and Human Psychiatry 11, 1, 37-49.

Wilkinson, Richard and Pickett, Kate. 2009. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allan Lane

Wolf, Stewart, and John Bruhn. 1993. The Power of the Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart Disease. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

The Center for Therapeutic Justice, http://www.therapeuticjustice.com/. A video of the Community Model cited in the article is available at http://www.communitymodel.org>www.communitymodel.org

[Thomas Scheff is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. He is past president of the Pacific Sociological Association, and
past chair of the Emotions Section of the American Sociological Association.
He holds honorary doctorates from Karlstad (Sweden) and Copenhagen (Denmark) universities. His books include Being Mentally Ill; Microsociology;
Bloody Revenge; Emotions, the Social Bond, and Human Reality; and Goffman
Unbound!: A New Paradigm (2006).

He has published more than a hundred articles in scholarly journals. There
are two current articles that are relevant to the post on The Spirit
Level. A Social Theory and Treatment of Depression (Journal of Ethical and
Human Psychiatry 11, 1, 37-49, 2009) concerns the social and emotional
spirals caused by indignities when anger is turned inward toward
self. The second article, A Theory of Spree Shooting (forthcoming in the
Journal of Aggression and Violent Behavior) shows how shame/anger spirals
lead to aggression and violence when the anger is turned outward onto
others.]

Pamela Gerloff just posted at HuffPost re the dignity-based Community Model for prison reform that shows great promise in radically reducing recidivism. See her post at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-gerloff/what-if-released-inmates_b_217100.html

I visited a jail in Virginia recently that has implemented the Community Model described in Gerloff’s post. Indeed, it is as she describes. I spent 3 hours with 45 inmates locked in large room and watched as they processed events in a system of self-governance that would put most university faculties to shame. The watchword was dignity. Inmates treated each other with dignity, staff treated inmates with dignity and vice versa. Many of these men had never known dignity in their early lives, and were examples of how indignity causes indignation, which may sometimes erupt in violence. Now, in jail, they were finally experiencing what it is like to live securely in dignity with other people. The stunning drop in their rate of return upon release shows, once again, that dignity works. Chronic rankism, malrecognition, and indignity adversely affect productivity, creativity, and the bottom line of every organization or society in which they are the default state. The Community Model of Morgan Moss and Penny Patton offers America a way out of what is surely one of our largest embarrassments: our high rate of incarceration and recidivism. If anyone reading this knows how to get this message to Senator Webb, please do so. And to Governor Schwarzenegger, and President Obama. Our leaders must be made aware that there is a proven solution to the prison crisis at hand.

Pres. Obama’s appeal comes from practicing the politics of dignity: Everyone is a somebody; no one’s a nobody. Rankism’s out; dignity’s in.