Leading For Dignity And Wellbeing In A Time Of Dehumanization

There's a man I see nearly every day at the coffee shop I work from. At least once a week he asks me to remind him of my name. We've talked a few times, he's asked what I do, I've explained the nonprofit to him, and he's told me about his work as a civil engineer. We sit at the same big common table.

When he arrives, he always looks at me like I'm a guy he used to know but is surprised to see again. But he can never remember my name. 

Today, with dead seriousness, he said, "Prometheus, right? ...What's your name again?" "It's Bjorn", I said. His friend, a man who also sits at the table with us and with whom he has daily conversations, laughed and shook his head. "I like Prometheus", I laughed, "maybe that will be my pen name".

Really, I shouldn't laugh at him. He always reminds me of his name after I tell him mine, and I'm not sure I'd remember his on my own anyway. But it's funny how it bothers me that he doesn't remember my name, while I have made little effort to remember his.

Someone remembering our name and our story is such a fulfilling experience. And being forgotten by someone you hope would remember you is so disappointing. The feelings of being known or being unknown have deep repercussions to our sense of belonging.

This is true, in part, because it tells us whether we matter. Whether we are worth the brain space. Whether our story is worth telling. It's a humanizing experience to be known, and dehumanizing to feel anonymous. 

Admittedly, I am terrible with names. And I find it deeply disappointing that I fail to recall names of people who I genuinely like. (I have tried to develop some habits to help with this that I'm happy to share). It's especially embarrassing as someone who has reflected a lot upon the power of story-hearing and who advocates story-hearing as an important value. 

There's irony in our inability to listen to other's stories. Our deep desire to be heard sometimes preempts our willingness to listen. Our deep desire to relate sometimes dampens our understanding of the story of our partner. Our deep desire to be known sometimes delays our willingness to know.

On a societal scale, we also see this irony in the debates over civility and reconciliation. In an attempt to protect ourselves, we insist that our political or social adversaries adopt the practice of vulnerability first. We try to leverage our opponents into conceding kindness before embracing it ourselves. And when we adopt language and behavior that dehumanizes, we too often engage in "what-aboutism" that obscures the choices involved in our participation in dehumanization.

I'm not arguing for blanket tolerance of "both sides" when the values of inclusion go up against the aims of exclusion. There are such things as right and wrong. But it is a failure of our moral imagination to recognize the depravity of xenophobia, white supremacy, and misogyny (to name only a few of the clearly wrong practices we face), and believe that we will bring about a different world through dehumanizing practices.

It feels justifiable. We cry out, "this is the only language they can understand!", and, "I didn't start the fight but you better believe I'm not backing down!" The catharsis is real, if fleeting. And, it can look like bravery to see a person we agree with return fire with fire.

But not only is this dehumanizing, it is also delusional. 

We have been duped into believing that peace can come through violence. We've bought into naive views of zero-sum, scarcity-based negotiations over our ways of life together. We've allowed the mechanisms of combative politics and competitive economics to color our understanding of what is possible among communities. We'd rather consume dignity and wellbeing than deal with the messy, often disappointing experience of creating dignity and wellbeing.

In so many cases, we who desire dignity and wellbeing for all have ended up recreating and reinforcing the illusions of separation and self-interest. We are co-creators of violent spaces, rather than practitioners of radical love.

I want to be careful not to suggest that people who are oppressed or abused are in some way responsible for the creation of their pain or trauma. I don't want to suggest that survivors of violence must sit with their perpetrator regardless of the violation. A survivor's path toward wholeness is deeply personal, seasonal, and resists sweeping statements. Reconciliation is an important and beautiful dream, but one that requires survivors to be attentive to their own dignity and wellbeing with the accompaniment of community.

For we survivors whose path takes us to the work of reconciliation, and for others of us also trying to lead community transformation for dignity and wellbeing, humanizing engagement with perpetrators is a necessity.   

Leading for dignity and wellbeing means insisting upon our own humanity while also humanizing our adversaries. 

This brand of leadership is certainly not what you see on display at the national level right now. Headlines and national debates are dominated by people with titles we associate with leadership, but acting in ways that undermine the common good.

I'm not just talking about civility. This isn't a discussion of how polite we are as we dehumanize our political opponent. There are clearly dehumanizing policies being advocated by people who still function within the political norms of liberal democracy. Civility alone will not change that, and abandoning civility will not prevent it.

Leading for dignity and wellbeing appeals to a deeper need. A radical love of our "other", in whatever form they take. It means asking the questions, "what dehumanizing stories are being told that support the illusion of separate interests?", and, "how can humanizing encounters be facilitated to undermine these illusions of differentiated self-interest?"

If this sounds far-fetched, you've probably begun to understand the gravity of this challenge and the difficulty in addressing it.

However, the ingenuity of community is limited more by our inability to imagine what is possible than by what we are actually able to create once we embrace possibility. 

Stretching our ability to imagine is a capacity we must build. Stories abound of communities discovering possibility and rising to meet it with ingenuity. (I suggest this book and this book for some interesting accounts). Shared in these stories are accounts of leaders among leaders, practicing uncommon ways of engaging each other and the world they inhabit, in order to create dignity and wellbeing for the common good.

We need more uncommon leaders working for the common good. And we need to reject the false choice between acting with moral clarity and embodying our vision of dignity and wellbeing for all. It's as false as our fear that taking time to know our other is to remain unknown ourselves.

If we do not yet see a way to practice both, we have not done enough reflective work to move our efforts from reaction to creation.

How are you practicing humanization in a time of dehumanizing policies and rhetoric? What vulnerability could transform your community if someone risked acting first? How can you practice humanization even as you condemn and act against dehumanizing policies and practices? How do you stretch your moral imagination?