From Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, Calif., a thirst for dignity is driving protest and heralding social transformation. In every major city and countless small towns, people are refusing to let their voices -- ninety-nine percent of the nation's voices -- be drowned out by the whispers of the most...

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.

The inefficiency of slavery is now obvious, but to George Washington it came as a revelation. While on a visit to Philadelphia, Washington noticed that free men there could do in "two or three days what would employ [his slaves] a month or more." His explanation--that slaves had no chance...

1. Work: Take the trouble to understand how co-workers contribute to getting the job done and acknowledge their contribution.
If you are a boss, it's not enough to avoid treating your employees in a rankist manner (though the example you set will reverberate through the entire organization); you are...

1. Recognize that no one is a nobody.
There's another "N-word" 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.
...

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...

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...

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...

"Ever let the fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home... Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar." - John Keats

Most kids visit their grandparents by car. Not me. Mine lived on Puget Sound and to see them my mother, baby brother, and I (at age...

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...

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...

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....

If I loved you,
Words wouldn't come in an easy way--
Round in circles I'd go!
Longing to tell you ...
How I loved you--
If I loved you.
- Carousel, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

When we fall in love, we don't know...

For years, poet William Butler Yeats famously courted Maude Gonne -- in vain. As part of his suit, he wrote When You Are Old, in which he chides his beloved:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And...

Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else. - Tennessee Williams

The title question comes from an old friend in response to Quests and Questions--A Path to Your Self. When a Facebook friend said she was struggling with the same question, I decided to put off blogging on "Why do...

Every other mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: "So? Did you learn anything today?" But not my mother. "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?" -- Isidore I. Rabi, (1900-88), Nobel-laureate in physics

The knights of the Round Table sought a quest and...

Who are the nobodies? Those with less power. At the moment.

Who are the somebodies? Those with more power. At the moment.

Power is signified by rank. Rank in a particular setting. Somebodies hold higher rank than nobodies. In that setting. For that moment.

A somebody in one setting can...

Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But the body is his book. - John Donne (1572-1631), English preacher and poet

There's the Darwinian's answer--that if our ancestors hadn't been obsessed with sex, we wouldn't be here--which is reductive but incontrovertible. And then, there's the Romantic's answer--which, while ennobling, leaves plenty...

What is rankism? First, some examples; then, a definition.

An executive pulls into valet parking, late to a business lunch, and finds no one to take his car. He spots a teenager running towards him and yells, "Where the hell were you? I haven't got all day."

He tosses...

...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...