Words&Dirt

“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lung the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”

––All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, pg. 468

“If you fail to act in a way consistent with your dignity, people will rightly cease to respect you. You do not have to earn your human dignity––you do not have to do anything special to get it. But if you fail to live up to your humanity, you can lose it. In this respect, it is like Prince Hal’s royal honor, which he did nothing to earn except show up, but which he could have lost by failing to live up to the standards it entailed. And if you lose your dignity, as with your honor, what you should feel is shame.

That comparative honor is conceptually distinct from dignity does not guarantee that it poses no threats to dignity. But if you worried about whether a culture of esteem might leave no place for respect for those who have done nothing special, the concept of ‘dignity’ provides a modern answer. What follows from a commitment to human dignity, I think, is that we should take care to avoid creating honor worlds and honor codes that grant so much standing to the successful that they imply a disrespect for the rest of us.”

––The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, by Kwame Anthony Appiah, pg. 131