"Thymos is something like an innate human sense of justice; people believe that they have a certain worth,
and when other people act as though they are worth less -- when they do not recognize their worth at its correct value -- they become angry. The intimate relationship between self-evaluation and anger can be seen in the English word synonymous with anger, "indignation". "Dignity" refers to a person's sense of self-worth; "in-dignation" arises when something happens to offend that sense of worth."
The End of History and the Last Man
by Francis Fukuyama
page 165
"Thymos... constitutes something like an innate human sense of justice, and as such is the psychological seat of all the noble virtues like selflessness, idealism, morality, self-sacrifice, courage, and honorability."
Fukuyama
page 171
"People evaluate and assign worth to themselves in the first instance, and feel indignation on their own behalf. But they are also capable of assigning worth to other people, and feeling anger on behalf of others."
Fukuyama
page 171
"...during the civil rights era, it was perfectly normal for people to say that the purpose of a particular piece of civil rights legislation was to recognize the dignity of black people, or to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to allow all Americans to live in dignity and freedom.
Fukuyama
page 203
"Every individual has dignity. The principles of human rights were drawn up by human beings as a way of ensuring that the dignity of everyone is properly and equally respected, that is, to ensure that a human being will be able to fully develop and use human qualities such as intelligence, talent and conscience and satisfy his or her spiritual and other needs. Dignity gives an individual a sense of value and worth. The existence of human rights demonstrates that human beings are aware of each other’s worth. Human dignity is not an individual, exclusive and isolated sense. It is a part of our common humanity. Human rights enable us to respect each other and live with each other. In other words, they are not only rights to be requested or demanded but rights to be respected and be responsible for. The rights that apply to you also apply to others. The denial of human rights and fundamental freedoms not only is an individual and personal tragedy, but also creates conditions of social and political unrest, sowing the seeds of violence and conflict within and between societies and nations."
from Understanding Human Rights
"In a society so completely, and complexly, organized as ours, in a world so interdependent and so disturbed, the choice between individual desires and social necessities becomes difficult.
It is made needlessly difficult when the basic value of freedom -- human dignity -- becomes confused with either comfort on the one hand or hardship on the other; neither measures human dignity. ... Dignity does not consist in being well-housed, well-clothed, and well-fed. Gandhi never lost dignity; in the deepest sense of the word he never lost security even when he lived in prison, was clothed with a loin cloth, and subsisted upon goat's milk. Other men , with "royal blood," have lived in luxury yet had no shred of self-respect and deserved no respect from others.
Dignity does not derive from a man's (sic) economic situation, nor from his vocation. It rests exclusively upon the lively faith that individuals are beings of infinite value."
Goals for Americans
by the President's Commission on National Goals,
1960
Ch 1, "The Individual", by Henry Wriston. Page 49
"What the protesters are saying is that human dignity and environmental sustainability are simply too important to be patiently prayed for like rain during a drought. They should not be belated side-effects, but the very foundations of our economic policies."
"Do the dead and dying bother you? Those worth your respect would have volunteered."How shall we reply?
"'People with low self-esteem tend to injure themselves rather than other people. Those with high self-esteem tend to damage other people, either because they are reckless and dangerous or because they're unpleasant', [London School of Economics professor Nicholas Emler] told Reuters.
Young people with very high self-esteem are more likely than others to hold racist attitudes, reject social pressures from adults and peers, and engage in physically risky pursuits such as drink-driving (sic) or driving too fast, the study said.
High self-esteem was unrelated to real accomplishments. 'What causes people to rise in management hierarchies is largely unrelated to their objective performance, but is related to their ability to convince their superiors they should be promoted'....
But his study, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the UK's largest independent social research and development charity, found that relatively low self-esteem was not a risk factor for delinquency, violence, drug use, alcohol abuse, educational under-attainment or racism.
It was, however, a risk factor for attempting suicide, depression, teenage pregnancy and being victimized by bullies, he said in the study, which followed the fortunes of children and young people over time."
"They will not be humiliated into their senses. They will resist again and again, more violently each time, and you will hit back, as if just a little more humiliation will do the trick. It's not that the Arabs will make a holocaust, it's that we will do it, because by adopting this idea, our humanity (see Confucianism: JEN) is going out the window. There's a reason they call it "humanism", it's because it's supposed to apply to all humans."
"There is a line of intolerable provocation and humiliation beyond which popular and governmental reactions are likely to become uncontrollable. It is the business of the governments to find out where that line is, and to stay well back of it."
"The Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell axis now running things under Bush II dusted off a "plan" they prepared under Bush I, for U.S. policy in the post-Cold War, but had no chance to execute. It meant shifting from a goal of defeating the Soviet Union to one of ruling the entire world so that no rival could ever rise again. It sounds absurd, but you can read it in official jargon in last month's Harper's. Colin Powell told Congress in 1992, 'I want to be the bully on the block', so all others will know 'there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the U.S.' This has been hailed on the right as a welcome rebirth of imperial thinking. Actually, it's more like post-imperialism, since it assumes no rival empires. ...
There's no doubt the U.S. can, and is, implementing its Plan. But people will react because human beings react to attempts at dominating them."
"Shows like Jerry Springer and Survivor not only insult our intelligence, they actively disparage human virtues like compassion, dignity, idealism and autonomy. They despise our pride."
"Modesty is a matter of the heart. The word modesty literally means to have a proper estimation of one's own self. This means to not think too highly or too lowly of yourself, but to really have peace in knowing who you are. This is why modesty is all but lost in society today, because people are very confused about who they are — especially women."The Twelve Tribes / Commonwealth of Israel philosophy is based on the Bible.