What is dignity of human life? Do we enjoy such a dignity in our workplaces, or lived places? Or is one’s dignity even recognised or appreciated by every other in your life? I have a new friend who does voluntary work with migrants in Malaysia. He says that their “dignity is denied from the moment they leave their country all the way up till when they land here; then they are further undignified by our lack for respect of basic human rights and values”.
A study of this value or appreciation of/for human dignity as applied and deployed in the workplace was my doctoral thesis research project. The first problem I ran into was with some of my very own professors. They wanted me to define dignity from an entirely secular perspective (because we are a school of science and not of religion or philosophy) without deploying any sacred values or religious premises.
My first hurdle
One professor wrote in the review of a graduate school final paper I submitted, “In countries like Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, it is okay to use this sacred view of dignity, but in secular America you cannot use this concept since we, in American Social Science, have rejected any notion of Absolute Good.”
I took those comments to another Professor, the late Jerry B Harvey, a Professor of Psychology in the Management Science Department, who said, “Dr X has rejected any notion of Absolute Good, but she cannot speak for me and the academy of American Social Science.”
On that day I learned to cross my first hurdle in ‘defining dignity’; one has to learn to move beyond individual limitations of professors and their personalised views about the Sacred or Secular world and views. Theirs is always a limited individualised and personal view of life. Therefore also I had to develop and introduce the concept of ‘worldviews’, as a compound word.
What is sacred and secular?
After the initial setbacks caused by Drs X and Y (another professor and organisational theorist) refusing to serve on my doctoral committee because of personal views and their limitations to support my thesis on human dignity; my doctoral committee chairperson, Dr Peter Vaill, advised me to invite the University Professor of Islamic Science and Philosophy at George Washington University (GWU) to join my committee.
I invited and he served in my doctoral committee because he was one of the foremost global advocates for the Sacred Worldview (see ‘Knowledge and the Sacred’ by SH Nasr).
In Nasr’s argument, the sacred is always, by definition, the full set and the secular would always remain a subset. Thereby and therefore, the secular is always “the absence of specific spiritual values in the definition of a human person”. The secularists believe in the fully liberated individual who has no concern or submission to any ‘other’, viewed as a bigger reality than self. Self defines all such truths for secularists.
In the Christian worldview, the limitations of human personhood include the idea of sin as the absence of the capacity for perfect good-doing in all human beings. Most other religious views would also admit some form of human limitations to achieving perfection, as is.
They all thereby prescribe some means or methodology to achieve this so-called perfection in a being status. Perfection then guarantees ‘nirvana’ of some form or another. Reaching ‘heaven’ in the other life is part and parcel of the search for meaning in life.
What then is our human problem?
My research focussed on ‘the study and appreciation of the meaning of dignity in the workplace’. I was concerned with and wanted to define dignity and all its implications in the workplace. Having done that now I want to seek to define the same in the world place and global environment.
Dignity has both a public face and a private face. The public face includes one’s ethnic heritage, culture, and language and belief systems. That is the external and visible dimension. But there is also a private face to dignity. One’s personality, background, training, work experience and educational levels also help define one’s private face of dignity.
Our human problem with dignity is when within organisational cultures; one is not respected for one’s inherent dignity and therefore treated like the means so some larger purpose or ends. In feudal cultures there is belief that allows ‘others’ to lord over, as greater or better human beings than mere mortals.
Similarly in decadent liberal cultures, the smarter or cleverer ones can cheat, steal, and destroy others so long as one is not caught doing it. These ones learn to steal within organisational cultures and learn how not to get caught. The real victim therefore is the moral public square which becomes naked of good and wholesome values, and rife with cheats and thieves.
Dignity denied?
In every human culture the inherent human dignity of every person needs to be explicitly recognised, promoted, and protected. People are not just a means to some larger end but each is a human being in and of their personal dreams, aspirations, and purpose of life. That defines their sense of destiny. They must not only be regarded as such but also treated with significant due regard in every circumstance and situation.
Most organisations often prioritise its interest above that of the person or worker. But often, these are left to the whims and fancies of the personality and temperament of the so-called managers. Although they too are workers, they choose to define dignity of other workers, by sheer compliance to their command and control function. Power and authority therefore corrupt good values.
Good senior management who are team players understand the philosophy and organisation culture of the founders of any organisation. For older social or private clubs and organisations, unless the managers and directors (as representatives of owners) truly understand the founding members’ philosophy, they could quite easily run the organisations aground.
Recently I met with one of the most senior managers of a club I am a member in, who is a long-serving and credible individual but who said he had given notice to leave because the “leadership of the club lacks integrity”. Dignity is always denied when personal integrity is compromised; especially by leadership. May God bless Malaysia.
