In a recent post mariner discussed a book by Congressman Ro Khanna, Dignity in a Digital Age. Very generally, Khanna promoted the idea that legislative issues should receive broader input from around the nation rather than being an isolated, deal-making process within the Congress. The Congressman’s ideology suggested legislating ‘dignity’ rather than ‘rights’.
Mariner suggested that some serious reorganization of the Constitution would be necessary before other parts of the culture could participate. That being said, the idea of protecting every citizen’s dignity has stayed with mariner, puzzling what it really means to legislate dignity rather than rights.
In the New Testament Jesus assures his believers that God guarantees dignity even to the least of us. Each of us, no matter how poor, forgotten or abused we may be, we are all equal and as the Beatitudes suggest, ‘blessed’ in the eyes of God. [That’s what Jesus says; don’t hold mariner accountable for today’s ‘Christians’]
The Christian doctrine suggests that giving dignity to others is a path to self-satisfaction and depends on God’s grace as a dignified reward.
The founding language for the new United States suggests, ‘life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedom of religion’ and ‘all men are created equal’. Bullhockey. This was deliberate language to ward off theocracy, monarchy, social discrimination and any version thereof that the King or the Church of England may have mandated. In truth, the United States was created to run a nation that owned a continent. Implied liberties were that the US had an entire continent of riches for everyone – go for it!
From the beginning to this very day, dignity = success. In the last forty years, dignity has come to mean I am f***ing rich.
The turmoil of the disenfranchised in the United States has led to a collapse in labor, a rejection of traditional national values and a questionable future as artificial intelligence strips away traditional forms of even meager financial security.
‘Rights’ have become threadbare if not meaningless. Mariner invites his readers to contemplate where the path may be to restore dignity to all American citizens.
Ancient Mariner