Dignity – The Quiet Foundation of Our Humanity

 

Dignity – The Quiet Foundation of Our Humanity

There are moments in life and work that stay with us.

Not because they were dramatic,
but because something essential was at stake —
in the way one human being met another.

In my years in child welfare, I have carried many such moments with me.
Encounters where something in a person either opened… or closed.

And over time, one question has followed me:

What does it mean to meet another human being with dignity?

What does it mean to meet another human being with dignity?

This question is not abstract.

It lives in everyday encounters — in families, in professional practice, in conflicts, and in the fragile moments where people feel seen… or unseen.

In this reflection, I find inspiration in the work of Donna Hicks, whose “dignity model” emerges from decades of experience in international conflict mediation. Her work reminds us of something both obvious and easily forgotten:

Every human being has dignity — not as something earned, but as something inherent.

And yet, we constantly violate it.

The Difficult Distinction

One of the most challenging insights is this:

We must distinguish between the person and their actions.

A person always deserves dignity.
An action does not necessarily deserve approval.

This sounds simple — but in practice, it is profoundly difficult.

When someone harms another, our immediate reaction is often to withdraw respect. But if we do that, we risk entering a spiral where indignity produces more indignity.

I have seen this in families.
In child welfare.
In professional settings.
And in society at large.

The pattern repeats itself:
When dignity is denied, something in the human being closes.

When Dignity Is Violated

In social work, we meet people whose dignity has been deeply wounded.

Sometimes through neglect.
Sometimes through violence.
Sometimes through subtle, repeated experiences of not being seen.

In such encounters, something important becomes clear:

Healing begins when a person is recognized again as a subject — not an object.

This is where Martin Buber becomes deeply relevant.

Buber describes two fundamental ways of relating:

• I–It: where the other becomes an object
• I–Thou: where the other is encountered as a living human being

A violation of dignity turns a person into an It.
Healing requires a movement back toward Thou.

But how do we make that movement?

Here, Hans-Georg Gadamer offers a quiet but important insight:
Understanding is not something we apply to another person — it is something that happens between us.

To understand is to risk oneself.
To remain open.
To allow the other person’s experience to challenge one’s own assumptions.

And perhaps this is where dignity begins to be restored:
not in explanation, but in genuine openness.

The Individual and the Demand

Yet there is another dimension — more inward, more demanding.

Søren Kierkegaard reminds us that each human being stands as a single individual, called to take responsibility for how we live and how we meet others.

Dignity is not only something we give.
It is also something we must choose to uphold, even when it is difficult.

Especially when it is difficult.

To meet another person with dignity when they have hurt us
is not a natural reaction.

It is an ethical decision.

A decision that reveals something about who we are becoming.

The Elements of Dignity

Donna Hicks outlines ten elements of dignity. Rather than treating them as a checklist, I read them as reminders of how we ought to be present with others:

• To accept another’s identity without reducing them
• To include rather than exclude
• To create safety — both physical and psychological
• To truly listen and acknowledge
• To recognize the value in others
• To act with fairness
• To trust rather than suspect
• To seek understanding
• To empower
• And to take responsibility when we fail

These are not abstract principles.
They are small, concrete acts — repeated over time.

Ubuntu – We Become Human Together

There is an old idea, expressed in the African concept of Ubuntu:

“A person is a person through other persons.”

Dignity is not something we carry alone.
It is something that is given, received, and sustained in relationship.

Here, Ubuntu, Buber, and Gadamer meet:

• In Buber’s I–Thou
• In Gadamer’s understanding as dialogue
• In the lived experience that we become human with and through one another

A Personal Reflection

Looking back on my own years in child welfare, I have seen how easily dignity can be overlooked — especially when behavior is difficult, chaotic, or even harmful.

But I have also seen something else:

When a person is met with dignity, even in the midst of conflict or failure, something shifts.

Not always immediately.
Not always visibly.

But something opens.

Perhaps this is where practical philosophy begins —
not in abstract theory,
but in the way we meet another human being.

Closing

To treat another person with dignity is not a technique.
It is a choice.

A quiet, demanding, and deeply human choice.

And perhaps, in the tension between
openness (Gadamer),
relation (Buber),
and responsibility (Kierkegaard),

we begin to understand what dignity truly asks of us.

References

Martin Buber
Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Charles Scribner’s Sons. (Original work published 1923)

Hans-Georg Gadamer
Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd rev. ed., J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1960)

Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard, S. (1985). Works of love (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1847)

Donna Hicks
Hicks, D. (2011). Dignity: The essential role it plays in resolving conflict. Yale University Press.

I have written the text with a few suggestions from OpanAI/ChatGTP which also made the illustrations 

Violence as a Political Project

 Violence as a Political Project

Power, powerlessness—and our responsibility to act

There are times when violence no longer feels distant. It appears closer—more ordinary—almost woven into everyday life.

This reflection grows out of such a concern.

Inspired by Hannah Arendt, John Lundstøl, and others, I want to suggest something simple, yet demanding:

Violence is not only an individual problem.
It is also a political one.

 

When violence becomes culture

I recall the debate around Crash. Some cinemas refused to show it. Others insisted it must be shown in the name of freedom.

The disagreement pointed to something deeper:

Where does critique end—and where does fascination begin?

Violence is not only something we do.
It is also something we imagine.

And what we repeatedly imagine, we may slowly begin to accept.

 

A violent inheritance

History reminds us that violence is not an exception.

The last centuries have brought war, extermination, and systematic destruction on a massive scale—often carried out by ordinary people within organized systems.

This is perhaps the most unsettling truth:

Violence is human.

And yet, it remains something we must continuously resist and understand.

 

From lifestyle to social suffering

In postwar Norway, we learned that political action could change harmful patterns. Lifestyle diseases were addressed through laws, campaigns, and collective effort.

Something worked.

Today, we face something different:

• violence
• abuse
• social fragmentation

Even in a peaceful society, many children grow up with neglect, instability, or fear.

These are not isolated problems.

They reflect something in the way we live togethe

 

Power and violence

Here, Hannah Arendt offers a crucial distinction:

Power and violence are not the same.

Power arises when people act together.
Violence, by contrast, is instrumental—it relies more on tools than on people.

And the difference matters:

Where power is present, violence becomes unnecessary.
Where violence dominates, it often reveals powerlessness.

 

When action disappears

We often describe modern society as free. Yet many experience something else: a loss of influence over their own lives.

When the ability to act is weakened, something can take its place.

Violence.

Not always in dramatic forms—but in everyday life, in language, in relations.

Violence becomes a distorted form of action.

 

A different response

Some years ago, young people attempted to burn the home of an immigrant family in a Norwegian municipality.

The response could have been limited to punishment.

Instead, the mayor invited the community to gather. People came. They spoke. They listened. They took responsibility together.

Something changed.

This is power in its most meaningful sense:

People acting together.

No violence was needed—because power had been restored.

 

Rage—and the possibility of change

Violence often grows out of rage.

But rage is not simply irrational. It arises when people experience that something is wrong—and could be changed—but is not.

This makes violence a political question.

If we want to reduce it, we must take seriously the conditions that produce it:

• exclusion
• humiliation
• lack of voice

Control and punishment alone are not enough.

What matters is whether people experience themselves as actors in their own lives.

 

A closing reflection

In my years in child welfare, I have often seen that violence does not grow from strength, but from vulnerability.

And I have seen something else:

When people are met with dignity—and given the possibility to act—something shifts.

Perhaps this is where practical philosophy begins.

Not in abstract answers,
but in a simple question:

How do we create a society where people can act—without needing violence?

 

References

Arendt, H. (1970). On violence. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Lundstøl, J. (1992). Den autoritative mann. Universitetsforlaget.
Skjørten, K. (1994). Voldsbilder i hverdagslivet. Universitetsforlaget.
Storr, A. (1968). Human destructiveness. Penguin.

I have written the text and ChatAI/GPT has tightened it slightly for me and also made the illustrations. 

 

The Ethics of Memory

A reflection from practice

Since the early 1980s, I have worked with cases involving sexual abuse of children and violence in close relationships. Again and again, I have found myself sitting with people who try to remember.

Not just what happened —
but how it felt,
and what it has done to their lives.

In every case, memory has mattered.

In therapy, something decisive often happens when a person begins to remember — and to find words for what has been carried in silence. I have returned to this many times: What is memory, really? And why does it matter so deeply that we remember?

At times, the question becomes uncomfortable:

Would it not be easier to forget?
To leave painful memories behind and move on?

But experience tells me something else.

We do not remember only to know.

We remember in order to become.

Memory, truth — and uncertainty

We often think of memory as a kind of knowledge. Something that gives us access to the past — and therefore to truth.

But memory is not stable.

I have seen how several people can live through the same event — and remember it very differently. In a courtroom, we ask people to tell the truth. Yet what they can offer is always their memory of the truth.

And sometimes, even careful systems of judgment fail.

This is where the question begins to deepen:

If memory is uncertain,
what does it mean to use it well?

Memory as something we do

Gradually, I have come to think of memory not only as something we have, but as something we do.

We work with memory.
We return to it.
We shape it.

In this sense, memory is a form of action.

And because it is something we do, it can also be done badly.

We can avoid it.
Distort it.
Repeat it in ways that keep us trapped.

Ethical questions arise exactly here — in the space between using and misusing memory.

This is not a new idea. Already in Plato’s Sophist, memory is described as a form of imitation (mimētikē technē). Some forms of imitation bring us closer to truth, others pull us away from it. And much later, Friedrich Nietzsche would argue that we often misuse our historical consciousness — even to the point where it becomes something like an illness (Nietzsche, 1873/1981).

I recognize something of this in practice.

When memory becomes work

In therapy, memory is rarely a simple act of recalling.

It is work.

Sigmund Freud described this in a way that still resonates deeply. In Remembering, Repetition and Working Through, he observed how patients often do not remember directly. Instead, they repeat.

The past returns — not as a clear story,
but as patterns, reactions, symptoms.

And this repetition can block memory.

What is needed is patience. A slow process of working through — what Freud called Erinnerungsarbeit (memory work) (Freud, 1962).

I have seen how true this is.

Memory cannot be forced.
It has to be lived through — again, but differently.

In Mourning and Melancholia, Freud also shows how memory is tied to loss. To remember is often to mourn. And here, Paul Ricoeur offers a powerful insight: memory itself can be understood as a form of mourning (Ricoeur, 1999).

We remember because something mattered.
And because something was lost.

When memory shifts: on false memories

In my work, I have sometimes encountered something that at first feels unsettling:

A memory that does not quite hold.

Not because the person is lying —
but because the memory itself seems to have moved.

Over time, details change.
Events are rearranged.
Sometimes, something deeply painful disappears —
and something else takes its place.

We often call this false memory. But that term can easily mislead us if we hear it as accusation. In many cases, it is not about deception. It is about protection.

Memory is not a recording device. It is shaped by emotion, by fear, by meaning. When an experience becomes overwhelming — especially when it threatens one’s sense of safety, or even life itself — the mind does not simply store it as it is. It works on it.

Fragments may be pushed away.
Other elements may be strengthened.
Connections may be altered.

In this sense, a “false” memory may emerge not as a failure, but as an attempt at survival.

I have seen individuals carry memories that seem to protect them from something even more painful — something that may be too difficult to face directly. The mind does not always say: this is what happened. Sometimes it says: this is what I can bear.

This places us in an ethically complex space.

The question is not only whether a memory is true,
but also what it does for the person who carries it.

Sometimes, moving too quickly toward correcting a memory can break something fragile. At other times, the work is to slowly approach what has been avoided.

Research within cognitive psychology also reminds us how reconstructive memory is — how easily it can be reshaped by suggestion, context, and emotional need (Loftus, 2005).

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that memory is not simply true or false.

It is alive.

Memory and identity

At a deeper level, memory is closely tied to who we are.

Ricoeur suggests that the real question is not “What am I?” but “Who am I?” (Ricoeur, 1992).

Yet we often try to answer the who with a list of whats.

And something essential is lost.

Identity is not fixed. It moves. It changes.

Ricoeur describes this as the tension between sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse) (Ricoeur, 1984–1987).

This is where memory becomes vulnerable.

Closing reflection

In my work, I have seen how memory can wound —
but also how it can heal.

Not by returning us to the past as it was,
but by helping us live with it in a different way.

Perhaps this is where an ethics of memory begins:

Not in perfect truth.
Not in complete understanding.

But in the ongoing work of remembering —
honestly, carefully, and with responsibility
for both past and future.

References 

Arendt, H. (1992). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Freud, S. (1962). On metapsychology: The theory of psychoanalysis. Penguin.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. Harper & Row. (Original work published 1926)
Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366.
Nietzsche, F. (1981). Untimely meditations. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1873)
Plato. (1997). Complete works. Hackett.
Ricoeur, P. (1984–1987). Time and narrative (Vol. 1–3). University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as another. University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1999). Memory and forgetting. In R. Kearney & M. Dooley (Eds.), Questioning ethics. Routledge

This text is mine, refined in a conversation with OpenAI/ChateGPT

The illustrations are created by OpenAI/ChatGPT with my instructions

To understand another human being, begin with yourself

 

To understand another human being, begin with yourself

A reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s psychology

There is something paradoxical about research in the human sciences.

We often speak of “results,” as if the goal were clear answers—something we can underline and settle. But when the subject is the human being, something resists closure.

Perhaps what truly matters is not the answers, but the questions.

Research, then, is not a finished product, but a movement. A conversation that does not end. Søren Kierkegaard writes within this movement—not to conclude, but to open.

“To live is to remain inwardly engaged.”

Not as a doctor—but as one of the sick

Kierkegaard does not write as a detached observer. He refuses the safety of distance.

“I am not the physician—I am one of the sick.”

To understand another human being is not to stand outside life, but to step into it. It requires risk. Involvement.

The observer who is involved

Kierkegaard distinguishes between observers.

The curious one sees much.
The scientific one is worthy of respect.
But the one who is inwardly concerned sees what others do not.

This is not a weakness.

In my own experience from child welfare, it was often in moments of unease—when something touched me—that understanding deepened. Technical knowledge was not enough.

Engagement sharpens perception.

Unum noris omnes

Unum noris, omnes — If you know one, you know all.

For Kierkegaard, this “one” is yourself.

All understanding of others begins here.

Not as introspection alone, but as ethical self-reflection. To study human beings is to be personally involved. There is no neutral position.

When life breaks open

Human life begins in immediacy—before reflection.

Then something happens.

A crisis. A loss. A disruption.

And we become aware—of ourselves, of choice, of responsibility.

Kierkegaard calls this awakening spirit.

These moments are rarely comfortable. But they are often decisive.

The task of becoming oneself

The human being is a synthesis:

of the finite and the infinite,
of necessity and freedom.

And the self?

The self is the relation that relates itself to itself.

We are not simply given to ourselves. We must become ourselves.

This is where despair appears.

• Not wanting to be oneself
• Wanting to be oneself on one’s own terms

Both are forms of resistance.

Because the self is not self-created.

Freedom as acceptance

Here Kierkegaard differs from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

For Hegel, freedom is insight into necessity.
For Kierkegaard, it is the acceptance of necessity.

Not resignation—but a passionate act.

To become oneself is to respond to a task.

Truth without certainty

Truth is not certainty.

It is:

“objective uncertainty held fast in passionate inwardness.”

Faith is the tension between passion and uncertainty.

This means uncertainty is not something to remove—but something to live with.

The limits of understanding others

We can understand something of another person—but never fully.

Each individual lives within their own self-understanding.

This cannot be reduced to concepts.

Communication, then, is not transfer of information, but awakening.

The other must recognize themselves in what is said.

Despair as possibility

Despair is not only suffering.

It is also possibility.

Without despair, no real self-understanding.
Without crisis, no transformation.

It reveals that we are not yet who we are meant to be.

A closing reflection

Kierkegaard’s psychology is not a theory to apply, but a demand to live.

It asks:

Where am I in this?

What does it mean—for me—to become myself?

Reference (APA style)

Nordentoft, K. (1972). Kierkegaards psykologi. København: Hans Reitzel Forlag.

In a world searching for certainty, Kierkegaard reminds us:

To be human is not to arrive at final answers—

but to live the questions,

with seriousness,

with responsibility,

and with the courage to remain inwardly engaged.

That is where practical philosophy begins.

This text is written by me with suggestions from OpenAI/ChatGPT

The illustration is made by OpenAI/ChatGPT with suggestions from me.