Revolution.

Ari Weinzweig on dignity ...

No Friend but the Mountains is an exploration of the best and worst of human behavior. Fear and fighting back, cruelty and kindness. Human frailty and fate. Existential exploration, agony, anger, and an attempt to understand. For me, it’s ultimately about a determination to seek dignity in the face of all odds. Tofighian calls No Friend but the Mountains “horrific surrealism.” Writer Richard Flanagan says the book “can rightly take its place on the shelf of world prison literature,” alongside prose like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, or Alexander Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. I’ve come to believe Boochani’s book could be a 21st-century companion to Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning—both men faced the worst of human horror, but found a way to fight back, not through violence, but through finding meaning and dignity. In November of 2019, Boochani was finally freed and allowed to travel to New Zealand where he was later awarded residency. After six years in a prison camp, freedom, he said, meant being able to walk down the street as he liked and listening to music. 

Grace Lee Boggs—who passed away at the age of 95 in 2015—asks, “What do we mean by revolution? … It is hard to struggle for something that you have not yet tried to define and name.” The idea of diligently making revolutions of dignity in our workplaces is at least an attempt, my attempt, to “define and name” a practical and powerful answer to Grace Lee Boggs’ question. Making dignity a daily practice in all directions would go a long way to making the world—and our organizations—better places to be a part of. Like all concepts, the initial idea of a revolution of dignity, though, is the easy part. It's the implementation that’s more challenging. Not just trying it once or twice or experimenting here and there with the idea. Rather, to me, this is about a consistent, long-term, commitment to acting with dignity, day in and day out, over and over again, over a long period of time until it becomes an integral part of how we show up in the world. 

Weinzweig's Six Elements of Dignity ...

1. Honor the essential humanity of the person we interact with:  Steer clear of stereotypes and assumptions
2. Be authentic in our interactions (without acting out): Be clear and direct, even when dealing with difficult issues.
3. Give everyone a meaningful say: Actively include as many people as possible, to invite opinions, and engage in caring conversations. 
4. Begin every interaction with positive beliefs: Opt for empathy and compassion even for those who are doing things that are anathema to us.
5. Commit to helping everyone get to greatness:  The revolution of dignity work calls on us to look in the other direction—the commitment in the context of dignity is to help everyone else we work with to get to greatness. Greatness, I’ll add, as they define it. 
6. Create a sense of meaningful equity: The weak always consider themselves powerful when they see others suffering.