by Wole Soyinka
In a culture where it is acceptable for a young man to be dragged down an alleyway and shot, children grow up believing there is no such thing as respect for human dignity. They . . . often develop anxiety and a fatalistic approach to their own lives.
Now, why did the psychiatrist settle on that word “dignity” over others in his clinical notebook? Why had this youth—as had others—chosen to embrace death rather than live but be publicly tarred and feathered and/or kneecapped, subjected thereafter to cruel taunts by his own-age mates—we learn—who called out to the fourteen-year-old, knowing he had been crippled, “Come out, Barney, come out and play”?
We are trying to come to grips with the concept of “dignity,” and why it appears to mean so much to the sentient human, almost right from childhood. Why has it been entrenched in so many social documents across cultures, civilizations, and political upheavals? Why was it given such prominence in the charter that resulted from one of the bloodiest revolutions in human history—the French—and was further enshrined in the document for the enthronement of peace after the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? In one form or another, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife, and willing sacrifice. Yet the entitlement to dignity, enshrined among these human rights, does not aspire to being the most self-evident, essential need for human survival, such as food or physical health. Compared to that other candidate for the basic impulse of human existence—self-preservation—it may even be deemed self-indulgent.
Here is another incident from real life, involving, this time, not an individual but a nation, an attempt at breaking out from a walling in, a contesting of the reduction of volition, this time largely of the economic kind. About six years ago, I was approached by a Cuban ambassador to Nigeria with whom I had developed a warm relationship. He felt that I might know some influential individuals within the United States government or in the intellectual circles that relate to its policy makers. His government, he informed me, was anxious for a resolution of the state of undeclared war between the two nations (these formal and informal probes are part of public knowledge, so I am not revealing any privileged communication). Cuba had weathered the general economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. reasonably well, he said, but after the infamous Torricelli Act, whose provisions extended the ban on trade with Cuba even to her existing foreign partners, threatening them with sanctions unless they severed such relationships, that small island began to feel the economic stress of claustrophobia, and sought diplomatic means of breaking the deadlock.
The ambassador said, Cuba is ready to meet and talk with the U.S. on any platform, formal or informal, with no preconditions—oh, except one: Cuba will not compromise her dignity. It struck me as a remarkable statement, even then. We are a small people, he declared, we are powerless compared with the United States, but we will not compromise our dignity; we would rather starve to death.
That declaration—We shall not sacrifice our dignity —is very much the language of nations, or states, to one another. During conflict negotiations or their aftermath— and I refer here to those unpublicized sessions, familiar to arbitrators—that phrase, an insistent, minimal appeal, surfaces with remarkable constancy, even when all else has been surrendered: let us leave these negotiating chambers with, at the very least, our self-respect. It is very much the historic cry of a defeated people, defeated either through a passage of arms or on the diplomatic field, when they discover that they have no more bargaining chips left. What their representatives are saying is simply: the very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent. Yes, we are compelled to make peace, we submit to force majeure, but leave us at least a piece of clothing to cover our nudity. This is the motivation behind every formula of diplomatic contrivance that is sometimes described as face-saving, and wise indeed is the victor who knows that, in order to shield his own rear from the elements, he must not denude his opponents.
Considerations of this intangible bequest, dignity, often remind me of a rhetorical outburst in the United Nations by a Nigerian representative—no, that desperate rhetoric did not lead to hysteria as identified in an earlier lecture, except if one chooses to remark the barely suppressed hysterical laughter in the hallowed halls of the General Assembly. The occasion was the nation’s arraignment before the General Assembly on charges of violations of human rights and the denial of democracy under the dictatorship of General Sanni Abacha. In what our apologist must have considered the definitive argument on the subject, he challenged his listeners to combat in more or less the following words:
What exactly is this democracy, these human rights that we’re talking about? Can we eat democracy? The government is trying to combat hunger, put food into people’s stomachs, and all we hear is democracy, democracy! Human rights! What exactly is this democracy? Does it prevent hunger? Is it something we can put in the mouth and eat like food?
I felt bound to come, quite unnecessarily, to the defense of the United Nations and wrote an article in response, remarking that I had dined in the cafeterias and restaurants of the United Nations on occasion, and had never seen democracy on the menu, nor indeed on any menu in restaurants all over the world. So, what, I demanded, was the point of that statement?
Well, while democracy as such may not be on the UN restaurant menu, it is nonetheless on its catering agenda. So is human dignity. Needless to say, both are inextricably linked. Indeed, human dignity appears to have been on everyone’s menu since the development of the most rudimentary society, recognized as such by philosophers who have occupied their minds with the evolution of the social order. Nothing is more fascinating, but permanently contentious, than the kind of binarism attributed to the motoring force of the evolution of this order by Hegel, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Locke, among others. The historic man, according to these thinkers, would appear to be a product of a choice between abject submission or bondage, on the one hand, for the sake of self-preservation, and, on the other, a quest for dignity, even if this leads to death. Karl Marx, for his part, felt compelled to distance himself from their deductions, yet even he refused to ignore the importance of that element, human dignity, naming it as a reward that comes naturally with the evolution of man whose labor is un-governed by necessity. That is the phase when it becomes possible to celebrate the dignity of labor. What for us is worth noting today is simply the prodigious output of numerous minds on this theme, nearly all of whom emphasize that the pursuit of dignity is one of the most fundamental defining attributes of human existence.
We could utilize the animal kingdom as our entry point: I have listened sometimes to comparisons of household pets in terms of dignity—a cat, for instance, is usually accounted to be extremely dignified in comparison with a dog. The former is regarded thus because it is aloof, independent, and deliberate in its motions, while the dog exhibits traits of fawning, dependency, and easy excitation. These judgments are of course taken from what human beings have extracted from their own patterns of social conduct. Thus, a predator stalking through the jungle, a “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,” in those luminous lines of William Blake, is often regarded—especially in National Geographic and by conservationists—as the very epitome of dignity, but watch it when it is devouring its prey or snarling at interlopers and I believe that all thought of dignity is forgotten. I think also that we would all agree that there is not much dignity to be found in the execution of one of those natural functions that even the most exalted, elegant, and “dignified” among us cannot avoid. Or indeed when we are indulging in that activity that guarantees the continuation of the species, but is mostly undertaken simply for the ecstasy of losing ourselves in another being.
Obviously we cannot remain within those parameters of poise, balance, rhythm, control, and so on, those attainments that are within the capability or trainability of the animal family, of which our species happens to be a part—
a unique species whose social rituals and conduct have defined it further and further away from the rest of the larger family since the beginning of evolution. Today, we can hardly conceive of the individual outside the membership of a socialized group that constantly reinvents itself; we do not equate ourselves with some static organism under observation in a permanently controlled setting, or indeed with a “dignified” animal in a zoo. Thus, it is within human relationships that the essence of a human attribute, such as dignity, is most meaningfully sought, not within the self as some mystic endowment, but as a product of social interaction. It is futile to seek out evidence of dignity in the life of an anchorite communing in the wilderness with only birds, reptiles, and the elements for company. The essence of dignity that is unique to humanity is manifested through the relations of one human being to another, one human being to the family, clan, or community, in the relations between one collectivity and another, however defined, including race relationships.
Regarding this context of relationships, however, one common reductionism that also courts dismissal is that of conduct under suffering. Superficially, acceptance or resignation may appear to convey dignified bearing. Would we, however, place a victim of torture, or of rape, within this category? Definitely, what the very act of violation achieves is to rob the victim of that inherent, individualized, yet social property that answers to the name of “dignity.” Something is taken away with the act of violation, and that innate entitlement is not restored by one’s ability to fulfill social or theological expectations that belong to fortitude. There is no such being as a dignified slave, with or without the tarring and feathering that appears to have been appropriated from the Jim Crow culture of America for the contemporary humiliation of Irish youths in that territory of unrelenting anomie. When the being that is labeled “slave” acquires dignity, he has already ceased to be a slave.
The Yoruba have a saying: Iku ya j’esin lo. This translates literally as “Sooner death than indignity.” It is an expression that easily finds equivalents in numerous cultures, and captures the essence of self-worth, the sheer integrity of being that animates the human spirit, and the ascription of equal membership in the human community. This does not in any way belittle other human virtues—integrity, love, tenderness, graciousness, generosity, or indeed the spirit of self-sacrifice. Dignity, however, appears to give the most accessible meaning to human self-regarding. Its loss, in many cultures, Japan most famously, makes even death mandatory, exile coming as a second best.
To offer some intimation, at this stage, of our ultimate destination, let us remind ourselves that, as with individuals, so it is with communities and nations. Equally, to identify with a community beyond the self is to take upon oneself the triumphs and humiliations, the glories and mortifications, that the larger entity undergoes. The very development and maturation of self-consciousness involves the absorption into one’s self of sometimes intersecting rings of community or association—the alma mater, sports clubs, religious societies, the professional register, and so on. To non-sporting individuals, or the indifferent, nothing is more absurd than to watch a gaggle of football fans, irrepressible and rambunctious on their way into the stadium to cheer their favorite team, slink out of the same arena like drenched fowl and sink into the pit of depression after their team has not merely lost, but conceded a basket of goals. To remind them at that moment, or even months afterward, that it was only a game is to court pity or transferred violence for one’s failure to empathize with their sense of humiliation. Nothing will serve until their dignity is restored in a victorious rematch. Through a variety of habits, tastes, activities, social interactions, vanities, even hobbies, one acquires, or is inducted into, a new family, an extension of the self that may actually come to take precedence over the immediate family and community into which one is born and where one earns a living. I think of this sense of belonging as Community with a capital C—a community of thought, values, and sensibilities, one that, like the quasi-state, transcends boundaries and governments. Often Community is founded on shared historical experience that may be negative—such as political or economic bondage or social marginalization. Finally, let us not forget, or underestimate, the Community that is religion.
Dignity in the management of Community lies at the heart of our preoccupation. The global climate of fear owes much to the devaluation or denial of dignity in the intersection of Communities, most notably between the stronger and weaker ones, an avoidance of the recognition of this very entitlement, this craving, this inbred addiction, if you prefer, in chambers of negotiation, compromises, recitation of statistics and resolutions, including within the United Nations. It is easy enough to speak of, and even condemn, the building of concrete walls that turn whole peoples into prisoners in glorified camps, but somehow the expression of one critical, implicit denial is itself denied: that of dignity. Such a wall reaches beyond its physical terrain, and is experienced as a gesture of disdain against the Community of which such people form a part. If the Berlin Wall was held to reduce the inherent dignity of a people since it circumscribed their freedom, then a wall in Palestine cannot be viewed with the same regard as is elicited today by the Great Wall of China.
A Community is additionally humiliated through the mortification of its leader, or symbol, never mind what private reservations or criticisms it has of his person, a consideration that has surely contributed to the tendency of the Israeli government, backed in turn by the U.S. government, to top its record of disdain for their “vassals” with threats to expel an elected leader,
Yasser Arafat, from Palestine—that is, after progressively reducing his headquarters to rubble. Let me recall a significant phase in that conflict through an assessment that I wrote in November 2000, published in Encarta Africana. It ended on an image, utilizing nearly the exact words that I borrowed from a now largely forgotten incursion of the brawler Mike Tyson into Great Britain.
After a predictable pulverization of a nonranked pugilist, Tyson embarked on his familiar bout of obscenities, but in a language that, even by his standards, shocked his listeners in the lurid portrayal of his demolition plans for his next opponent, Lennox Lewis, for whom he appeared to have conceived a singular hatred. I wrote:
How . . . does one interpret the act of bombing Yasser Arafat’s offices? We appear to have been spared the horror of the direct bombing of his residence but, for several moments, that insensate outrage did appear to have taken place—according to one of the early newscasts. Fortunately, it dropped out of the reportage. Nonetheless, confirmation has since followed that a rocket did land within yards of his residential compound, and that the quarters of his bodyguards were demolished. The attacks began even while the UN secretary-general’s envoy, Roed-Larsen, was actually in Mr. Arafat’s offices. . . .
The tactics of cutting off electricity, telephones, water, and of course radio transmission around the city of Ramallah, blocking all exits and entrances to and from the city, joined in reinforcing a pugilist’s tactics of asphyxiation—working the ring methodically, reducing an opponent to a gradually diminishing space of mobility and oxygen, then zooming in for the kill. Kofi Annan was somewhere around, his intermediary was shuttling between the belligerents. I permitted myself the hope that this United Nations presence would be sufficient to restrain Israel from going any further.
Such optimism was swiftly punished. The gun-ships returned to the attack and, this time, the assault on the headquarters of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah was followed by further attacks in Gaza. Then the radio station was hit. Then other police training stations, the marine corps, Palestinian Authority buildings, etc. The nerve centers of Arafat’s makeshift authority were being systematically destroyed. Barak . . . was tearing out Arafat’s heart, liver, and tongue—and feeding it to his children, and his children’s children, the heirs of an unremitting hatred that will brand them from infancy and drive the hopes of peace in the Middle East beyond the horizons of generations yet unborn. [Italicized words c
ourtesy of Mike Tyson.]
It is becoming impossible to recall a time when death visited this field of incompatibilities in single digits. Let us bear that in mind as we recall the response of Israel’s main backer, the United States, to the escalation of this belligerence, so rooted in disdain that it literally bared an opponent, a beleaguered leader of his people, of all the rags of authority—reverting to our language of conflict bargaining—and left him not a stitch to cover his nudity. Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, read a statement on behalf of the U.S. government that failed to recall the deaths of Palestinians, failed to share with the world any thought of regret for their deaths, even as she mourned and commiserated with the Israeli government on the deaths of two of its soldiers. Such unstatesmanlike insensitivity, such a crass lacuna in the history of global relationships, which was justly and bitterly seized upon by the secretary-general of the Arab League, reinforced the glaring question mark on the claims of the United States to be an evenhanded partner for peace with the rest of the world.
My mind often returns to that act of global contempt in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—an attack on the headquarters of Yasser Arafat that began even while the UN secretary-general’s envoy, Roed-Larsen, was physically in Arafat’s office! The secretary-general and his other envoys were also within Palestine—in short, this assault took place right under the nose of the United Nations. If nothing else, that incident must have completed the ongoing erosion of the confidence of a large, interlocking Community—the Arab and the Islamic—in an impartial and authoritative intervention from the world organization in which the global community has placed the mechanisms of arbitration. If we have to look for defining moments of despair and desperation within the Community that embraces the Palestinian people, its consciousness of the disdainful dismissal of its worth in international opinion, this surely must rank as one of the foremost—and there have been, alas, uncountable numbers.