Our identity and/or liberties as individuals must never become an agent of destruction, either for ourselves or others. Who we are is a gift from our Creator. Our special place in this world must always be understood in the light of our Savior and His commission. As Isaiah wrote, "the wolf and the lamb shall graze alike...;" the wolf is still a wolf but has subjected his will to that of the Father. We too must understand who we are but always filtered through who He is. Above all esle, we must protect humankind's dignity through our policies and actions. This means resisiting any moevement that encourages the breakdown of that dignity. Social instutitions, individual "liberties", and government polcies must be placed to this scrutiny. Indeed the diginity of individuals must be protected. Yet, the dignity of the whole must be the priority when individual liberties and human dignity are on different paths.
VM
11 comments:
vm- thoughts:
1. how does one positively define the 'dignity of humankind'...in light of cultural/social/structural differences? can this even be accomplished? is this a purely spiritual thing? and if so, policy in political and/or social terms?
2. i'm hesitant to ever qualify 'the dignity of the whole' as ever being a priority, as i understand it. yet...this could change...were i to have better understanding of your definition of dignity.... or of your concept of 'the whole'.
I agree...this leaves to question one even defines "dignity"...
Particularly, inreference tot he last line..."...when individual liberties and human dignity are on different paths"...
1. Is there such thing as "human dignity"?...As stated, I am taking this to imply belief in a base sense of nobility.
2. If so, would you go so far as to supress liberties for the sake of preserving human dignity of the whole?...Example, fornication is an undignified action in light Biblical perspective, would you hinder one liberty to fornicate in order to preserve the "dignity" of the whole?
cheers
zeius
I'm not certain that the isolated act of an individual (by isolated I mean "one-time") can pose any danger to the dignity of "the whole," in response to zeius. However, vox, you ought to be more specific in what you mean in this post. If you are indirectly commenting on any facet of human-cloning controversies, please be direct with your thoughts. A great conversation could commence with such clarity.
T - The assumption is that if one is free compromise "dignity", then all are...Thus making it not an "isolated act of an individual"...In fact, there would be no difference in my responding to your post by stating that one individual act of cloning would not compromise the "dignity of the whole", and, mind you, my design in that question was to attain a better grasp of VM's hypothetical scenario where "individual liberties" (obviously expressed though individual actions whether isolated or not) challenge the preservation of the "dignitity of the whole".
Z
Z - I would say YOUR assumption, rather than THE assumption. (Please forgive the caps---I'm not yelling, it's my only means of emphasis from a Mac.) And, again, I defined "isolated" as "one-time," not "unconnected." This was in response to your example of fornication. Unlike such an act (dubiously defined as undignified, if VM is in fact referring to human cloning), though involving two individuals, unlike fornication human cloning requires thousands and thousands of successive acts of many individuals working together. There can thus never be, in that sense, "one individual act of cloning." Therefore there IS in fact a difference in your "reponding..." Such an "act," "event," whatever you like, cannot be achieved through an "isolated" act of "individual liberty." Now, of course, this has all become predicated on MY assumption. For that I apologize, but I think it shows that VM has really given us no rules or limits for this (or any) debate, even one purely in the abstract. This has led to the unfortunate circumstance of all of us proceeding from our own assumptions, giving me no real intellectual/tactical standing to critique zeius, and vice-versa. So, again, VM...please clarify.
T - Be it two people fornicating or two hundred people cloning...Behavior is not defined by the person/people behaving, but by their motivation for behaving so...And one could draw the distinction between a singular act of fornication and the successive acts involved in the cloning process, but one would have to be a fairly impractical individual to believe that where individual liberties exist, a singular act of fornication is even likely.
Still though, this is all rubbish.
As you have said this is all based on assumptions...So equally impractical would be me arguing that my assumption is better than yours.
z
t & z- thoughts:
1. i think the missing 'bridge', as it were, between your two conversations is vm's practical application in policy...when that is divergent from 'dignity'...whatever that means.
2. though we don't have definitions of dignity and 'the whole', i think this has lead us to some place useful...albeit, amorphous. open-ended, yes. rubbish...maybe.
The dignity of humankind, i.e. humanity's special position as a higher order than animalia, which was created and imbued with, as a result of that creation, a dose of the divine, must never be sacrificed for individual identities or "liberties." The identity of which I comment is of the ethnic/nationalistic variety. The liberties to which I refer are those individual freedoms over one's own physical actions and spiritual person. To use the illustration posed by Zeius, if one pursues a sexual relationship outside of marriage which produces a child and the child is exterminated out of convenience, that is a crime against the dignity,i.e. special position as a higher order and imbued with a dose of the divine, of that child as an individual as well as against humanity as a whole. Humanity as a whole is included here because, as human beings, we are intraspective creatures contemplating our own existence and impathizing with other human beings as like-kind. When, refusing to recognize the humanity of another, we claim our personal liberties, either in an attempt to preserve our state of freedom (irresponsiblity) or attempting to shrug-off the consequences of our actions, over the dignity of another, we undermine our own humanity. If one, as an ethnic nationalist, dehuminizes another, refusing or failing to impathize with that other as like-kind, human dignity is damaged in both directions.
This is not to say that there are not superior cultures, which would be those cultures that, as a product of thier very natures, value and protect human dignity. Even so, there are no superior humans.
I fear I may have simply muddied the water.
The dignity of the whole is undermined through the dehumanization of individuals over a long period of time. While this has often occured historically, there is always a group that has been held up as THE people, who are reified, protected, and preserved. Contemporarily, even the dignity of those "chosen-ones" has been undermined, leading to a general dehuminization of all flesh.
When clarity and specificity is called for it will be given. However, since this is an observation of recent trends in many sectors of society, one must necessarily be general and inclusive.
btw, it should be noted that a singular act of fornication, without, at least, a long-term relationship, if not life-long, is in fact giving in to one's animalism, ignoring in the two parties the dosing of divinity and the possible products of that dose of divinity's completion, i.e. children.(see Aquinas & Hegel, perhaps Kant) Without this regard, there is a perpetual cycle of indignity that eventually serves to undermine humankind's (the whole's) dignity and finally value. example: decades of this very activity culminating into cultures of death within hip-hop culture etc.
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