Neutral Ground 10-03-10

I respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  It is one of the principles I live by.  You may be wondering what "inherent worth and dignity" really mean?  Well, "inherent" means "inside".  If something is "inherent", it just comes that way, as part of the package.  You can't take it away, you can't add to it, it's just there.  Purring is inherent to cats, color is inherent to flowers, worth and dignity are inherent to people.
OK, so what, exactly, is "worth and dignity"?  Most of us are used to talking about what things are worth.  Usually what something is worth is how much money we'll have to spend to buy it.  A candy bar is worth about a dollar.  Same for a soda.  But, of course, I'm not talking about how much it would cost to buy a person.  Actually, the whole point of "inherent worth and dignity" is that people aren't just things, stuff that you can buy or sell.  People matter.  Why do people matter?  They just do.  It is inherent.

All people are born with "inherent worth and dignity"; all people have equal claim to life, liberty and justice; all people, no matter what they've done, deserve to be treated with dignity.  A persons worth never goes away, no matter how matter how they're acting.  Our own worth never goes away, no matter what we've done.  Believing that all people matter, that they should be treated with respect (dignity) is part of who I am as a man today.

Of course, acting on the belief that everybody matters and should be treated with respect isn't always easy.  Actually, it's far too easy to fall into the trap of believing that who a person is and what they've done are the same thing.  I've observed this way of thinking my whole life, but never so much until coming to prison.  People with more acceptable crimes usually start to imagine that they're somehow better than they actually are, and those on the other end of the spectrum start to fear that they're somehow worse than they actually are, when in fact, we're all just people.

We should do everything in our power to insure that others are treated as we wish to be treated, respected as we need to be respected and heard as we need to be heard.  We're all in here together: Fathers, Brothers, and Sons.  It would be wonderful if we could learn to live together embracing the spirit of mutual support, understanding and respect.