From Humiliation to Dignity:
For a Future of Global Solidarity

Author: Evelin Lindner, MD, Ph.D.s

Foreword by Howard Richards, philosopher of social science and scholar of peace and global studies.
Download an executive summary

Long version finalized in 2022
Download the author's preliminary personal digital review edition with shortened endnotes (993 pages)

ISBN
978-1-952292-00-2 print book
978-1-952292-01-9 eBook
978-1-952292-03-3 PDF with extended endnotes
1016 pages (half of the book are endnotes)

Printed edition: TBA
Ebook: TBA

About the Book

This book widens the concept of academic work by combining what usually is separate, namely, scholarly work and lived experience. The book came into being as part of the author’s many decades of working with dignity in all parts of the world.

Evelin Lindner was born into a family that was deeply affected by war and displacement, and therefore 'never again' became the motto of her life. She considers the world her 'university' and looks back on almost fifty years of living globally as a lifelong sense-making project, at home on all continents, always embedded in families and family-like contexts. For the past twenty years, she has helped gather a global community of academics and practitioners dedicated to furthering dignity in the world.

Through her global life, the author has developed a big history view on the human condition, a view that embeds the current historical moment in the entire journey of our species Homo sapiens sapiens on planet Earth and extrapolates from there what we need to create a dignified future. This book therefore takes a step back to evaluate humanity’s situation in its larger historical context, and, equipped with the insights from this evaluation, makes suggestions for a roadmap into a future of global dignity in solidarity.

This book offers a complex analysis that summarizes where we stand and what is needed to create a dignified future.

Executive summary by the author further down or downloadable here

Contents

Foreword by Howard Richards
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part I: Humiliation and humility – A timeline from 1315 to 1948
Chapter 1: 1315 — The journey of humility and humiliation begins
Chapter 2: 1757 — A new meaning of the verb to humiliate emerges
Chapter 3: 1948 — Human rights ideals separate humiliation from humility and shame
Chapter 4: 1948 — In awe of inherent dignity

Part II: 1948 and beyond – Equal dignity for all!
Chapter 5: Dignity is yearned for all around the world
Chapter 6: Beware of dignity mission creeps
Chapter 7: Beware of systemic humiliation — Cogitocide, sociocide, and ecocide
Chapter 8: Can we rise from humiliation?

Part III: Where do we go from here? A future of solidarity!
Chapter 9: How we got here
Chapter 10: What makes the present historical juncture so challenging
Chapter 11: What now? Egalisation, dignism, and unity in diversity
Chapter 12: A call to action

Afterthoughts by Francisco Gomes de Matos
Appendix
Index
References

Short Biography of the Author

Evelin Lindner has a dual education as a Medical Doctor and a Psychologist, with a Ph.D. in Medicine (Dr. med.) from the University in Hamburg in Germany, and a Ph.D. in Psychology (Dr. psychol.) from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo in Norway. She is the founding president of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), a global transdisciplinary community of concerned academics and practitioners who wish to stimulate systemic change, globally and locally, to open space for dignity, mutual respect and esteem to take root and grow. Our goal is ending systemic humiliation and humiliating practices, preventing new ones from arising, and opening space for feelings of humiliation to nurture constructive social change, so that we call can join in healing the cycles of humiliation throughout the world. Linda Hartling is the director of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.

Lindner is also co-founder of the World Dignity University initiative, including Dignity Press and World Dignity University Press. All initiatives are not for profit. She lives and teaches globally and is affiliated with the University of Oslo since 1997 (first with the Department of Psychology, and later also with its Center for Gender Research, and with the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights). Furthermore, she is affiliated with Columbia University in New York City since 2001 (with the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity, AC4), and since 2003 with the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. She convenes two conferences per year together with the HumanDHS network, and more than 30 conferences have been conducted since 2003 all around the world. One conference takes place each December at Columbia University in New York City, it is the Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, with Morton Deutsch as honorary convener until his passing in 2017. The other conference takes place at a different location each year, since 2003 in Europe (Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Dubrovnik), Costa Rica, China, Hawai’i, Turkey, New Zealand, South Africa, Rwanda, and Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. See for a list of past and future conferences and the status of the work here. Lindner has received several awards, and as a representative of the dignity work of HumanDHS, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

DIGNIfuture: A plea to humankind

The past of Humanity?
Partly a history of humiliation

The future of Humanity?
The rise of DIGNITY for Solidarity-globalisation
To the promise of DIGNITY let’s be committed!