I did not quite understand what I was signing up for. I had complained to trusted colleagues that I was distressed by the divisiveness, polarization, and hurtful language that I have been experiencing in Northampton, a city I love and have called home for 45 years. In response to my hand-wringing, colleagues encouraged me to attend a Dignity Index Workshop offered by the Braver Angels organization, a volunteer-led, nonprofit, cross-partisan movement dedicated to bridging political divides in this country and reducing polarization. Trusting the advice of colleagues that The Dignity Index Workshop would be helpful to me, I found myself on a Zoom screen in late August with some 80 other concerned citizens from across the country.
Minutes into the workshop, our skilled team of trainers identified what they view as a key driver of the divisions in our country — and I was surprised by their assertion. The problem, they said, is contempt. Contempt, I thought? I was immediately skeptical.
Then the PowerPoint presentation began and I read a quote from “Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt” by social scientist Arthur Brooks: “We have a cultural addiction to contempt,” Brooks wrote, “an addiction abetted by the outrage industrial complex… and it is tearing us apart… If we want to solve the polarization problem today, we have to solve the contempt problem.”
Well, I thought, this is interesting. An addiction to contempt, abetted by the outrage industrial complex?
The next slide defined contempt as, “An expression of disdain or disgust that we use when we want to send the message that the other side is beneath us.”
One more slide before being sent off into small groups, this one quoting psychologist John Gottman. “Contempt is poisonous to a relationship,” he wrote, “it makes it virtually impossible to solve a problem.”
Off we went into small groups to discuss contempt, and I was hooked. The people in my group of four talked about when we had felt we were treated with contempt, and when we had treated others with contempt. We discussed what contempt did to difficult conversations that we had tried to have in the past. All very eye-opening, humbling, and helpful.
Back in the large group, we learned the basic tenet of the workshop: contempt drives us apart, while dignity brings us together. The Dignity Index was created to show us the difference.
The Dignity Index is an eight-point scale that measures the contempt or dignity reflected in the language we encounter, or use, every day. Lower scores reflect divisive language while higher scores reflect language grounded in dignity. Ultimately, the Dignity Index is a mirror to help each of us identify our own patterns of contempt.
Here is a summary of the eight-point scale:
8. Each one of us is born with inherent worth, so we treat everyone with dignity — no matter what.
7. We fully engage with the other side, discussing even values and interests we don’t share, open to admitting mistakes or changing our minds.
6. We always talk to the other side, searching for values and interests we share.
5. The other side has a right to be here and a right to be heard. They belong here too.
4. We’re better than those people. They don’t really belong. They’re not one of us.
3. We’re the good people and they’re the bad people. It’s us vs. them
2. Those people are evil and they’re going to ruin everything if we let them. It’s us or them.
1. They’re not even human. It’s our moral duty to destroy them before they destroy us.
Returning to small groups, we were given the task of rating — using the Dignity Index — a series of direct quotes by elected officials across the political spectrum. That was the most shocking part. Some of the comments we were to rate were stunning, dripping with contempt. Some were infused with more dignity towards others. We dutifully rated each one.
I kept returning to the words I had written down in my journal when the trainers defined dignity as “… the mutual recognition of the desire to be seen, heard, listened to, and treated fairly; to be recognized, understood, and to feel safe in the world.”
Dignity, our trainers emphasized, is the inherent worth we all have from birth.
Much of the rest of the workshop was spent strengthening our promoting-dignity capacities, learning how to respond to individuals with whom we disagree with language that would fall high on the eight-point scale.
We were reminded repeatedly that The Dignity Index scores language not people. No one is a three on the index, no one is a seven. We were told we all have the capacity to move up and down the scale every day.
During the workshop, I felt enlightened and hopeful. But I also wondered how I could possibly respond to people with whom I strongly disagree and may feel hurt by with a comment high on the eight-point scale. Then this quote by Desmond Tutu flashed on the Zoom screen, “I have sat with condemned men on death row, I have spoken with former police officers who have admitted inflicting the cruelest torture, I have visited child soldiers who have committed acts of nauseating depravity, and I have recognized in each of them a depth of humanity that was a mirror of my own.”
The Dignity Index Workshop has shifted my thinking about how I respond to people with whom I have serious political disagreements. But beyond how I respond, the workshop changed how I think about those with whom I disagree.
Since participating in the workshop, I have tried to respond in difficult conversations with comments that would be high on the eight-point scale. Most times I fail. But at least The Dignity Index is now part of my thinking, part of my awareness during challenging conversations, and at least I can continue to try to do better.
Disagreement is not the problem. Contempt is. At the close of the workshop, I wrote in my journal the key lesson from the 90 minutes we had spent together: Contempt drives us apart, dignity brings us together. Thank you, Braver Angels.
The Rev. Andrea Ayvazian, Ministerial Team, Alden Baptist Church, Springfield, is also founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership.