The Ending is only the Beginning….

Over the past fourteen to fifteen weeks, I departed on a personal journey to discover my own definition of human dignity.  I was not alone in this journey called Revealing Human Dignity.  This journey encompassed the explaining of factors that contribute to different interpretations of human dignity around the world, the meaning and use of respect as an essential characteristic, and my self-worth through interpersonal relationships.  Hence, these are the major pieces of the content that I took with me to solve the great mysterious puzzle of human dignity.



My journey.  The road is long and dangerous.  There is not much to look around. 
We started with no defnition and ended with wealth of knowledge. 



The first time I heard the word human dignity, I was like “Oh I know what that is, no worries.”  However, when someone asks you, “What does it mean to you, and how do you define it?” well that made the uncertainties appear because I had no idea.  There is no formal definition of human dignity, it is only our interpretations and the theories that we can relate to it. 

Hence, nearing the end of this class I can truly say that I have my interpretation for the definition of human dignity, but then I can also say that my definition will always be changing.  Human dignity is constant, but moves at the same time.  It is as if we can never catch up to it.  We will always behind it because we can never be in front of it or with it.  Maybe it is just the way the world is, we were never meant to fully understand human dignity, but always strive for it.  Therefore, I feel the name of my journey has changed.  I am not revealing human dignity, I am revealing myself.  I am discovering who I am in this world, and how my beliefs and morals form my dignity and the dignity of others.  Human dignity is intangible and irreplaceable.

Human Dignity?  It is intangable, but you know it is there.
Just like the clouds and the sky. If everyone has a sky above them,
then maybe that means everybody has human dignity. 

Additionally, the theorist Kant has been a major contributor to facilitating my thoughts on the various topics that I have discussed about human dignity.  For instance, a good will is one that acts in accordance with rationally-determined duty.  No character trait or consequence is good in itself.  However, as good is defined in terms of rationality, Kant argued that all rational beings were ends in themselves and should never be treated purely as a means to an end.  This moral philosophy assisted me in finding the aspects to understanding of human dignity around the world, and the significance of respect and self-worth through relationships. 

Overall, I have a sense of myself.  Can you say the same about you?  Has this affected you in anyway?  Are you able to come up with your own definition of human dignity?  Yes, no, maybe, an answer does not matter because we are humans and we will always have our dignity.  There may be times that it feels as if we have none or too much.  Nevertheless, this is who we are.  We need to love and respect ourselves, and take these emotions to every single person around us.  Human dignity is never ending because we were born this way.



We are all humans and born this way. 
Human dignity is a part of us, and we will always be a part of it.
What is dignity with humanity?  

Thank you

Visualized Humanity's Dignity

What can a picture say about Human Dignity?  Can only a person or an object represent it?  For me, a picture is capable of many effects and is able to communicate volumes of humanity.  This picture was taken while I was walking around Oakland and saw the public health building, it was surrounded by  bright pink blooming trees.  I took a picture, and saw cherry blossoms in my mind and heart.  Even though this picture is not of the real thing, it reminded me of them. 

Pink blooming tree in from of the Public Health building
located in oakland across from the old Children's hospital.
This is Human Dignity invisual form for me. 

In Japan cherry blossoms symbolize the ephemeral nature of life.   The transience of the blossoms is the extreme beauty and quick death, which is associated with mortality.  For this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic, and can be easily utilized into the concept of human dignity.  Furthermore, they have the concept of “Mono no aware,” which means the pathos of things, an empathy toward things, or a sensitivity to ephemera.  It is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence.  It is a reminder of how precious life is and to live each day with joy and love towards others. 

Capturing this image brought numerous blissful thoughts.  I could remember the sweet scent and the pink ambience they use to engulf me.  I truly have a powerful dynamic between the subject of my picture and myself.  The power that I feel is security when I am underneath their boughs.  It is as if I have a secret relationship with the photo that no one else can understand, but me.  Moreover, the difference in using imagery rather than words to capture a moment of beauty related to human dignity is quite impressive.  My mind becomes overwhelmed when I look at a picture compared to the written word.  I can see and interpret more with a picture because I am a visualand emotional thinker. 

Human dignity to me is thought largely in a visual sense.  When I see or feel human dignity, I am more adapt to envelope myself it and delve deep into what it is saying to me.  Who knew that one picture would make me think of the transience and beauty of life like this one has made me?  Did my picture do the same for you or different?

4/5 ~ Criminals and Human Dignity

For this week’s blog, I decided to research children in the criminal justice system and how their dignity is upheld.  I wanted to do something based on the prompt “Does our criminal system uphold dignity of individuals? With examples,” however, I decided to recreate that question into my own:

Is our criminal justice system able to handle in an ethically and with human dignity, the legal and emotional issues surrounding a preteen child charged with a capital crime?  Is he/she going to be treated fairly for someone of his or her age? For instance, the crimes of Jordan Brown, Christopher Pittman, Nathaniel Abraham , and Lacresha Murray are children charged as adults, but is the adult prison system set up for children? 

I know that I am probably not able to answer all these questions in my week’s blog, but I wanted to touch on this difficult and emotionally driven human dignity question.  I do not believe that our criminal justice system upholds the dignity of children placed in the adult systems.  They are not made for children.  For example, they did not have a child sized jumpsuit for Jordan Brown when he was  convicted of killing his father’s pregnant girlfriend.  There pictures of him in the media drowning in an adult orange suit.  There was no dignity there for him, even for his crime, he still needs human dignity.  Furthermore, I still believe children can change and reform with rehabilitation.  They can be saved.  I believe in second chances.  For instance, the story of Nathaniel Abraham will serve the longest time in prison then anyone else in history.  He convicted and committed at the age of 11 and received a life sentence. 

This is a picture of Jordan Brown, the convicted 11 year old

for murdering his father's pregnant girlfriend. 

Do believe his dignity is there or taken away? 

Do believe he can be saved? 

 Look at this face and tell me what you think or feel?

In the United States, children are treated as different from adults, except when it comes to criminal law: Most laws and policies acknowledge that children are different from adults. Children cannot drive, vote, drink, or even obtain a rental membership from a video store. We see them as in need of protection from the outside world and as insufficiently mature to justify being treated as adults. But the one glaring exception to this rule comes in the context of criminal law. Children who commit crimes are often perceived as “adults” and suddenly become “adults” for purposes of prosecution, trial, sentencing, and punishment.

Nothing is fair for these children when you change the age of 11 year old and make it an adult.  Close your eyes and tell me what you see when you hear an 11 year old, and then imagine seeing the 11 year old as an adult.  You cannot do it, because no matter that 11 year old is a child, and needs to be treated as a child, so they grow and be modeled into proper citizens.  Children need love not shackles, we need to protect their dignity and make the correct changes to save their dignity before being treated as the adults. 

mental illness and stigmas: saving the people with schizophrenia

This week I decided to do research on the mental disorder of schizophrenia.  This disease has always interested me, since I first heard about it.  In my nursing mental and behavioral health class, we touched on the subject, but I wanted to do my own research on the topic.  Moreover, I truly wanted to explore how people live with this disease every day and how it affects their human dignity every day. 

Approximately 1% of the world’s population will develop schizophrenia at some point during their lifetime. This severe, disabling neurological disease is chronic and there is no cure. Although it affects both men and women equally, men are usually diagnosed earlier, in their late teens or early twenties. Schizophrenia symptoms are complex and the disorder can be difficult to diagnose, particularly in its early stages. People who have schizophrenia often have terrifying psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices in their heads, or believing that others are controlling their thoughts, reading their minds, or plotting against them. These symptoms often leave them afraid and withdrawn, so people living with schizophrenia can be incomprehensible or scary to other people because their speech patterns and behavior are disorganized and bizarre.

The initial signs indicating schizophrenia often appear as behavioral changes that may be confusing or shocking. A sudden onset of symptoms is referred to as being an “acute phase” of the disorder. Psychosis is a common symptom of schizophrenia where the patient is mentally impaired by hallucinations, delusions, and the inability to discern what is real and what is not real. Less obvious symptoms may precede, occur along with, or follow severe psychotic symptoms. Some people have a single episode of psychosis, but others have them many times throughout their lives, yet they lead fairly normal lives between episodes. However, a person who has chronic schizophrenia usually does not recover completely normal functioning, and they often require long-term medical treatment, usually requiring medication, in order to control their symptoms.

There are treatments for schizophrenia that can relieve many of the symptoms, but very few patients recover completely and most continue to suffer symptoms of some sort throughout their lives. Suicide is a danger for people diagnosed with schizophrenia; approximately 10% of all patients commit suicide, especially younger males. Medications can other treatments can control symptoms when used regularly and as prescribed, but there are persistent consequences of schizophrenia that can be very troubling - lost opportunities, medication side effects, social stigmas, and residual symptoms that never go away completely.

Overall, people with schizophrenia do not live successful lives, healthy well-beings, or strong relationships.  Nothing is easy for them and they are constantly stigmatized in society.  They are looked down upon and are feared because they are not considered “normal”.  Based on these findings, the dignity of these human beings is greatly affected.  They become so hopeless and so depressed due to their own diagnosis and what people say that they kill themselves.  We need to step up and stop this stigmatization.  We can save lives, and save people’s dignity who have schizophrenia or any other mental illness. 

3/22 ~ Medicine and Dignity

This week we read provocative medical topics.  Topics, which I have discussed in my Biomedical Ethics, but not delving into the depths of human dignity and medicine as much as this class is making me do.  For me I chose the article by Gawande, A called “Letting Go;” it was about keeping people alive on life-sustaining medicine, and the people who chose to die without those measures.

The article centered around one particular person, a young woman with end-stage lung cancer.  She just had her first child, and was told she was going to die.  They did everything to keep her alive, but no treatment worked. She only got sicker and sicker, until she got pneumonia and slowly slipped into and out of death, before she finally took her last breath.  Her parents and sister wanted to keep her alive, but her husband let her go.  There was nothing more that could be done.  They all knew that, but they did not want to believe it.  I believe this article is directly related to human dignity.  The family and doctors respected the woman’s wish to try everything, but at the end they let her go.  In addition, they did not stop her from being a mother or a wife; they never stopped her from being human.  They let her live her life, a painful life, but her spirit was able to retain its dignity to the last breathe and beyond.

For me this article brought up some tough memories.  My uncle/godfather had terminal brain cancer.  It was a tumor that he was born with, but no one knew he had.  Near the last couple weeks of his life, he was not the same person.  After all his extensive brain surgery he lost everything that made him human, he was in a vegetative state.  He could neither look you in the eyes, smile, or laugh.  I was too young to know what was going on, but I knew it was something bad.  My aunt made the final decision to “pull the plug” on his life-sustaining measures.  To me I thought she killed my uncle, I thought, “Why couldn’t we wait, He could pull out of this eventually.”  Knowing what I know now, I understand that my aunt made a really rough decision, and it was the right one.  Medicine would have not brought my uncle back to himself.  His brain was so damaged by chemo, radiation and surgical resection, that all his human traits were gone.  He was nothing, but a shell.  A shell is not a life and I believe holds no dignity.  ‘Letting go’ was the best decision, and also it makes me wonder how my aunt feels everyday knowing what she had to do to give my uncle his life back before he drift away.

This whole topic of letting go and life-sustaining measures connects to the theorist Peter Singer’s thoughts and ideas.  According to Singer, he holds that the right to life is intrinsically tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is intrinsically tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure.  Therefore, if a person cannot feel pain or pleasure then the person cannot possibly be alive or human.  For instance, Singer would agree with the idea of “Letting go” to what happened to the young woman in the article and my uncle.  However, since my uncle was born with this disease.  Singer would have easily decided to put my uncle out his misery early in life.  Additionally, the young woman knew of her tough road of her incurable disease, but still fought hard.  Singer would have told her to give up. 

We must make our own decisions; we cannot base them on previous experiences or theorists’ ideas.  We must place trust in our own hearts and minds to know what is right for us.  We cannot choose for others what we find best for us.  It does not work that way.  I chose my own path of life sustaining measures or “letting go,” and I will respect anyone’s wishes for what they want.  This is human dignity to me.

A Quiet Time

The experiential learning that we did in class gave me an hour of my life back.  I was able to take back control of the things that were taken away from me.  I could listen to my heartbeat and watch the rise and fall of my chest during each inhalation and exhalation I took.  It was only me.  There was no one to make me feel bad about myself; there was no one to make me feel less.  With this hour of solitude I knew I needed more than that one time in class, I needed to make this hour for myself everyday if I were to truly take back control. 

The dove grasping an olive branch in its mouth is a sign of peace.  I am looking for this sign that things will turn out alright, but I need to start making my own peace and serentiy.  This is something you cannot go out and find, you need to make it happen.

Moreover, I have been going through some really rough times with my roommates to the point where I end up crying myself to sleep and stay at Carlow until night.  I do not feel appreciated, I feel rejected physically and wounded emotionally.  It is a toxic place to live, but it is the only place I have right now during school.  To find an hour of solitude is almost impossible in this place.  Thus, I looked for other means to find my peace, but it was hard.  However, I do find peace the peace I so desperately need while I exercise in the gym or sit on the bus.  It is not the hour that I strive for or the perfect environment of serenity, but for now it works for me. I need a mental and physical escape, and this experiential learning gave me to first step to taking back what rightfully belongs to me. 

Sacredness of Creation: Living a Core Value of Carlow University

“We reverence each person and all of creation and the diversity they embody.” This is the Sacredness of Creation Core Value of Carlow University. The above definition was taken from the university's website.

I chose this specific core value to practice for seven days and blog about because it is something that I never really understood and took the time to live out.  The first thing I did was to break down the core value, so I could better comprehend and perform it more effectively.  Therefore, my interpretation of the value is we the Carlow community (students, staff, etc.) will respect and admire each human being, and all that make up the person inside and out; hence, valuing the human of any form or background without prejudice or disregard. 

To me, the college experience was going to be life changing and educating.  I never thought or delved too deep into Carlow’s mission statement, core values or sisters of mercy.   I am definitely not the person or student I was when I arrived at Carlow in August of 2008, and I will probably not be the same person when I graduate.  I never thought a college would concentrate so much on the human spirit.  I feel that everything that Carlow wants us to take from this experience is to find ourselves, through empowering others and embracing service to make a better world that is just and merciful. 

 I have spent the last week focusing on this core value, and thinking about how exactly the idea of Sacredness of Creation related to me. I found that, this value made me question myself each day.  For instance, did I say the right thing to make sure I reverenced someone’s dignity and humanity?  It made me check myself multiple times; to make sure I was following the core value.  It made me more aware of what I was thinking, saying, and doing.  I was taking a more active rather than passive role in helping others, and giving compliments to people I never meant.  I was making people smile and it made me feel wonderful.  I made sure that everything that was coming out of my mouth and off my hands was considerate and full of empowerment for the people around me.  Everyone is special, everyone is different, yet we all have a similar beating heart and a soul.  I feel like a better person because I was able to focus on others rather than myself.  I forget that there is this greater world out, and that we need to make a gesture in it to show that we are here and that we care. 

I felt that this value directly related to human dignity.  For myself, it fit my personal definition of human dignity almost perfectly and the class’s definition quite well.  Respect and interpersonal relationships are evident throughout the “Sacredness of Creation” core value, and they are major points for understanding human dignity.  People around the world should try to strive to live this value each day.  So many people could benefit from its single sentence definition.  Things could really change for all of us.  This world needs appreciation and understanding for each other, and without it, I do not believe we are humans at all.  We would be shells without emotion.  This core is the emotion and passion that is needed to make human dignity and to make the world a better place.