Theo Fer­gu­son

Were I to treat my do­mes­tic helper and the many trades­men and tech­ni­cians who ser­vice my home and of­fice with dis­re­spect, I will be dis­re­spect­ing my moth­er and fa­ther and di­lut­ing my own hu­man dig­ni­ty. The mem­o­ry of the cal­lused hands of my par­ents helps to keep me ground­ed. Sad­ly, dis­re­spect is ram­pant in our homes, schools, or­gan­i­sa­tions and Par­lia­ment. Some­times I get the feel­ing that we are com­pet­ing to see who can be the most bar­bar­ic through the lan­guage that we use or through our ac­tions or ac­tions that we would like to see. Even our con­vict­ed crim­i­nals de­serve to be seen as hu­mans and to en­joy their dig­ni­ty, de­viant as they me be. I was most shocked to see this post­ing on a lo­cal blog re­cent­ly: "We are in a war against cri­mi-nals, the scum of the Earth, fer­al beasts and lowlifes who are hell-bent on at­tack­ing in­no­cent cit­i­zens. Time to take off the gloves...let's even the play­ing field." Must we all be­come dig­ni­ty-de­prived bar­bar­ians to solve the crime prob­lem? This at­ti­tude will make us all an­i­mals. The wis­dom of Nel­son Man­dela as a builder of hu­man­i­ty is clear when he not­ed that: "The death penal­ty is a re­flec­tion of the an­i­mal in­stinct still in hu­man be-in­gs." It is on­ly by grow­ing our hu­man pos­i­tives that we can take our hu­man­i­ty to a high­er lev­el and in so do­ing solve our so-called "crime prob­lem." Let us pre­serve and grow the dig­ni­ty that we have achieved, rather than di­lute it.