The Meaning of Human Dignity
It’s hard to lay down a simple definition of human dignity that everyone would agree with. Human dignity is an idea we seem to understand intuitively rather than through a formal definition. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights opens with the statement that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” In the following articles it spells out the rights that flow from the idea of human dignity, above all the right to life, liberty, and personal security; to freedom of thought and expression; and many more. Violations of human dignity comprise such actions as exploiting and oppressing others, inflicting torture and degrading punishment on them, and humiliating them because of their social status, race, religion, or gender identity.
The idea of human dignity implies that every person possesses inherent worth and therefore deserves respect and consideration. Even prisoners have certain rights that the authorities must recognize.
The Buddhist texts do not explicitly bring up the idea of human dignity, but I would say that the idea lies implicit in the Buddhist precepts. The precepts tell us that we should treat others in the same way that we expect them to treat us. We shouldn’t kill them, steal their belongings, slander them, or injure them in any way because each person cherishes their own life, security, and well-being. The virtues of loving-kindness and compassion central to Buddhist ethics also reinforce a commitment to human dignity.
The Drift toward Moral Nihilism
Now I come to the second part of my talk, on the factors at work in today’s world that threaten human dignity and are pushing us toward moral nihilism. These are types of behavior which presuppose that human beings have no inherent worth and thus can be debased, exploited, tortured, and even killed without pangs of conscience.
I will briefly mention four factors pushing us toward moral nihilism, but there are still others that I won’t have time to discuss.
(1) The first factor pushing us toward moral nihilism is the transnational economic system driven by unregulated predatory capitalism. This system operates on the premise that the aim of a corporation is to maximize profits. The paradigm treats all non-monetary assets—land and rivers, minerals and trees, animals and human beings—as a mere means to generate financial gain. The huge profits enrich executives and investors but bring misery and despair to many outside their privileged circles.
Oil and chemical companies pollute our environment and push Indigenous people off their ancestral lands. Fast-food chains exploit workers without adequate pay and fire them when they can no longer work at peak efficiency. Pharmaceutical companies drive up drug prices beyond people’s ability to pay for the drugs they need to remain alive.
Corporate capitalism creates a wide rift between the super-rich and everyone else. Today the top 1% owns 43% of the world’s wealth; the bottom 50% owns around 1%. This extreme inequality has a harmful impact on physical and mental health. Those at the low end of the scale lose their sense of self-respect, and many succumb to “deaths of despair” from alcoholism, drug use, poor health, and suicide.
(2) A second factor contributing to moral nihilism is the invasive role that computer technology now plays in our lives. While the internet has brought us immense benefits, it also poses serious threats to human dignity. Those who master these systems can sweep up billions of pieces of personal data about us in just a few seconds. They can use this information to influence our political views, change our consumer choices, harm our employment prospects, and destroy our legal status. Computer technology itself is a precious asset, but if we don’t properly regulate electronic media, they will turn back and bite us, even becoming tools of totalitarian control.
The internet also offers aspiring autocrats an easy pathway to power. Tweets and other instant messages can stir up angry crowds, ignite violence, and destroy a rival politician’s chances. Lies echo through the internet, repeated so often that we swallow them up as facts.
(3) In recent years, several major democracies have been mutating into right-wing autocracies dominated by authoritarian leaders. Autocrats often rise to power by pitting their base, those they call “the real people,” against those they treat as scapegoats: immigrants, gay and trans people, those of a different race, and followers of the “wrong religion.” If the aspiring autocrats gain power, they might imprison, deport, or “disappear” their victims. After hiding underground for decades, fascism has been making a comeback, now using softer language but seeking to win followers with the same old appeals to racial resentment, economic anxiety, and the obsessive need to punish perceived enemies.
Numerous commentators have pointed out that democracy is fragile and must be vigilantly defended. If we aren’t careful, we may find ourselves living in an upside-down world, where we applaud our tormentors as our saviors.
(4) The fourth factor leading to moral nihilism is the contemporary conduct of warfare. While all war violates human dignity, the conduct of war today oversteps the most basic standards of decency. Nations at war deliberately destroy hospitals, schools, churches, and power plants. They abduct children and torture prisoners. They slaughter civilians and post photos of their victims on social media. They blandly dismiss civilian casualties as “collateral damage.” The international agreements drawn up after World War II define the boundaries of legitimate conduct in war, yet today governments trample on these rules, twisting the guardrails that sustain the global moral order.
This completes my brief survey of four threats to human dignity. What makes these four trends qualify as types of moral nihilism is a shared project of dehumanization. To exploit low-wage workers, you have to pretend they don’t have human needs. To sweep up the personal data of others, you have to ignore the real people behind the data. To rise to power by attacking the vulnerable, you have to treat them as legitimate targets of hate. To kill civilians and torture prisoners, you first have to dehumanize them.
From this it follows that the key to combating moral nihilism is the affirmation of human dignity. We have to shine a spotlight on the humanity of those at risk. We have to see ourselves in others, embrace them in our hearts, and act boldly in their defense.
What Does a Dignified Society Look Like?
I now come to the third part of my talk, raising the question: “What kind of society, consistent with Buddhist teachings, can sustain and enhance human dignity in today’s world?” To counter the forces hostile to human dignity today, it’s not enough just to point out the dangers we face. We also have to advance an alternative vision to our present system, the model of a social order that affirms human dignity, a world where everyone wins.
To provide such a vision, I suggest six pillars of a social order that embodies the ideal of human dignity.
(1) The first requirement is a world with a safe, beautiful, flourishing natural environment—one where we avoid the dangers triggered by runaway climate change and industrial pollution. To realize such a world, we have to curb toxic waste and make a rapid transition to clean and renewable sources of energy, sharing their benefits with everyone on this planet. We also have to make determined efforts to protect other species besides human beings, to make sure we preserve the forests, jungles, and lakes and a thriving animal kingdom.
(2) A safe world would also be a world of peace, where we no longer resort to war to resolve tensions. Conflicts between nations should be settled through discussion, mediation, and compromise, with the UN as the proper platform for such negotiations. We must aim at the complete abolition of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
(3) In the social domain, we should aspire toward a world with more genuine democratic governance, where citizens have the power to shape the crucial decisions that affect their lives. A healthy democracy would adopt strict laws preventing corporations and super-wealthy donors from influencing elections through campaign donations and pressure groups. Government should reflect the will of the people, not of gigantic corporations and billionaires keen on more wealth and power.
(4) A just social order also requires a fairly equal standard of living for all its residents, including non-citizens. Perfect equality of wealth and income is an impossible ideal, but all residents of a country should be able to satisfy their basic material needs: for a home, nutritious food, clothing, and health care. Researchers have noted that the most equal societies are also the happiest; the most unequal, the most violent and stressful.
(5) In a vibrant democracy, citizens must receive a well-rounded education that will prepare them for fulfilling their civil duties. Schools should offer required courses in the humanities and social sciences, in ethics and civics, and should train students how to exercise critical thought. Governments should generously support higher education, granting scholarships to poorer students so that all can benefit from advanced studies.
(6) We must ensure that gender equality prevails at all levels of society, so that women can realize their full potential. In relation to the Buddhist monastic order, monastic leaders should grant full recognition to the Bhikkhuni Sangha and take steps to authorize bhikkhuni ordination in their respective lineages. There are means in the Vinaya to legitimate bhikkhuni ordination, and with an open and flexible mind, we can adopt such means.
Realizing Human Dignity Today
Next, I want to briefly lay out a set of values we need to realize a social order that fully affirms human dignity. I call this set of values, rooted in Buddhist ethics, “conscientious compassion.” Conscientious compassion is not a mere passive sympathy with the suffering of others, but an active commitment to stand up against systems of oppression and to pursue alternatives conducive to the general good.
The core value of conscientious compassion is solidarity, the ability to identify with others. Solidarity flows from a recognition of the essential unity of all people, the understanding that all human beings wish to be well, happy, and safe; that we all seek to be free from violence and suffering. Solidarity gives rise to love and compassion: love as an active concern to promote the well-being of others; compassion as the aspiration to liberate people and other sentient beings from suffering.
“As Buddhist leaders we shouldn’t stand silently on the sidelines. We have to seize the demands of the moment, find our voices, and use them to call for peace and justice.”
For conscientious compassion to succeed, we need still another quality, namely, courage, which corresponds to the paramitas of energy (viriya) and determination (adhitthana). In the work of conscientious compassion, courage means the readiness to follow the call of conscience, to act boldly, without fear, on behalf of all those whose lives and dignity are under threat. Conscientious compassion is not just being nice, not just being kindful. It requires the courage to fight, gently and non-violently, for the principles consistent with love and compassion. It requires the willingness to act even at great personal risk to oneself.
Concluding Remarks
I will conclude my talk with a few additional remarks. I should first say that in these remarks I will be stating my own personal point of view. I am not representing the UN Vesak Day Committee, the Government of Vietnam, or any other organization.
I want to end by throwing a spotlight on a region of the world that might be called the epicenter of the contest between the forces of moral nihilism and our obligation to protect human dignity. I refer to the Gaza Strip, where, right now, a terrible genocide is underway, a brutal campaign of extermination visible to us in real time on our TVs and computer screens. This is the convergence point where our commitment to human dignity should engage us in a relentless struggle against the forces of moral nihilism, which wage their campaign of devastation with smooth diplomacy and arsenals stocked with the most lethal weapons.
Israel’s response to the horrific Hamas attack of 2023 has broken all ethical boundaries, threatening to shred the global rules-based order rooted in international law and human rights. In just eighteen months, Israel has killed over 55,000 people in Gaza, almost 70 percent of them women and children. Its bombs have reduced homes, hospitals, relief centers, and universities to dust; its forces have executed teachers, doctors, journalists, and relief workers in cold blood. For the past two months, Israel has imposed a complete blockade on Gaza. A complete blockade means, literally: no food, no clean drinking water, no electricity, no medical equipment.
Vietnamese of an older generation know what it’s like to face daily bombardments, when you don’t know whether you or your loved ones will be alive tomorrow. The people of Gaza now face a similar ordeal. In Gaza, you might see twenty members of your family wiped out by a single rocket strike. Your children may have lost their arms and legs. You have no access to medical care, and your whole family is being deliberately starved. How can we tolerate this?
Please bear in mind that I am not looking at this crisis primarily as a political issue. I am looking at it as an issue of humanitarian ethics. We are facing a campaign of annihilation that has opened the doors to moral chaos and shattered the very idea of human dignity. The genocide in Gaza should burn our conscience and move us to act—to stand in defense of a people whose humanity is being degraded and violently crushed. I know these are strong words, but I speak as a person of Jewish origins, born and raised in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York.
I’ve noticed that Buddhist leaders speak endlessly of compassion, peace, justice, and human dignity, but when it comes to criticizing Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, they seem to lose their voices. I don’t know whether this is due to fear or indifference, but we need to be courageous. As Buddhist leaders we shouldn’t stand silently on the sidelines. We have to seize the demands of the moment, find our voices, and use them to call for peace and justice. We must insist that Israel ends its violence against the people of Gaza, and we must support the aspiration of the Palestinian people for an autonomous sovereign state of their own, with full representation at the United Nations.
We should remember that an attack on the human dignity of one community is an attack on the dignity of all. By standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we demonstrate our compassion, our courage, and our commitment to humanity.
Thank you very much for your attention. Let me conclude by wishing everyone a joyful Vesak celebration. May the blessings of the Holy Triple Gem be with you all.
