All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (0) [Kindle Edition]

My 12 year old transferred schools mid semester. He was the 'mayor' of his old school...very popular. Now he says, "I was a somebody, and now at the new school I am a nobody." The new school is better but he wants out.

It is easy to see it in kids, but Robert Fuller has identified an issue so pervasive and so ingrained that we adults don't even notice it. Sometimes it takes a great thinker (or a 12 year old) to show us the way.

This is a book about how to treat and be treated with dignity. Both a global blueprint and a personal one. Like our racial blindness only 50 years ago, rankism needs to be isolated so we can see it and conquer it. And that is what Robert Fuller does with deceiving simplicity.

I read the book on vacation. It is direct, simple and accessible. It makes its point with examples that will ring true to us all. Fuller makes his point so well, that it appears almost obvious.

Buy it. Read it. And read it again. This book will stay with you even if you don't have a 12 year old at home.

Robert Fuller has written another extremely important book, one that takes a close look at how our institutions are changing and how we can change them to serve us better. We're all aware of how deflating many of our daily encounters can be. Here, each page makes us even more aware of the occasions when our dignity is being trampled---and what to do about it. It's a place we can turn for courage.
I wish I had the means to put this book in the hands of those who make mainstream movies. I want to see a movie where the hero or group of heroines say just those things we wish we could think of when we've been embarrassed, put down, humiliated or dismissed. I don't mean what we usually say when we intend to give the perpetrator his lumps. I'd like to see an exciting, funny, sometimes somber, always thoughtful movie showing the hero moving through life's common indignities---but coping gracefully with them.
As Fuller writes, "Rankism can only be ended when people find a way to protect the dignity of their tormenters while at the same time suggesting to them a way to treat people with respect." What we all need, as Fuller points out, is better models as illustrations of coping, a kind of verbal aikido which lets the person know that you've heard and received the injury, but that you're both bigger and smarter than that. In short, we need to have fun with our imaginations as we delve into deeper levels of response, levels where we're proud of our ability of think of new solutions, proud of how we've responded at the scene. We want ways to at least feel that we're left in a neutral position, rather than as enemies waiting for vengeance.
What is more important in this historic period of our lives? We're all aware that we live on the brink of disaster---due to people's lack of imagination to do much more than act out conflicts through war. I suspect that many of us are frozen in fear, when what we need is just this kind of creative, imaginative response in the world. What if in rebuilding schools around the world, we not only built the schools, but sent the teachers off with cartons of Stephanie Heuer's book, "I Feel Like Nobody When...I Feel Like Somebody When," and let the children answer those two questions? It would help to create an atmosphere of openness, strength, respect and self-awareness from day one in those schools, preventing more catastropic Columbines.
For those who read his previous book, "Somebodies and Nobodies" and who wanted more concrete suggestions on how to deal with our daily indignities, "All Rise" is the book which has some answers. Fuller wrote "Somebodies and Nobodies" to illustrate the problems that rankism creates, and "All Rise" gives us ideas about how to solve them. And while you're at it, take a look at his website at [...], where you'll find a lot more. If you're brand new to the concept of rankism, you can go to that site and take a tour of the dignity movement. If you've known about the concept for years, you can go to that site and find support as you bring the concept to others.

Over the many years, roughly 3,000 books of which 850+ have been reviewed here at Amazon, with a few exceptions all of the authors at the top of their game, I have never encountered a book quite so straight-forward or quite so vital to our future. At 54, I simply did not understand the fundamentals of "all men are created equal" until this author pointed me to the one word I was missing: "dignity."

This book is nothing less than revolutionary, nothing less than the manifesto for the new politics of transpartisanship and being developed by Don Beck and Jim Turner and Reuniting America (80 million strong and growing).

At the very highest level, the author suggests that "rankism" or the abuse of rank, not to be confused with the proper use of rank and authority for the good of the group, is an umbrella term that encompasses racism, sexism, fascism, and even (I add) fundamentalism that excludes "the others" and offers an almost cult-like sense of belonging to the "initiated." We are all in this together, and with one word, DIGNITY, the author has completely shredded all excuses for abusing others, and opened the door for a new politics of one for all and all for one. The Republican and Democratic parties are, in my personal view, toast. Not their individual candidates, mind you, but the two parties, both of which violated their Article 1 responsibilities for keeping the White House in check, both of which have treated "the other" party as the enemy, with arrests, venomous attacks, slander, and other monstrous behavior.

Norman Cousins and his book, "The Pathology of Power" is still the best all-around dissection of the corrupt nature of unchecked power, but this book is in my view the single best lifeline for those who would seek to embrace bottom-up power, the power of the We, the Us, the collective intelligence of everyone from janitor to Epoch B swarm leader.

As an intelligence professional, and as an estranged moderate Republican who did what he could to oppose the war on Iraq based on lies from Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, I found the author to be utterly compelling and relevant when he reviewed how rankism silences or ignores dissent, and consequently leads to disaster. His examples are brilliant, from the shuttle disasters to nuclear power plant short-cuts that have almost led to Chernobyl-level melt-downs in the USA.

Bottom line: the dignitarian approach dramatically increases the chances that we will get a particular policy or budget or process RIGHT.

The author teaches us that insulting behavior from above is a precursor to exclusion, abuse, and I would add, genocide--see the work of Dr. Greg Stanton on the web. Isolating any one group is the first step in making them "sub-human" and thus acceptable as targets for mass murder.

I worked hard in the 1980's to shift the US Government away from its focus on military hardware geared to the Soviets and Chinese, and toward what General Al Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, called "peaceful preventive measures." I am warmed and impressed as this author makes the point that "dignity for all" is the ONLY "pre-emptive" strategy that will work both at home and abroad. See my reviews of "Class War," "Working Poor," "Rogue Nation," "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" and "The Soul of Capitalism" for a broader understanding of how all that our American leaders are disgracing America and making us less safe.

The author tells us that DIGNITY respects every contribution at every level. From this I take dignity to be the foundation for TRANSPARTISANSHIP, which embraces all individuals while recognizing that "Unity08" like the takeaway of the debates from the League of Women Voters, is a thinly guised effort to keep the two-party spoils and pork system alive.

The author teaches us that dogma is neither dignified nor sacrosanct. It is the opposite of dignity.

The author devotes an entire chapter to the importance of creating new models of understanding, something that humans are uniquely qualified to both do, and communicate and discuss.

He teaches us that humility is essential to an open mind, and essential to successful leadership. I fear that I have been lacking in this area my entire life, but now I embrace this term and am moving forward.

The author equalizes the role of the experts (who we learn are wrong 45% of the time in "The Wisdom of the Crowd" and the end-users, the citizens.

The author brings together and simplifies an entire literature in four ideas: shared governance; 360 degree reviews and evaluations, collaborative problem solving, and--this is huge--CONSTITUTIONAL reviews every five to ten years. Henry Kissinger in "Does American Need a Foreign Policy" and General Tony Zinni in his most recent book both tell us that our current government is DYSFUNCTIONAL. In my view, the most dysfunctional aspect is the "winner take all" approach to both the Cabinet and to Congressional leadership positions. We need a COALITION government that restores both the balance of power and the balance of ideas.

The author tells us that when authority loses credibility, the ship of state is on the rocks. See Max Manwaring's "The Search for Security" and Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History" to understand why legitimacy and morality, respectively, are the non-negotiable foundation for our future.

The author provides 10 ways to combat rankism, and provides a 17 item conclusion as a guide for leaders. Finally, the author joins with the relatively recent declaration of the United Nations, to wit, that sovereign nations should NOT be allowed to violate human rights, a universal right. On this see Philip Alcott's extraordinary book, "The Health of Nations."

The author errs in identifying only 1 billion in poverty. Not only is the number five billion. See C.K. Prahalad in "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid."

This author and this book save our Republic and the world with one word: DIGNITY.

The Pathology of Power
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
The Lessons of History
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits