Announcement
From Humiliation to Dignity: For a Future of Global Solidarity
This new book by Evelin Lindner has been preliminarily published online in 2022 (with shortened endnotes, 993 pages)
The printed book is envisioned to be divided into three parts (with full endnotes, 1161 pages)
Reviews
See more on www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/evelin/book/07.php
Standing on the edge of countless catastrophes, humanity needs to chart a course forward more powerful than the problems erupting today. That is purpose of this book! Informed by 45 years of scholarship on all continents, Evelin Lindner calls us to seize our remaining window of opportunity. She offers us our best hope for a better future, a journey toward global unity built on a courageous foundation of loving dignity.
– Linda Hartling, Director, Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and World Dignity University initiative.
This is much more than a history-making book: It is a uniquely DIGNImaking contribution to Human Character Elevation and to in-depth Humility.
– Francisco Gomes de Matos – A peace linguist from Recife, Brazil.
Evelin Lindner is rightly pointing out the tragic destiny uf humanity, facing so many humiliations and surviving through a permanent, and often heroic, fight for dignity. As a renowned activist for a human emancipation from all kinds of humiliation, social, economic or political, she brilliantly shows in this book that any social order is not even conceivable without establishing dignity as the main human institution.
– Bertrand Badie, Professeur émérite des Universités à Sciences Po Paris. See his book Le Temps des Humiliés, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2014, translated by Jeff Lewis in 2017, Humiliation in International Relations: A Pathology of Contemporary International Systems, Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart.
We must all be grateful that the extremely distinguished Medical Doctor and Psychologist Evelin Lindner has given us a book which can guide humanity to a sane and sustainable future. Her book, From Humiliation to Dignity: For a Future of Global Solidarity, outlines the steps that are urgently needed to build a new global ethic, in which local loyalties to family and nation will be supplemented by a higher loyalty to humanity as a whole. Only an ethic of solidarity within the world's entire human family can save us from the multiple interlinked threats that we face today: militarism, the climate crisis and excessive inequality.
– John Scales Avery, theoretical chemist, part of a group associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.
Evelin Lindner’s work is vast, visionary, and pluri-disciplinary; it incorporates historical, philosophical, psychological, sociological, and linguistic analysis — as well as insights from her pluricultural experience. Her book From Humiliation to Dignity analyzes the concept of humiliation and its impact upon personal, social and political behavior. In a polemological perspective, her conceptualization can be applied to what she calls “crossback” behavior with respect to Moscow’s feelings of “humiliation” in response to American triumphalism after Soviet collapse and “defeat” in the Cold War, as well as Beijing’s “100 Years of Humiliation” since China’s defeat in the Opium Wars. In seeking to transcend the so-called “security dilemma” that could soon lead to major power war, she points to the need to establish “the big peace — long-term global human security through dissolving all shells — rather than small peace — short-term local military security between hard shells.” It is a book that provides realistic hope that we can transcend the multiple crises that confront humanity by way of establishing a global society in which all human beings can live in dignity in careful interaction with the natural environment.
— Hall Gardner, Author of Theory, Historical Analogy and Major Power War (2019); World War Trump: The Risks of America’s New Nationalism (2018); The Ashgate Research Companion to War: Origins and Prevention (2012), primary editor with Oleg Kobtzeff. Contributed chapters: “General Introduction”; “Alienation and the Causes and Prevention of War”; “The Failure to Prevent World War I”; “Reflections on Polemology: Breaking the Long Cycles of Wars of Initial Challenge and Wars of Revanche,” among other works. See www.hallgardner.com.
Evelin Lindner is one of our most important voices for conflict resolution, human dignity, peace and global solidarity, and has, with her research-based commitment laid down a lifelong work, not least in the form of international publications. In this book, too, the study of conflicts is understood and portrayed through the decisive role that humiliation and the restoration of dignity plays. Can we raise our children to dignified lives and a world of respect for each other? Do we still think this is possible? On what should we build the hope for a peaceful world today and how shall we prevent oppression, the human urge to oppress and exploit others in a persistent competition? These questions are more relevant than ever, and in this book, Lindner tries to answer them all. By presenting the great story – big history – Lindner places us in ‘the dark era of the twenty-first century’, but at the same time offers concrete advice on how we can get out of the self-defeating ‘cycles of humiliation’. ‘Equal dignity in solidarity’ – in short, dignism – can become reality.
Norwegian original:
Evelin Lindner er en av vårt tids viktigste stemmer for konfliktløsning, menneskeverd, fred og global solidaritet, og har med sitt forskningsbasert engasjement, lagt ned et livslangt arbeid, ikke minst i form av internasjonale publikasjoner. Også i denne boken er studiet av konflikter forstått og fremstilt gjennom den avgjørende rolle ydmykelse og gjenopprettelse av verdighet spiller. Kan vi oppdra våre barn til verdige liv og til en verden preget av respekt for hverandre? Tror vi fortsatt dette er mulig? Hva skal vi bygge håpet om en fredelig verden på i dag og hvordan skal vi forebygge undertrykkelse, menneskets trang til å undertrykke og utnytte andre i en vedvarende konkurransesituasjon? Disse spørsmålene er mer aktuelle enn noen gang, og i denne boken forsøker Lindner å svare på dem alle. Gjennom å presentere den store historien – big history – plasserer Lindner oss i ‘the dark era of the twenty-first century’, men tilbyr samtidig en rekke konkrete råd om hvordan vi kan komme ut av de selvødeleggende ‘cycles of humiliation’. ‘Equal dignity in solidarity’ – in short, dignism – can become reality.
– Inga Bostad, Professor of Philosophy, Director, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, Norway.
Evelin Lindner continues her unfailing engagement for world peace in her new book From Humiliation to Dignity: For a Future of Global Solidarity. As a Western scholar, with experience from the South, and insisting on being a world citizen, she is able to pinpoint our Western shortcomings when it comes to building peaceful, just, and sustainable societies. The world is using abnormal and growing sums to build military might, including modernizing nuclear weapons, the world’s most devastating invention, but fails to meet the needs and concerns of its people. The inequality gap is growing, creating justified anger by those who are left behind. Evelin Lindner contributes substantially to the new reflection that is needed to get us out of the dominant capitalistic, confrontational, and competitive patterns, and instead help us concentrate our energy, creativity, and empathic potential on how to cooperate, in and with dignity, to save humanity and our planet from the global environmental and climate threat.
– Ingeborg Breines, former Co-President of the International Peace Bureau (IPB), former Director of Women and a Culture of Peace at UNESCO, and Special Adviser to the Director-General on Women, Gender and Development.
Scholar and visionary Evelin Lindner analyzes our looming, self-enacting, path to extinction. By reviewing human history through the lens of honor, humiliation, and dignity, she develops a counterstrategy. She challenges the very frameworks of domination of people and nature led by exploitative, corporate, and dictatorial forces. She illuminates a pathway for dignified, egalitarian solidarity, one that is grounded in the capacities of 'we, as humankind' to generate new frameworks, cultivate sensitivity, and incorporate the language of dignity. Lindner advocates engaging these social capacities and current empirical knowledge with the perspective of one planet-one humanity. She demonstrates how we can redirect a massive historic turn toward a global citizens movement for new global life-supporting mechanisms and dignity-sustaining constituent rules.
– Janet C. Gerson, Ed.D. Education Director, International Institute on Peace Education.
Dr. Evelin Lindner is a scholar way ahead of her time, a true “original” with a very special sense of mission. A fearless, courageous and dedicated woman, she is a “citizen of the world” who has offered her life to the cause of peace and justice and dignity for humanity.
I know that this book comes straight from Evelin’s heart and soul as well as from her intellect and insight. Her compassion, wisdom and love are a role model for us all. I will always feel grateful to have crossed paths with Evelin and to have been brought into the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HDHS) community.
– Grace Feuerverger, Professor at the University of Toronto and author of Oasis of Dreams: Teaching and Learning Peace in a Jewish-Palestinian Village in Israel (Routledge, Taylor and Francis), and Teaching, Learning and Other Miracles (Sense Publishers).
Evelin Lindner’s new book From humiliation to dignity: For a future of global solidarity presents us with profound insights into our utterly unique human situation: out place with one another as creatures of dignity, our place with nature, and our place within this mysterious and wonderful cosmos. This book is a must read for all who care about our endangered human future.
– Dr. Glen T. Martin, President, World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA). Executive Director, Earth Constitution Institute (ECI). Author of The Earth Constitution Solution: Design for a Living Planet.
From Humiliation to Dignity can help us finally recognize how our dominant worldview has allowed for humiliation to replace the humility of our original, Nature-based worldview.
– Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, Ph.D., Ed.D., author of The Red Road (2020), Point of Departure (2016), and Teaching Truly (2013).
In Humiliation to Dignity, Evelin Lindner calls us to create a peaceful global village by nurturing love and dignity. The time for courageous change is now!
– Darcia Narvaez, co-author with Four Arrows of Restoring the Kinship Worldview (2022).
Another excellent book by Dr Evelin Lindner. Trained as a medical professional as well as a clinical psychologist, inspired by her own painful experiences in early life, and learning from diverse cultures, the author aims to create space for humanity to flourish. She strives to prevent crises in planned and systematic ways rather than fighting them when they have already developed. She succeeds admirably.
– Deepak Tripathi, Ph.D., FRHistS, FRAS, author of Imperial Designs: War, Humiliation and the Making of History (Washington, DC: Potomac, 2013).
Evelin Lindner has fashioned a remarkable overview — a grand view — of human history through her powerful understanding of the primary causes of human suffering, our violence, our predation, and the ongoing destruction of our planet, leading potentially to omnicide. That same analysis undertaken through the lens of humiliation and dignism offers humanity not only a road map to sidestep further and even exponential disasters, but also offers us a way out toward a finer future, one based on what fellow dignitarian author, Robert Fuller, calls ‘operationalising the Golden Rule’.
– John Steiner, Transpartisan activist/meshweaver, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.
Every single contribution to the genuine aspiration of living in a world of equality, dignity, peace and harmony, is highly valuable. Evelin Lindner's book is clearly part of an arduous commitment to the values of dignity that should characterise every single human conduct.
– Baher Kamal, Publisher, Director at Human Wrongs Watch, Madrid, Spain.
Evelin Lindner's From Humiliation to Dignity not only enriches the mind, it nurtures the heart because of the deep compassion that speaks through her words. Thank you Evelin for your unconditional dedication to transforming wounds into dignity for all, and for sharing your acquired wisdom and knowledge so generously with your readers.
– Femke Wijdekop, legal counsel Stop Ecocide Netherlands, UN Harmony with Nature Network.
DIGNIfuture: A plea to humankind
By Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace linguist,professor emeritus of linguistics, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and
Board President, ABA Global Education, Recife, Brazil.
Author of DIGNITY: A multidimensional view
published at Dignity Press, 2013.
Recife, 22nd July and 27th July 2018.
The past of Humanity?
Partly a history of humiliation
The future of Humanity?
The rise of DIGNITY for Solidarity-globalisation
To the promise of DIGNITY let’s be committed!
From Humiliation to Dignity
For a Future of Global Solidarity
by Evelin Lindner, M.D., Ph.D., Ph.D.
The book widens the concept of academic work by combining what usually is separate, namely, scholarly work and lived experience. The book came into being as part of the author’s many decades of working with dignity in all parts of the world.
Evelin Lindner was born into a family that was deeply affected by war and displacement, and therefore "never again" became the motto of her life. She considers the world her "university" and looks back on almost fifty years of living globally as a lifelong sense-making project, at home on all continents, always embedded in families and family-like contexts. For the past twenty years, she has helped gather a global community of academics and practitioners dedicated to furthering dignity in the world.
Through her global life, the author has developed a big history view on the human condition, a view that embeds the current historical moment in the entire journey of our species Homo sapiens sapiens on planet Earth and extrapolates from there what we need to create a dignified future. This book therefore takes a step back to evaluate humanity’s situation in its larger historical context, and, equipped with the insights from this evaluation, makes suggestions for a roadmap into a future of global dignity in solidarity.
This book offers a complex analysis that summarizes where we stand and what is needed to create a dignified future.