Dignity at Home

By: Tim Shriver

Last week, my childhood home was recommended for historic status in Montgomery County, Maryland. But that’s not because I lived there from the age of 2 to 21. It’s because the worldwide Special Olympics movement was founded there, in the backyard of our home. 

And it wasn’t just Special Olympics that was born at that house. The Peace Corps, Head Start, The Job Corps, Upward Bound, and The Legal Services Corporation were all born there, too.

Seargant Shriver talks to a group of potential Peace Corps Volunteers. 1961.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that, “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” All those years ago, that message applied in my home. I grew up in a home with “enthusiasm.”

In my childhood, our country was bursting with enthusiasm, too. Many adult men in my life had fought in World War II alongside soldiers from England and France and Russia and Poland, and many more countries who risked everything for freedom and for each other and for a future many did not live to see. 

At home, civil rights believers—Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, whites, blacks, rich and poor- all joined together to try to remove the sin of racism from our country. Even poverty itself seemed possible to overcome in my childhood if only we could muster the will to make opportunity real for all.  

But it wasn’t just enthusiasm that made the difference in those days; it was a fundamental and life-changing awakening of dignity. My mom decided to teach children with intellectual disabilities to swim because she believed that the rest of us would be awakened to their dignity if we could see their skill and the bravery and joyfulness in becoming swimmers. 

My dad launched the Peace Corps because he believed that young Americans would see the dignity of people from a multitude of backgrounds and beliefs if only they lived eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart. 

I think civil rights activists and community organizers and teachers, and business leaders, all of whom visited my childhood home, shared this belief. 

Together, they were convinced that the world could become more just and more joyful if we learned how to treat each other with dignity. And they made history.

In retrospect, it’s clear to me: treating people with dignity makes life better for everyone.

If that’s the most important insight, then why aren’t our leaders focused on it today? Our president and his friend, Elon Musk, just gave us a lesson in how to treat each other with contempt, and millions watched—some in horror, some with laughter, some just hoping it would end. But no one could miss the point:  these enormously powerful and influential men used language that treated each other with contempt, not dignity. The message seemed clear: “If you disagree with me, I will dehumanize you.” 

Why can’t we see how destructive that is for all of us?

What a difference a dose of dignity would make—not just in politics, but in business too.  As I write, leaders are pouring trillions of dollars—trillions—into AI technologies and as far as I know, no one is asking if or how those technologies are going to help us human beings flourish and treat each other with dignity.

Last week, I attended the Tech Emotion summit led by my friend Angelo Moratti, who is challenging investors and entrepreneurs alike with a simple question: “How will you bring heart to technology?” In recent weeks, I’ve asked several leaders a similar question: “Will AI make us happier and more likely to flourish?” The most common response? “We have no idea.”

But just because some leaders are sometimes role models of contempt and some businesses aren’t thinking about how to help us flourish, doesn’t mean that no one is. In the last few days alone, our dignity team has been asked to bring the message of dignity to groups as diverse as an Indian multi-national corporation, the World Community of Christian Meditation, The Tech Emotion Summit I mentioned above, and the National PTA. 

And with Father’s Day coming up, I’ve also had a chance to talk to 4 amazing experts on the subject of masculinity and fatherhood on my podcast, Need A Lift?. 

Jason Wilson, the founder of the Cave of Adullam, Simon Hooper, Author of, Forever Outnumbered: Tales of Our Family Life., Ruth Lippman, author of Boy Mom, and my amazing son, Sam Shriver all shared insights about how men and dads can ease out of “emotional incarceration” (Jason Wilson), and learn how to treat others with dignity.  

Most of the time, it’s the simplest lesson that changes everything.

Treat people with dignity. 

That’s what got my mother in the pool with children with intellectual disabilities at my home in Rockville, Maryland, in 1962. 

That’s what inspired generations of Peace Corps volunteers to serve. That’s what made our country a little more perfect time and time again. 

Sixty years ago, treating people with dignity made simple acts of goodness into a history-changing force. And treating people with dignity is what will make a history-changing force again today.  

Tim

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Dignity Updates

Tami and Alicia were in India this past week leading Dignity Index sessions with a group of leaders at Adani—a global company headquartered there. The participants' enthusiasm for the Dignity Index was contagious, and further proof that the Index and its benefits are universal.

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Back in the States, Karren led a breakout session on the Dignity Index at the Arizona School Administrators summer conference, training both district and school-level leaders. The room was full of strong engagement and thoughtful questions—proof that educators are ready to bring more dignity into how schools lead and respond! 

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