Oh yes, we know… If you’re like most people, you don’t really enjoy thinking about abstract concepts. In other words, you probably don’t often tackle broad ideas such as equality and respect and self-worth. Very likely you hear or read those words, you form some vague notion of their meaning and importance… and that’s it. Few of us take the time to truly understand why those ideas are so significant for each human being. Or in the case of the Humanity Project, why our organization focuses on those ideas in creating our free programs and materials.
Those words, those ideas, truly are at the heart of everything we have done for the past 20 years.
So let us take a moment to put the Humanity Project’s work into words that may be more comfortable for lots of folks. At the center of it all is our very human need to feel good about ourselves as individuals. That’s what we mean by “self-worth,” of course. The sense inside one human being that they matter, they are important, they are worthy. The feeling they are somebody, to borrow the phrase we teach our Humanity Project kids: “I am somebody!”
“Equality for each, respect for all” are words we use to briefly explain that the Humanity Project wants every person to feel as valuable as everyone else, if in their own unique way. Equality in our society and respect among individuals help people feel good about who they are.
And in the end, that’s the true goal of the Humanity Project. As our vision statement says, “to help create a world where every human being feels unshakable self-worth and profound respect for all humanity.” That is, a world where everybody feels good about themself …and recognizes that every other person needs to feel good about themself too.
There are deeply human psychological reasons why self-worth is so vital to each of us as individuals. Our founder wrote an entire 600-page book about this: “Beyond Me - Dissecting ego to find the innate love at humanity’s core.” It offers a highly detailed but understandable examination of individual identity. But for this short blog, we can say this much about the book’s ideas: Every human being learns to think of themself in terms of specific identities: Susan-the-nice-person, as an example. Or Joe-the-great-athlete. Or whatever they may be. Each of us treasures many of these identities that feel very important to our sense of self-worth, allowing us to feel good about who we are.
The problem is that we also need other people to tell us we are right — that we really are Susan-the-nice-person or Joe-the-great-athlete. We look for outside validation of our identities. But very often, the world doesn’t agree with our views of who we are. Others don’t see us the way we see ourselves. This causes deep self-doubt, self-criticism and self-sabotage. We become our own worst enemy because we’re not sure we are the person we think we should be. And this dilemma is at the root of many problems we see around us every day, both individually and as a society.
But don’t just take our word for it. You can find endless observations by great minds that point out the absolute need for self-worth. Here are just a few of these:
“What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines his fate.” Henry David Thoreau
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” T.S. Eliot
“All of a man's happiness is in his being the master of his ego, while all his suffering is in his ego being his master.” Al-Ghazali (Persian philosopher, 12th Century)
As you see, the importance of self-worth is not a new concept. People who feel less than worthy constantly struggle with their egos. They do things, often destructive things, trying to prove their value. Inevitably they cause themselves and others harm in varying degrees as a result. And yet, far too few people today have begun to understand the central role of identity and self-worth.
All this to say that the Humanity Project is energetically engaged on this key battlefront of humanity. We want to teach both kids and adults to recognize their own worth much more fully. In so doing, we believe, the individuals who make up our society become more healthy and whole. And so does our world.
