Reflections on the Recovery of a Quality
- Anne Ross
- Jun 5
- 2 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
"How can a person restore his* quality of dignity?"
I SAW THIS QUESTION posed on the main page of a website, and it intrigued me. Here is how I took it apart:

“dignity”
“Dignity” is a noun, a conceptualization and concretization of an experience, a label.
A label, while it may be shared in language, cannot adequately map our experience, and although we might use the same label others do, our respective bodies of experience will always differ.**
“Dignity” is also a “social” word, meaning it exists in reference to the (supposed) thoughts and experience of others. If the underlying purpose of the overall question is based on a need to conform to an imagined social standard, then the overall objective is itself suspect.
“quality of dignity”
Where do qualities (such as “dignity”) come from? Are they not abstract attributes we ourselves lend to things we perceive?
“restore”
Is a “restoring” even necessary?
And what test is there that establishes that some thing to be restored has actually been lost?
If we can still think of that “lost” thing, it still resides in our experience. The existence of a “not-something” requires that there first be a “something.” The “something” is what identifies the true context; the “not” is merely an adjective.
Further, in the realm of abstractions (where qualities like “dignity” reside), how can we, as owners of our perceptions of our experience, ever lack for anything in that realm?
* * *
In terms of manifesting things into a time-oriented universe, merely considering something to be so can be useful as a necessary preliminary fiction.*** However, since the question posed regards an abstraction and not something physical, the “considering” part is easier and the result faster.
In answer to the posed question, then, the person can simply consider the quality of dignity restored—that is, invoke that power of context which is available to us all.****
In fact, to assume the mantle of one’s “creatorliness” is possibly the best way to restore the dignity of that capacity.
__________
*or her or their
**“A rose by any other name . . .”?; another rose is not the same.
***Note that “pretending into reality” and “hallucinating things that don’t exist” are a stock-in-trade of bridge engineers, inventors, and architects.
****Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech in The Merchant of Venice (Act IV, Scene I) might be contemplated in the same light of analysis. (Another discussion, for another day.)
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