Quick Summary: The Blueprint for Peace
- Understanding the Dependency Gap: When leaders prioritize external military or political alliances over the will of their citizens, they create a “dignity wound” that often leads to internal revolution.
- Technological Misalignment: Procuring advanced technology without grounding it in the people’s ideology creates unstable power dynamics.
- A sustainable resolution to modern conflict requires a framework that prioritizes inherent human dignity above strategic, ideological, or territorial gains.
As conflict rages in the world, we must stay grounded in a fundamental truth: Each human being has an equal inherent value. Inherent human dignity isn’t just a moral ideal, but the only practical starting point for resolving modern conflict.
The most recent events in the Middle East are the result of an increasingly biased out-group mindset between groups that fail to see this inherent value in one another.
Leading up to the Iran Revolution in 1979, disproportionate outside influence on the Iranian Shah was a poignant cause of the revolution itself.[1] Political scientists like Ervand Abrahamian have documented how the Shah’s regime prioritized strategic ‘Client State’ status over the ‘Common Good’ of its own people.[2] As a beneficiary of Western military technology during the Cold War, the Shah lost sight of the Iranian people’s will. This resulted in the Shah being perceived by the people of Iran as a puppet of Western powers, incapable of protecting Iranian sovereignty, ideology, and human dignity.
As Donna Hicks notes in her work on dignity, when a leader creates a ‘dependency gap’—valuing external alliances more than the inherent dignity of their citizens—they aren’t just making a political error; they are inflicting a ‘dignity wound’ that historically leads to revolution.[3]
Technological advancements (or procurements in this case) that are not grounded in the ideologies of the people – are often the result of a political leader who is incapable of discerning the ideologically-aligned purpose of the technology from their own perceived superiority. When technology is misaligned with the will of the people, unstable political power dynamics develop.
Intending to shift away from unstable and misaligned political power dynamics during the Revolution in 1979, the people of Iran failed found themselves in an even more authoritarian state that failed to recognize inherent human value. After the revolution, the people of Iran ultimately secured a constitution grounded in mistrust of out-groups. This constitution has fostered hatred and dehumanization of those out-groups often perceived as “others”.
The Hypothesis of Inherent Human Dignity
Today, we are actively seeing the escalation and intervention of Iran’s Cycle of Conflict by out-groups such as Israel and the United States. Intervention is necessary, but it must be grounded in a strict understanding of the inherent human dignity of each person, regardless of the group they belong to. The intervention of Human conflict is complex and can only succeed using a blueprint of inherent human dignity; furthermore, any blueprint that is not founded on inherent human dignity will lead to continued human-degrading conflict.
Sources
- Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Iranian Revolution.” britannica.com. ↩
- Abrahamian, E. (2008). “A History of Modern Iran.” Cambridge University Press. cambridge.org. ↩
- Hicks, D. (2011). “Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict.” Yale University Press. drdonnahicks.com. ↩
Author’s Note: This exploration into inherent human dignity is part of our ongoing research on Human Conflict. By examining historical precedents like the Iranian Revolution, we can better understand how to apply these blueprints to the human-degrading conflicts of today. For a deeper dive into these frameworks, please explore our recommended books, other reflections, or our book, Conflict: Recognizing Human Dignity as a Solution to Humanity’s Greatest Challenges..
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