‘Living in dignity’

Following the fundamental disregard for human dignity in the years prior to 1945, manifested in war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, the newly founded United Nations declared: All state authority has, first and faremost and as an indepensable requirement, the task and duty to respect and protect human dignity.
    In recent decades, the world – and the major Western powers in particular – has drifted ever further away from this. Today, we are facing a total collapse of the human rights and international law systems: in international relations, but also within many states.
    Crises and wars are happening more frequently. The existing world order has effectively ceased to exist. There is a threat of a major war in which weapons of mass destruction are also being used. There is a bitter struggle taking place over the future shape of the world order. Countries such as Russia and China, but also the Global South, are openly challenging the previous Western hegemony. What is being demanded is equality and equal rights, just as the United Nations Charter formulated back in 1945.
    The moral state of Western power elites is catastrophic. Good faith has been replaced by lies and deceit.
    Today, when we can no longer be certain that human dignity is respected and protected by the forces of state, peoples and the human community face an existential challenge: how do we enable and shape a life of dignity, even when our own state authorities fail?
    More than ever, we depend on living out our social nature and cooperating as equals. This raises the question of the conditio humana – the fundamental circumstances of our existence. Through reason and compassion, people are capable of recognising the fundamental principles necessary for moral and political action, and of thinking, feeling and acting in a humane manner. We must be, or become, aware of this. We must respect and take these conditions into account so that human coexistence can be shaped in a humane way.

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mze@mut-zur-ethik.ch