Dear ALL
Please read further down Dr. Dakshinamoorthi Raja Ganesan's stimulating reflections on humiliation from the point of view of Indian philosophy.
I am especially grateful for these thoughts since I believe that it is important to fertilize discussions on the phenomenon of humiliation that cross-cut cultural spheres.
Most warmly!
Evelin

Dear Evelin. Greetings.
I went through 'Our Advisors' and I was particularly attracted to your biographical background. I can see how a traumatic experience has set the direction and a moving goal for your lifecourse.
Yes, I agree with your perception that it is psychological humiliation rather than heavy penalties that cause the fermentation for the next war. It is by harping on this theme of humiliation that Hitler mobilised, as you have noted, Germany for the II World War. You have made it that war that begins in the minds of men,as a rule, begins as an experience of humiliation.
As for building an identity as a global citizen I can only recommend to you that you savour the Indian -- either Buddhist, Jain or Hindu -- particularly the Advaita Vedanta -- definition of identity. All of them define the goal in one way or another as 'perfect transparency of consciousness' in which biographical and cultural -- specific and memory oriented -- identities are sublated.
No, these are not negated but transcended. Daniel Bell, the renowned American sociologist, perceptively observed India does not have conflict due to identities because identity is defined here -- paradoxically -- in terms of a pure, transcendental, transparent awareness.
The savouring of this identity has been rendered in contemporary English by J. Krishnamurti, a famous philosopher of India who lived upto the late nineties, as an experience of 'choiceless, effortless awareness' and 'nameless experience'.
This Indian identity has its locus and roots within the psyche of the human being and not in external culture or language or its replica in the reportoire of individual memory. Did not Jesus say something to the effect, 'What is the use of gaining the whole world if you lose your soul (in the process)? Perfect silence, not words, is the sign of the dawn of the wisdom of true identity.
An ancient Tamil poetess has defined it as, 'Silence is the beginning and bound of wisdom' diametrically opposing the German philosopher Wittgeinstein who said, 'The limits of my language are the limits of my knowledge'. No, Indian tradition asserts that knowledge begins where language ends.
The Upanishads have distilled the answer to the perennial question before every human being generation after generation into what are called mahavakhyas --the great sentences. They are: 'aham brahmasmi' (I am the ultimate, fundamental substance undergirding and encompassing everything), 'Tat tvam asi' (Thou art that -- that is the one and only ultimate substance of the universe).
How did they teach a statement the import of which flatly contradicts our stark experience of the world? Yes, it was an instruction that addressed the non-verbal, ontological level. William Cenkner's book, 'The Guru in the Indian Tradition' about the spiritual lineage of Adi Sankara, the founder of Advaita Vedanta, details it. Cenkner had been Professor of Religious Studies in Catholic University, New York.
Such a transpersonal identity will help one to orient and anchor oneself in a point where the contradictions of the mundane world are perceived to be subontological paradoxes of maya, the universal illusion of human exprience. One who has gained this identity is ipso facto immunised against humiliation. Of course, he may find himself in humiliating predicaments but he will not succumb to it. This is not atropying of the sense of human dignity.
I for one believe Indian psychology (embedded in its religions) has many insights to offer about eufunctional coping strategies against humiliation.

Well, I will conclude for the present with best wishes for you.
Yours sincerely
D.Raja Ganesan