Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies

Dear ALL!

Please congratulate Maja & Eric Van Grasdorff!
They got married on 16th August!

Dear Eric is a beloved member of our Global Board of Directors! Please read about him on our Board of Directors section.

Please see the pictures from my camera (17th August)!
On these pictures you see also dear Birgit and Becca!

Dear All!

Dear Eric is a pillar of our work in many ways:

Eric brings a sensitivity for equality in dignity (and humiliation as its violation) to our work that very few people share. He is a Mandela. Many people in this world are intelligent and diligent and hard-working and prolific. All this is Eric, too. However, few have his sensitivity for humility, for walking the talk, for the significance or dignity and how it feels when dignity is disrespected. This sensitivity is like a foreign language that some people speak and others not.
And dear Eric has this sensitivity, he is speaking this foreign language! It is a language that people do not learn usually, only some people seem to know it, perhaps through particularly educative or even harsh life experiences. The fact that Eric grew up in Senegal, and came to Germany when he was ten years old certainly plays a role. He once shared with us how humiliating it was for him to be exposed to racial prejudice when in Germany, prejudice towards black people, who, for him, were his dear friends, human beings to be respected, not looked down upon. Through our work, we wish to spell out in more depth what this new language of dignity is all about, of which, so far, so few people have an inkling, and Eric’s intimate knowledge of this language is extremely important to us.
The world needs Mandelas, and Eric is one of them!

Then, without Eric our website would not exist! In 2003, he and his dear friend Martin took the initiative to build our website, and they almost “forced” me to learn Dreamweaver! I maintain our website since then, with Eric’s and Martin’s help when problems occur that I cannot handle. In other words, also on a very down-to-earth practical level, Eric is a pillar of our work!

Eric has also convened our 2005 HumanDHS Annual Conference in Berlin! Have a look at the conference! Eric made everybody feel welcome in an wonderful and unparalleled way! He lives equality in dignity, every minute! I remember, for example, how we ordered food in a restaurant, and how Eric guided our participants from all corners of the world to treat the waiter in a respectful way. This is what is so great about Eric, he detects “normal humiliation,” the humiliation that is part of our day-to-day behaviour, the kind of humiliation which we do not question, which we do not even notice. Eric notices this tacit humiliation!

My dearerst Maja & Eric, let us all congratulate you! One thousand invited members of our HumanDHS network send you love from all corners of the world, together with the 40 000 people from 183 countries who read y/our website each year!

We all carry you in our hearts!
Evelin

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under News, News from inside our network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.