Transcript - How the Dignity Index Can Heal Our Divides With Tom Rosshirt

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: How the Dignity Index Can Heal Our Divides With Tom Rosshirt

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 564 of Live Happy Now. We live in a time where differences have turned into deep divides, and public debate feels like a battleground. But this week’s guest is on a mission to change that. I’m your host, Paula Felps. And today, I’m joined by Tom Rosshirt, co-creator of The Dignity Index, an eight-point scale that helps rate the tone of our dialogue to recognize when we’re speaking with contempt.

Believing that embracing dignity can help us overcome our differences, Tom and his team have launched a new campaign to help ease our divisions, prevent violence, and solve problems. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:42] PF: Tom, thank you so much for coming back on Live Happy Now.

[0:00:45] TR: I love it here.

[0:00:46] PF: You’re going to become a frequent flyer with us.

[0:00:48] TR: I want it.

[0:00:49] PF: It’s super interesting to talk to you. We’ve talked with you about your book. We talked about the spirituality of silliness. This is entirely different and something that you told me about during a conversation we just happened to be having, something that you were working on. I did a little digging in. I see the Dignity Index has been around for a few years. But give us a little bit of its history and tell us how it came about.

[0:01:11] TR: Yeah. No, I’m happy to do that, but I do want to correct you. It’s not entirely different. You’ll see that thematically it is a cousin of everything we’ve been talking about. And I don’t want to get too deep in this before. I want to thank your listeners because – and I told you this before, but there was something that happened the last time I talked to your listeners about the spirituality of silliness. And a week later, I was checking my sales numbers on my book, and I thought, “What is this?” And I called my publisher. And when you looked at the graph of my sales, it looked like a Himalayan mountain rising out of the plane. And then falling and said, “What was that?” And that was your people. I mean, it was the biggest spike in sales I had during the entire time of my book.

[0:01:58] PF: I love that. I love it. Live Happy Now listeners are the best, aren’t they?

[0:02:01] TR: Oh, man. They just gave me a big mood boost in the middle of my book. So, thank you all very much. Great to be here.

[0:02:08] PF: I love that.

[0:02:10] TR: So, how did this get started? Well, 2018. And again, we have a bond. We have an agreement. You caught me off if I talked too long. But 2018, Tim Shriver, who’s the Chairman of Special Olympics and a good friend, he started an organization called Unite. And the idea is we want to ease divisions in the country. And that’s about where we started.

And we knew we were a small group trying to take on a big problem in a huge country. We need something different, right? We need something that people were missing or people were minimizing. And with a lot of reading and guided from a lot of prior reading, we figured what really is the cause is scapegoating. And if you turn scapegoating into a modern vocabulary, you would say it’s contempt. And we came away that if there’s an insight that people are missing, it’s significance, it’s that it’s contempt that causes our divisions. Our divisions aren’t caused by disagreeing. They’re caused by treating each other with contempt.

[0:03:14] PF: And I love that. When you told me about that, it put so much in perspective. It really changed the way I started looking at things because we talk so much. Everything’s divided. It’s us and them and all these things. And then when you can distill it down to, okay, this is the starting point. That’s a game-changer.

[0:03:32] TR: Yeah. People find that, very quickly, when we start talking about dignity and contempt, it shifts people’s understanding of their role in the problem. And it’s very striking.

One of my favorite stories to tell is we have an eight-point scale that measures how we treat each other when we disagree. And we print out these cards. And Tim told us one day he was giving a talk. And at the end of the talk, one guy came up and said, “I heard this talk three months ago, and it changed my marriage. It saved my marriage.” And Tim said, “How’s that?” And he held up the card. He held up the card, and he said, “See this one through four, the contempt? This is how I used to talk to my wife.”

[0:04:16] PF: Wow.

[0:04:17] TR: And I looked at the card, and I said, “This is me.” And then I looked at the upward zone of the card, five through eight, and he just said he made a resolution, a private one. He didn’t even clue in his wife. He said, “I’m going to stop talking this way. I’m going to start talking this way.” And three months later, he said everything turned around. And then he told his wife how it happened. But that’s the impact you can have because we really don’t know how painful contempt is.

One of the books that was a landmark book for us was Arthur Brooks who wrote Love Your Enemies. And he writes very touchingly. When someone treats you with contempt, you never quite forget it.

[0:04:55] PF: Oh wow. That’s true.

[0:04:57] TR: And Donna Hicks. Well, Donna Hicks says – now she wrote the book Dignity, and also a very landmark book for us. And she talks about contempt. She calls it a dignity violation. But she says if you violate someone’s dignity repeatedly, you will get a war, or a divorce, or a revolution. Because a desire for revenge is an instant response to a dignity violation.

[0:05:23] PF: Oh my gosh. And we see the reactions that are going on, the verbal bombs that are being thrown, and then we see that reaction, and it just keeps making the divide deeper and deeper and deeper. So, you can see that in real time playing out. As we get into this, give me a definition, so that we know we’re all playing with the same deck of cards, of dignity and contempt.

[0:05:47] TR: Right. Well, dignity we define as honoring the inherent worth of another human being. For us, dignity, it’s not respect, because respect is something earned. You can give it today and you can take it back tomorrow. Dignity is an essence. And we either honor that essence and we prosper, or we violate it and we suffer. That’s dignity. honoring the inherent worth of another human being that exists independent of anything they do. Right?

Contempt is looking down on someone. Basically, thinking you’re better than. You don’t matter. So anything that conveys I’m better than you, you’re worse than me. You’re beneath me. You don’t matter. All that is contempt. And it is profoundly injurious. But when contempt tears us apart, dignity can heal us. In fact, when contempt is torn apart, dignity is the only thing that can heal us.

[0:06:51] PF: And I want to know how, because we live in a time of such contempt. You hear it on television. It’s the name calling, the kind of bullying, the things that go on that didn’t happen as I was growing up. You couldn’t treat your classmates like that, let alone people in the public eye. How can it start to heal it? Because we as the public have then followed suit and talk with contempt. We name call. We’re not our best selves at this point in history.

[0:07:22] TR: No, we aren’t.

[0:07:24] PF: How does dignity heal that?

[0:07:26] TR: Right. First of all, it helps to look at it as we are in a culture of contempt. And when we say we’re in a culture of contempt broadly in the United States, what we’re saying is we are in a culture that rewards and encourages contempt. If I can treat someone with contempt and gain wealth, fame, and power, then I’m in a culture of contempt. I’m being rewarded. Right?

Now, individuals are pretty near helpless in a culture of contempt. And it could be a culture of contempt in your workplace. If you’re in a workplace where someone is treating you with contempt and you try to treat them with dignity in response, but they just double down on the contempt and you find that they have a little cheering section. People who use contempt always need a cheering section. If they have a cheering section that’s applauding them and encouraging their contempt for you, then you just got to get out. Right?

[0:08:28] PF: Right.

[0:08:28] TR: But the way to get out is build your own dignity culture. You could start with you, but find one other person at work, or at your church, or in your community, in your family even. Find one or two people and bond with them, and say, “We’re going to make a commitment that no matter what, no matter what the pressures are outside of us, we’re not going to take it out on each other. We’re going to treat each other with dignity no matter what.” And a group, no matter how small, if they commit to treating each other with dignity, they’re going to make their lives better.

[0:09:03] PF: I love that. I love the fact that you can do it from that small little grassroots, whether it’s just you and your spouse that decide we’re going to live this way.

[0:09:11] TR: Yeah. The idea is if you’re an individual in a culture of contempt and you’re somebody that it’s cool to show contempt for, then you got to protect yourself and safeguard yourself and get out. Now, if you’re in a culture where someone treats you with contempt and you can respond with dignity, many times you can turn that around because it’s exquisite.

If you treat someone with contempt and someone treats you better than you expect or better than you think you deserve, you also never forget that. That’s a dramatic thing that happens. If someone treats you contempt and you have it within you to respond with dignity, do it. And see, and test it and see what happens. Because sometimes it can turn things around and make a friendship where you didn’t think it was possible.

But, also, people often say, “Look, what about people who think I have no dignity? What about people who treat me with contempt?” And if someone treats you with contempt, if someone thinks, “Well, you don’t even deserve to live, or you don’t even have any dignity.” First of all, they don’t know you. If they think you have no dignity, then they don’t know you. But if you don’t at least once try to respond with dignity, then they may never know you. So give it a try. Try it out.

But, definitely, if you find that they double down with contempt when you’re attempting dignity, then you got to go remove yourself, make yourself safe, and try to build a culture where you can agree to teach each other with dignity. And that will nourish you, and help you, and protect you from the wider culture around us.

[0:10:52] PF: And that can take some practice because it’s our human nature to respond in kind. When someone is treating us with contempt, the last thing we want to do is turn around and treat them with dignity. How do you build that framework internally? So that’s your response.

[0:11:10] TR: Okay. So, that’s a brilliant question. And one of the ways we like to look at it is when we look at the eight-point scale. And if people want to go to dignity.us and look, you can find an eight-point scale there. Well, the eight is the uppermost level. And it’s really the love your enemies level. And people think, “Well, this is not even possible. This isn’t even practical.”

And in fact, the love your enemies, I love the King James version is, “You have heard that it hath been said by them of old time that thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemy, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you.” And you think, “Who can do that?” And I would say, well, parents, first of all, do that.

[0:11:57] PF: If you have teenagers.

[0:12:00] TR: Honest to God, if you have teenagers, and if you have been a teenager, you have treated your parents like that. And if you were lucky, your parents once in a while, not all the time, they’re not saints, but once in a while, they see, “Oh, he’s really in suffering. He’s really scared, or he’s embarrassed.” And you meet anger with understanding. Then it can diffuse the situation.

We have the natural ability in certain circumstances to do that. Then the challenge is to try to do that over time. And if you find yourself in a situation where you’re just full of contempt – and when we say we measure 1 through 8, what it really is is we’re trying to measure a state of mind at a point in time. And when we’re in a state of mind of contempt, nothing good’s going to happen from there.

To the extent that we can see we’re in a contemptuous state of mind, remove ourselves from the things that are upsetting us or provoking us, calm down, and then re-engage, that’s much better. But even that skill – because I’m telling you, Paula, the thing that often I confront is sometimes emails. An email will trigger me. And it could be you need to do this again, or this is over, or this is a meeting. Where are you? We were expecting you. Or some piece of work that I had forgotten about that I have to do, or some ungracious response to something that I sent.

And the challenge for me is not to respond to that until the wave has passed. And it’s super hard. It’s super hard to step away from something that has provoked your contempt. Your question is a very good one. There’s a range of arts to how do you do it? And John Gottman is a psychologist. We adore his work. And it’s very solid work. Jefferson Fisher, the trial attorney, is writing great books about how to deal with people who treat you badly. And Chris Voss, the former FBI hostage negotiator, he has terrific stuff about how you can respond to contempt and diffuse the situation and manage. It’s not like I’m going to win the debate. It’s diffusing the fight. Actually, the conflict is reduced, and you can solve problems together.

[0:14:24] PF: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:14:33] PF: And now, let’s hear more from Tom Rosshirt.

Not everybody wants to solve the problem. They want to change the other person’s mind. They want to prove that they are right and you’re not. We’re in a situation like that. Doesn’t matter which one we are, whether we’re like, “Okay, I just need to make them see how right I am.” Or if they’re like, “You are just so wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” We want to fight. We want to do it at that point. So, how do you put something in place?

[0:15:05] TR: First of all, I assess, “Oh, what went wrong there?” Right? We’re in a fight. It escalates. We bring out our worst, and then we retreat and we regret. And we think, “Okay, next time, what would I do?” But one of the great arts when people say, “Okay, well, if someone’s treating me with contempt, how can I get them to treat me with dignity?”

Well, one of the ways is listen. Make them feel listened to and heard. Because if someone’s yelling at me, if I’m in a conversation and someone starts yelling at me, guaranteed they do not feel that I am listening to them. And if I say, “Okay, could you explain that to me? I don’t really understand. Okay, what am I missing? Could you tell me more? Okay. It sounds like you’re really upset with me, or it sounds I did something again to offend you.” And you’re just trying to listen and understand, and allow them to express. And try to hear the feelings underneath the words. Because if that person feels that you are trying to understand them – and Chris Voss has this technique called mirroring, where he says just use the last three words that they said and repeat them, and they keep talking.

And then as Gottman says, postpone persuasion. Don’t persuade yet. Listen to them. Make sure they make their full case. And the more they make their case and the more they feel you’re listening, the more likely they are to listen to you. You can actually, with some of these skills, turn someone from who’s in a contemptuous mood into one that has more dignity and is willing to listen to you. There is an art to this. And there are a lot of people we can point to who are very skillful teachers of this. But just understanding that contempt can tear us apart and dignity can bring us together no matter how far apart we are. Gestures of dignity can begin to reduce the distance between us is a big insight.

[0:17:16] PF: And I know you’re doing this new push, this new campaign with the Dignity Index. Your team got some great new findings. And one of the things, as I was going through this, preparing for it, boy, they just really reinforce how divided we are. One of the things that fascinated me was that you found that two-thirds of the people think we have become too divided to solve our big problems.

[0:17:38] TR: Right. And now that was something the New York Times came out with last October, and it was all over the country because it had reached a threshold where it hadn’t been before. When two-thirds of – and it’s really one of these bellwether questions. Are we on the right track, or on the wrong track? Are we too divided to solve our problems? And two-thirds said yes.

Now, our data delivered that same result. But we also asked another question, which was, “Are you satisfied with the way we’re treating each other in the country right now?” And the magic of that question is it begins to point to a way out, because 78% said, “No, I am dissatisfied with the way we’re treating each other in the country now.”

Now here’s the twist on that. If you look at we’re too divided to solve our problems, and we’re not treating each other well, maybe we’re unable to solve our problems precisely because we’re not treating each other well.

[0:18:37] PF: I love connecting those dots.

[0:18:39] TR: Right. That offers a path that, well, maybe if we started treating each other better, we could solve our problems better, ease our divisions and solve our problems. The next really significant piece of data from our survey is we asked people and we defined dignity as treating people, honoring the inherent worth of each person, honoring their worth as a human being.

Then we asked, “Do we all deserve to be treated with dignity?” Survey question. Do we all deserve to be treated with dignity? 94% said yes. 94% said, “Yes. We deserve to be treated with dignity.” Now, here’s the plot, right? We also asked people now, looking over the past year on a scale of 0 to 10, how did Americans tend to treat each other when they disagree? And 31% said we tended to treat each other with dignity. 57% said we tended to treat each other with contempt.

Here’s the problem, right? Here’s the challenge. Here’s the path ahead. We got 94% saying everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, and 31% saying we’re treating each other with dignity.

[0:20:02] PF: That’s kind of a gap there. It’s a big It’s a big gap to make up. So, it’s exciting. But what I think points the way out is that when we say we’re dissatisfied with the way we in America are treating each other, what we’re saying is we are not living up to our values.

[0:20:21] PF: Yes.

[0:20:22] TR: And so there’s a moral tension. As soon as you say we’re not living up to our values, you’re generating a certain amount – there’s potential energy right there. That tension creates energy. If I can find an outlet or a path for my energy, that energy is there, right? I’m not lacking energy. I might be lacking a path. That’s the encouraging thing about – that it’s a personal feeling that we’re not living up to. We’re not meeting our own standards.

[0:20:53] PF: And so, we have that realization. And I would agree even without reading your survey results, the people I know even who are in conflict, they don’t wish to be in conflict with one another.

[0:21:05] TR: Right.

[0:21:06] PF: It’s not where people are most comfortable. You’ve launched a new campaign with the Dignity Index. Tell us a little bit about that, and what you want to do.

[0:21:16] TR: Well, here’s the other piece. Because I think the exciting part of the survey is yes, it talks about we’re unhappy with how we’re treating each other. Two-thirds think we’re too divided to solve our problems. 77% say we’re getting worse in the way we’re treating each other. Three-quarters say we’re exhausted by the divisions. We’ve got all that problem data, right?

But here’s the way-out data is not just that people say we all deserve to be treated with dignity, but the respondents are saying that dignity is not just a moral value. It’s a practical response. We’ve got data that says that contempt reduces trust, but dignity increases trust. Contempt makes it hard to talk to each other. Dignity makes it easier to talk to each other. Contempt makes it hard to solve problems. Dignity makes it easier to solve problems. This is the respondent speaking for themselves. They’re putting forward a path.

But here’s the complication. Here’s the plot thickener. As if we needed another, right? But we tend to have – and the data shows that there’s a bit of a gap between how we perceive our own behavior and how we perceive the behavior of our neighbors, so to speak. Right?

[0:22:39] PF: They’re bad. We’re not.

[0:22:41] TR: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s there. We got 95% of the people saying, “Yes, I am deeply aware of whether I’m treating someone with dignity or not.” 95 sounds high to me. But then here’s another piece of data. We’ve got 77% who say I always or mostly treat each other with dignity. But the same people say only 47% mostly treat me with dignity.

[0:23:12] PF: Interesting.

[0:23:14] TR: Already, there’s a bit of a percent. Also, we said, “Here are 12 actions that are fairly common everyday actions. Which of these have you done, would you say, in the last year or so?” And six of them were dignity actions and six of them were contempt actions. And the top six chosen were all dignity, and the bottom six were contempt actions. We’re just saying people are being – maybe they’re easy graders on themselves.

[0:23:45] PF: Right. Right.

[0:23:46] TR: They’re tougher graders on others. So the question then becomes, Paula, “Well, is there anything to do about that, that we tend to think we’re doing better?” The problem is really, “Sure, I have some problems. But other people have bigger problems.” And if you’re saying you don’t have much role in the problem, then you can’t have much role in the solution, right?

What we found is that just talking, just talking about dignity and contempt, and just pondering the idea that It’s contempt that causes division and dignity eases division. And then noticing how when we put a spotlight on dignity and contempt, we’re more inclined to use more dignity and less contempt. When you ponder those things in whatever way in conversation upon reflection, it changes the way you see your role in the situation. And so people wake up and say, “Wow, I didn’t even notice.”

But here’s one line. We have a bunch of verbatims which are exquisite about how people responded at the end of the survey. And this is just after a short survey, right? So many people said things like, “Wow, it really makes me want to take a look at how I treat people.” And one person said, “It made me more aware of language I use and behavior I exhibit, especially around my son.”

[0:25:11] PF: I love that.

[0:25:13] TR: In fact, I’ll just complete the point. Especially around my son, it kind of gives me chills. But what we found is we asked people to rate what were the best reasons for treating someone with dignity. And they rated all these reasons we offered them. They rated them all highly. But when we said, “Okay, now rank them.” The one that rose clearly above all the others was children are watching.

[0:25:40] PF: That’s so important, because it does change how they’re responding to things and what they think is acceptable behavior.

[0:25:48] TR: Yeah. It teaches them and shows them what’s acceptable behavior, but it also makes them anxious if they watch people yelling at each other, right? We love that children are watching because we know that people are inclined to try to treat others with more dignity because, look, it eases divisions, it prevents violence, it solves problems, it promotes conversation, it protects relationships, it has all these good qualities. But if you know it has these good qualities and you still need a little burst of willpower, the idea that the children are watching, children are watching, that activates the conscience. That’s powerful stuff to bring into your consideration when you’re thinking, “Am I doing all I can to make our society run better?”

[0:26:38] PF: That is fantastic. Where can people get involved with the Dignity Index? We’re going to – I know you just launched on the 23rd. We’re going to offer an email where they can sign up for some things.

[0:26:50] TR: Dignity.us is where to go first. And from there, you can look at the survey results. You can look at the eight-point scale. You can read some guides about learning more about the insights and principles of dignity and the whole theory of change. But also, you can sign up for the newsletter.

And Stephanie Wallace, our kickass social media director, she’s created a circles group. If people really want to learn more and connect with each other and build their own culture online, we have a little bit of a digital neighborhood hangout for people who want to learn more about dignity and practice it more. And there’s books, and there’s all kinds of ways you can learn more.

[0:27:30] PF: People who are listening now and they can’t get to the website fast enough, but what can they do right now to start changing that and to start losing the contempt and discovering more dignity?

[0:27:43] TR: Yeah. I think just go grab the eight-point scale and look at the eight-point scale. We have a longer scoring guide, but we have a simple little eight-point scale on a card. And if you start to look at that card, you will begin to see places where you’re treating someone with contempt. And it will surprise you.

We have something we call the mirror effect. And it’s when you hear about the dignity index, you tend to think it’s a tool for judging others, but then you find it’s a mirror for seeing yourself. If I am trained to score certain passages as dignity or contempt, I’m going to train myself, “Oh, when you say this, that’s contempt. And when you say that, that’s contempt. And this is also contempt.”

And so I become good at seeing it out there in society. But then, suddenly, after I am trained myself to recognize contempt in other people’s speech, suddenly, I see the same thoughts forming in my own mind coming out of my own mouth. And that is a jolt, but it’s an exciting jolt because you say, “Wow, there’s this whole field of self-improvement I was kind of missing.”

[0:28:56] PF: I love this. I’m so happy you’re doing this. I’m excited that you told me about it, and excited that we can support you in any way possible. Tom, thank you for coming on the show and talking about it, and what you’re doing.

[0:29:08] TR: I’m so happy I’ve been to come talk to you. As many times you want me back, I’m coming. I just want to leave one last note of hope, which is when people say, “Look, this is a huge problem, and this is a small movement.” And we say, “Look, we don’t need a majority. We don’t even need a large minority. We just need a trend.”

[0:29:30] PF: Oh, yes. All right, let’s get that trend going right now.

[0:29:34] TR: All right. Let’s rock.

[0:29:36] PF: Let’s do it.

That was Tom Rosshirt talking about the Dignity Index and how it can help us overcome our differences. We have partnered with the Dignity Index to create the Live Happy 5-day dignity challenge, a series of emails that invites you to one action a day to help change the way we approach disagreements. Be sure to sign up for it on social media at @mylivehappy, or visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. And while you’re there, you can learn more about the dignity index, discover additional resources, or follow them on social media. Please join us in this movement to build a culture where understanding replaces contempt and where we solve problems together instead of deepening divides.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why contempt is the real source of division — and how to recognize it.
How dignity strengthens trust, communication, and problem‑solving.
How small, everyday choices can shift the culture around you toward connection.

Download The Dignity Index Card

Visit the Dignity Index website.

Follow Dignity Index on social media:

Facebook: @thedignityindex
Instagram: @thedignityindex

Join the Live Happy 5-Day Dignity Challenge.

Download the Live Happy 5-Day Dignity Challenge Worksheet.

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