Breaking Ranks: Dignity for all with Robert Fuller

Program Description

Rank based abuse, or rankism, is as old as time, and takes its toll on everyone, some much more than others. In personal relationships, rankism takes the form of disrespect, disregard, insult and humiliation. When one nation pulls rank on another, demanding subservience or surrender, the result is often war. This is a timely and long suppressed topic that Fuller addresses with deep insight, and in doing so, radically alters our worldview.

(For other New Dimensions dialogues with Robert Fuller find programs #1803, #1988, #2044, #2091, #2672, #2869, #2891, #2896, #2983, #3069, #3152)

Robert Fuller is a physicist, former president of Oberlin College, Peacemaker and, above all a devoted educator. His writings have appeared in Utne, Harvard Magazine, Whole Earth Review and In Context. He is the author of Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (New Society Publishers 2003) and All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (Berrett Koehler 2006). To find out more information about the work of Robert Fuller go to www.breakingranks.net.

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• How you can stop the exploration of rank
• What are the ways to address rankism in your life
• How rankism relates to freedom and democracy
• Why rankism is often unconscious behavior
• How rankism connects to addiction

Host: Interview Date: 4/24/2003     Program Number:  2983