Have you heard a baby being born? A baby is all like “AAAAA! AAAAA! AAAAAAA!”, except less textual and more piercing in pitch. Show me a definition of “dignified” which encompasses such shrieking, and I’ll show you a definition of “dignified” which lacks mainstream recognition.
Well, since you’re asking, today actually (really? really!).
I concede that you have the mainstream definition in your favor. I find the mainstream concept of “dignity” (the one in which perfectly understandable reactions to physical stimuli can somehow detract from one’s dignity) to be a pretty confused notion which I cannot relate to.
If anything, the way in which someone deals with a crisis point (comparatively speaking) such as giving birth can greatly enhance my estimation of that person’s capabilities. (I did understand your original comment to refer to the mother more so than the baby. Babies and dignity? Given “mainstream”-dignity, I’d expect sGetDignity(Baby) to throw an exception more so than return “undignified”.)
A year late on this but “up-front warning” seems to clearly refer to the baby, the idea being that being born is the first thing humans do in reality (or at any rate a major encounter with more of it than we’d experienced before).
You do have a point that perhaps the problem is the common definition of dignity rather than the concept itself. I could certainly see a use for a word like “dignity” that refers only to things we can reasonably be expected to control.
I find nothing undignified about it, once you get over “poop is the epitome of indignity” and such (imo) nonsense.
Have you heard a baby being born? A baby is all like “AAAAA! AAAAA! AAAAAAA!”, except less textual and more piercing in pitch. Show me a definition of “dignified” which encompasses such shrieking, and I’ll show you a definition of “dignified” which lacks mainstream recognition.
Well, since you’re asking, today actually (really? really!).
I concede that you have the mainstream definition in your favor. I find the mainstream concept of “dignity” (the one in which perfectly understandable reactions to physical stimuli can somehow detract from one’s dignity) to be a pretty confused notion which I cannot relate to.
If anything, the way in which someone deals with a crisis point (comparatively speaking) such as giving birth can greatly enhance my estimation of that person’s capabilities. (I did understand your original comment to refer to the mother more so than the baby. Babies and dignity? Given “mainstream”-dignity, I’d expect sGetDignity(Baby) to throw an exception more so than return “undignified”.)
A year late on this but “up-front warning” seems to clearly refer to the baby, the idea being that being born is the first thing humans do in reality (or at any rate a major encounter with more of it than we’d experienced before). You do have a point that perhaps the problem is the common definition of dignity rather than the concept itself. I could certainly see a use for a word like “dignity” that refers only to things we can reasonably be expected to control.