Can We Disagree Without Contempt? — Tim Shriver (The Dignity Index)

 

Airdate: November 12, 2025

Julie Rose: Do you struggle to keep your cool when someone lashes out at you?

Tim Shriver: "How could he be so stupid? How could he be so misguided? I'm so much smarter than he is. I'm so much," in the back of my, you know, ugly, unconscious thinking, "I'm a better person than the person who thinks the way he thinks."

Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And I get it, nobody likes to be Uncomfy, but I've learned from experience, and you probably have too, that sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can stay open and curious about it. And that's what we're here to explore, so let's get Uncomfy. Today, I'm joined by Tim Shriver. He's the chairman of Special Olympics International and he is co-creator of The Dignity Index. It's an eight-point scale to determine how much contempt we are embedding in our communication when we disagree. Tim, welcome. Thanks so much for being with me today.

Tim Shriver: Thanks for having me. I'm not sure I'm happy to be here, but I, I'm excited to have our conversation and get a little Uncomfy.

Julie Rose: Oh, it's, it's my pleasure. I know it's a big ask when I ask people to come into this space and get personal as well, and I will say, personally, as I have grown familiar with The Dignity Index, I have realized I am often responding with less dignity and more contempt than I'd like to, and that I actually have even ever recognized before, which has not been a pleasant thing to recognize in myself, um, although I'm grateful.

Tim Shriver: That's the experience a lot of us have. You know, we built this kind of concept that we could improve the dignity in our culture by somehow measuring, or at least illuminating where contempt sits, but we didn't realize we were gonna be finding it in ourselves so much, so it's, uh, it's, it's, it's been, uh, it's been uncomfortable at times, but, uh, at least for me in this journey of trying to think through how I fit into the problems in our country and how I could possibly, I hope, fit into the solutions, it's been a great learning experience and I hope making me a better citizen if, if not a better person.

Julie Rose: Would you get specific? Tell us about a time when you realized you weren't doing as well as you could when you disagreed.

Tim Shriver: Yeah, you know, unfortunately it happens a lot. I mean, I'll just say, maybe 10 days ago, I, I, I come from the Catholic tradition, and I, uh, as a faith community, and when I was a kid, it's felt like everybody was a Catholic was like me. Maybe we were all Democrats, we were all Irish, at least in my mind it seemed that way. We all went to churches, we all prayed the same prayers, we're all the same. Not anymore. We have in our tradition all the extremes, politically, and I was just in a conversation the other day, we were talking about a public official who happens to be Catholic, and I was like, "I can't believe this guy. I mean, what gospel is he reading? He, he can't be paying attention to his faith." And I was just, "No, no, stop it." Like, on The Dignity Index scale, that's a, a four, maybe even edging towards a three. "How could he be so stupid? How could he be so misguided? I'm so much smarter than he is. I'm so much better at my theology than he is. I'm so much," in the back of my, you know, ugly, unconscious thinking, "I'm a better person than the person who thinks the way he thinks," and I'm talking about, in this case, someone in my own faith tradition to another person in my own faith tradition, and I'm sorry to say, the other person said, "I agree with you." You know, so, so the, even, even when we have a common ground of tradition, of text, of practice, of ritual, contempt just sneaks right in and hides as self-righteousness, you know, moral, uh, principle, like, "I'm morally principled. He's not! There you go. I'm better than you."

Julie Rose: Thank you for sharing that. So, so put some, um, meat on the bones then of the, of the scale, right, you said, "At best, that's a, it's a four, maybe even sneaking into a three." One is, like, the very lowest, right? Eight is the very highest, which, uh, frankly, if I'm, if I'm at a five most of the time, I feel like I'm doing pretty darn good because an eight is really up there. So, so, what, what is a one versus an eight? What are the markers?

Tim Shriver: So, so what the scale does is it tries to help us see the nuances in the way in which we treat each other, because there's a million variations, right, so we've just distilled it to eight. A person who uses "one" language, "You're not human, you don't deserve to live." That's the language of war. It's the language of violence. That's the language of genocide. It's quite common in history, and sometimes it's quite common in our politics today, even. That's a one. Two, a little better, not much. "You're a bad person. You're an evil person. Uh, we have to get rid of your point of view. It's us or you. I, we're not gonna be in this together." That's "two" language. Three, a little less contemptuous. "Good people, bad people. I'm on the right side. Uh, I'm in a battle against you. You're lower than me." That's what you heard in my talking about that other public official who's, who's, who, "Couldn't be possibly reading the same gospel, eh, couldn't be possibly reading the same scriptural text I am 'cause he's kind of got it all wrong." That's kind of "three" language. Uh, a four is kind of like, "Yeah, you're bad, I'm good. Our team's better." You know, I'm a Red Sox fan. "Of course the Red Sox, I know they lost to the Yankees, but they're better. We're better." When you get up to five, you're starting to see, uh, the elimination of the premise of superiority. A five is a good listener, kind of equal time. "You and I don't agree, gimme 10 minutes to make my case, you take 10 minutes. We both, uh, deserve the chance to have our opinions heard." As you go up, though, you see in, like, a "six" type language is curiosity. "I wanna, I wanna know more about what's going on. Like, I know we're not, we're not agreeing here, but there must be more to this. There must be something we agree on. You know, we can't agree on everything, but maybe I, I'm kind of curious," is the key word there. Seven, humility. A seven will often say, "I may have this wrong, but I want to know, I wanna learn," so that's kind of the humility you see in a seven, and an, and an eight is capable of saying, "Even if I disagree with you at the core of my being, I see something in you that is your, our common humanity." So those, that's the scale in, in,

Julie Rose: yeah, no, that's really helpful. It, it, it starts to feel softer as you move up, and I don't know if these are the right words, but here are two words that came to my mind, Tim Shriver, um, set me straight, feels a little "soft" and "permissive" as you...

Tim Shriver: That's a good question because it's completely wrong, and here's, here's why. It's a really good question, and I mean that sincerely. A lot of times people assume that to treat the person you oppose with dignity is to go soft on their moral violations or their ethical violations, or the ways in which they're damaging the world or other people, that, that dignity is kind of a soft version. Uh, the best current examples in our mind, in our cultural mindsets are the examples of Gandhi and King, both of whom pioneered a way of social action, resolute in its determination to oppose the forces they saw as evil and equally resolute in their determination to treat the people who they opposed with dignity. They saw that you could be more effective at opposing the policies and practices that they saw as being evil and malevolent and contemptuous, you could oppose those more effectively if you didn't attack the dignity of the person responsible for them, that you only attack the policy.

Julie Rose: And so, how are you defining "dignity"?

Tim Shriver: I'm defining dignity as, "The basic worth that every human being is given at birth and you can never take away," and, you know, we don't have to look at Dr. King. As people like to say, "If you're looking for example of someone who meets hatred with love, all you have to do is look at the parent of a teenager," and I mean that without, without, not, not just 'cause it's, it seems kind of cute or funny, it's because we all do know that sometimes people come after us and sometimes people attack us, and we're, we're, we're much better off loving them as a counter force, not because it's nice or sweet or a pushover. Uh, you know, I don't wanna be a doormat, but I would like to be a doorway to transformation. Not all situations call for eight, not all situations call for seven, but we underestimate the power of dignity as a transformational tool when we dismiss it as being, uh, you know, uh, pushover or sweet or nice or, uh, compliant in the face of evil.

Julie Rose: So, what is the, what is the best response when someone is attacking you personally, or it certainly feels like it, and you wanna respond with dignity, but you also don't wanna be like, "Okay, yeah, it's okay to treat me like that, or it's, it's okay to totally get me wrong and to say such a thing."?

Tim Shriver: Yeah, well, lots of people have, have been thinking about this question, uh, and I think there's two levels of answer. The first answer is, really, "The only way you can respond to a personal attack with dignity is if your own dignity is intact."

Julie Rose: Hmm.

Tim Shriver: And a lot of times I notice I lash out when someone gets under my skin and attacks my capacity to hold my own dignity.

Julie Rose: An insecurity of yours, then, or an,

Tim Shriver: it's an insecurity or a pain point, or an old story, or a sense of being, "I wanna render you invisible, unimportant, uh, I wanna humiliate you, mock you," and when, when, when, when that meets me in a place of strength, it's okay. Uh, you know, "I'm sorry you feel that way. Let me, let's talk about why you're saying that. I'm gonna give you my point of view. I'm gonna be very clear that you're, uh, in my view, completely misguided, that the evidence you're suggesting that isn't accurate," but when I'm in a kind of a weaker place, I'm like, you can't be in a healthy disagreement with another human being if your own dignity, if you're not, if you haven't got your own strength together because you're likely to pass on your own weak pain if you, if you, if, if not. The second piece of it is, you know, "What's the tactic I want to use here?" And, you know, the social media is full of, "I insult you, you insult me. Who gets the better of the insult?" It honestly doesn't produce much in the way of change. For instance, if you're trying to convince the person that there's a way to disagree with dignity, here's a guaranteed way not to convince them: insult them, right? So, uh, it feels good to insult someone who insults you. Everybody loves the, the emotion of it, but it actually, uh, backfires. So, we like to say to folks, "Hey, you gotta decide what you want: do you want to bring people over to uh, uh, uh, to change their point of view, or do you wanna make a point that makes you feel good and ruins your issue?" It's kind of like a telltale sign. Like, "I actually care more about making you feel like crap than actually winning you over." Time for a gut check.

Julie Rose: Tim Shriver, tell me, tell me a little more, about, um, the decision to focus on speech? Because It, it, it can also be easy to sort of dismiss. It's like, "Well, it's just words. You're just asking people to use nicer words or to not use labels," right? What, what is the power, do you think, for, maybe for ill, like, what's the risk when we..?

Tim Shriver: The risk, the risk of focusing on, the risk of focusing on speech is it, it can be trivialized. "Oh, oh, you changed your words, didn't change anything else. Oh, we announced that we are all gonna do something, but nobody did anything. I signed a, a pledge, but I didn't change, uh, how I'm running my school or my family or my business or whatever it is." So, words are easy to, uh, demagogue, easy to change. Uh, behavior's hard to change, attitude's hard to change. On the other hand, words are often a, reflections of our attitudes and behaviors, so asking people to rethink their words often invites them to se, question. I'll use a Special Olympics example. We had a campaign asking people to stop using the word "retard" as a way of making fun of other people, even if you're not making fun of a person with an intellectual disability, and people say, "Well, what's, that doesn't matter, I don't mean anything by it," but after, like, the second or third time, you know, when we polled that, we, we started that campaign, and we polled it, and people were 80% against us. "This is an infringement on my free speech," so on and so forth. "I, I can use whatever words I want." We never said you couldn't use it. We just said, "You're free to use it, we're free to ask you to stop," and within three years, 80% were in favor of, uh, eliminating the R word from their, from their vocabulary, and I think it's because people started to think, "Wait a minute. Maybe I didn't realize that that word carries connotate, I, I never knew it could feel so painful to people. Uh, I I, I didn't know that, maybe in the back of my mind, I, I think people who have an intellectual disability are... ooh, man, let me, let me, let me change that." So, words, uh, can be easily dismissed, but words do matter, um, and discussions about words can matter. I'm not in favor, like, people say, "This is cancel culture!" I, I don't wanna cancel anybody. It's the opposite of cancel culture; it's welcome culture. That's what dignity's all about, a welcome culture. So, we're not interested in finding people who are twos and labeling them and then getting them thrown outta their jobs, it's the opposite. We're, we're looking to help people see when they use two language, there's a dignified opportunity that would actually create a culture that you can say whatever you want, but you don't have to say it with dehumanizing hatred. You can say it with hatred, but you don't have to.

Julie Rose: Let me ask you, finally, Tim Shriver, um, you know, we think about, obviously this applies in every interaction in our lives when we're, when we're using language, but when it comes to the, the, I guess I've heard you call it, "the contempt industrial complex," right, or, "the outrage industrial complex," like, this sea of contemptuous language that we're, that we're floating in, there are some very, very loud voices, um, that really seem to have no interest in toning that down or moving up the scale in any way, and so How can this work? Do you think it can work? Can we change the tenor if the loudest voices in the room just really, like, they're winning attention and power, and I'm not just talking about, you know, any specific individual, but kind across the board in politics and culture?

Tim Shriver: Yeah. Can we beat it? Um, the answer to that is, is a simple, definitive and unequivocal "yes". Cultures change. We're in a culture of contempt right now. We weren't in the same kind of culture of contempt 10 years ago. Maybe there were other things that were troubling, or 20 years ago, we had other issues, but cultures change, and today, culture changes fast. You just look at the last 10 years, the number of issues in which public opinion has moved dramatically, uh, and even flip flop back and forth on issues. So, we, we're human beings. We change every, every day, every hour, every, uh, we're having, this conversation's gonna change me, so we can change the direction of the country, absolutely, unequivocally yes. Are there people that are very powerful that are not interested in changing the direction of the country? I don't know if there are people who are powerful, but there are forces that reward contempt, no question. What do you do when big forces reward something that makes you uncomfortable or, or is counter to your beliefs? First, choose what side you're on. Secondly, find people who are on the same side as you. Two, three people, now you've got a community. Reinforce each other. "This is the way we're gonna try to do it. When someone posts that thing at me on Face—, I'm gonna share it with you. Remind me how I might try to respond." And before long, people are gonna look at your Facebook post and say, "Look at her! What, what has she taken? She responded so thoughtfully to that person and look, how did she do that?" And before long, that becomes a counterculture, if you will, to the dominant culture. It's neither Republican nor Democrat, it's not from one state or another, it's just the counterculture of people saying, "I've had enough with living in fear and anxiety and the perception of hatred of other human beings. I don't wanna do that anymore. I'm gonna work with you, we got two, three, four of us," and before you know it, people start to, uh, own an alternative, and look, every great religion was started by five or six or two or eight or 12 people, and other people looked at them and go, "What the heck do those people have? I want to hear, what, how are they doing what they're doing?" And, you know, sometimes it takes 50 years, sometimes it takes 500 years, but before you know it, the whole world is different because of those people who did it differently. That's what we gotta do.

Julie Rose: Tim Shriver is the chairman of Special Olympics International. He's co-creator of The Dignity Index, and you can find more about The Dignity Index at dignity.us, dignity.us. Tim Shriver, thank you so much time

Tim Shriver: Thanks for making me Uncomfy.

Julie Rose: My pleasure.

Tim Shriver: Thank you.

Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. So, how well do you think you are doing at communicating in dignity rather than contempt when things get heated? I obviously have a lot to improve, and I'd love to commiserate with you, so let's keep the conversation going. You can reach out to me at uncomfy@byu.edu or reach out on social media; we are @uncomfy.podcast on Instagram. Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.​