“The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”
Psalm 24:1 · King James Version [1]
An institution can operate efficiently and, at the same time, lose sight of the person it serves. The patient becomes a place in a queue, the employee a post in a table, the citizen a case number, and the person who has made an error — someone to be blamed. This essay proposes a reversal of perspective: before we ask whether the system works, let us ask whether the human being remains visible within it. The starting point is a single sentence from a Psalm; the destination is a set of concrete practices that can be tested in a hospital, an office, a company and a civic organisation.
I. To Whom the Human Person Belongs
Psalm 24 is a processional song. It opens with the declaration that the earth and its fullness belong to the Creator, and immediately afterwards asks who may ascend the mountain of the Lord. The answer concerns neither origin, nor office, nor wealth: it concerns the one who has “clean hands and a pure heart” (v. 4). The order of the Psalm is therefore plain — first it speaks of whom the world belongs to, and only then of how to conduct oneself in that world. [1]
In the Hebrew wording of the verse — la-Adonai ha-aretz u-melo’ah, tevel ve-yoshvei vah — alongside the earth and its fullness, “those who dwell in it” are named. In this sentence human beings are neither the owners of the world nor its resource. They are its inhabitants, who belong to the same One to whom the earth belongs. A conclusion of great practical importance follows: no system, no organisation and no superior owns a human being. At most, they exercise custody over something.
Jewish tradition drew a concrete practice from this verse. The Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 35a) sets it beside Psalm 115:16, which says that the earth has been given to the children of men. The resolution is subtle: before a blessing is spoken, everything belongs to the Lord; after the blessing, a person may enjoy the gift. Whoever enjoys the world without a blessing acts as though he had appropriated something sanctified. [2] This is not a prohibition on enjoyment, but a reminder that enjoyment begins with the acknowledgement that we are not the first owners.
The Apostle Paul quotes the same verse in the First Letter to the Corinthians (10:26), resolving a dispute about food. There, the freedom to enjoy the gifts of the world is at once limited by regard for the conscience of another person (10:28–29). [3] In both traditions — of the Torah and of the Gospel — the sentence about the Creator’s ownership does not lead to abstraction. It leads to the question of how I treat the other person, who also “dwells on this earth”.
For Just Council this verse is the key to a problem I call the disappearance of the human person in institutions. If the human being is not the property of the system, the system cannot treat him solely as a means to its own ends. I state plainly: the Psalm contains no programme for organising a hospital or an office. Its application to public life is an ethical interpretation, which has to be justified by reason, experience and data. That is how I shall try to justify it.
II. A World in Which the Human Person Disappears from View
Modern institutions rarely reject the human being outright. More often they cease to see him gradually, through decisions each of which, taken alone, seems reasonable. An indicator is introduced to improve control. A form is simplified to speed up service. Contact is moved to an app to reduce costs. Each of these steps may be justified. Their sum is sometimes that no one is any longer responsible for what happens to a particular person between successive stages of the procedure.
The British anthropologist Marilyn Strathern formulated a generalisation known as Goodhart’s law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. [4] It describes a mechanism well known in healthcare and public administration. The indicator was meant to report on the state of affairs, and it begins to replace it. Shortening the length of a visit improves the throughput statistic, but says nothing about whether the patient understood the recommendations. The number of closed cases rises, although some of them were closed without solving the citizen’s problem. The measure is not the enemy here — it becomes one only when we stop asking whom it concerns.
The second dimension of the disappearance of the person is social. In its report of 30 June 2025, the WHO Commission on Social Connection estimated that loneliness affects roughly one in six people worldwide and is linked to more than 871,000 deaths a year, about one hundred every hour. [5] This is a population-level estimate, not a precise count of victims; it does not allow us to prejudge the fate of any particular person. It does indicate, however, that a lack of bonds is not merely a private sorrow. It is a public health phenomenon. The Commission stressed that social connection should be taken into account in digital, health, education and employment policy. [5]
An earlier meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton covered 148 studies and more than 300,000 participants. Stronger social relationships were associated with roughly a 50 per cent greater likelihood of survival over the follow-up period. [6] These were observational studies, so they do not prove a simple causal link in every case. They do, however, provide a solid basis for the claim that a relationship with another human being is a factor in health, not an addition to it.
In the Polish data a tension is visible which I described in the previous text of this series. In the February 2026 CBOS survey, 75% of respondents agreed that one must be very careful in dealing with others, while at the same time 69% declared a readiness to be sensitive to the needs of others and to help. [7] [8] Society is cautious, but not indifferent. This is an important observation: the potential for care for the human person exists. The question is whether institutions allow it to express itself, or extinguish it.
III. How Dehumanisation Comes About
Social psychology describes dehumanisation as denying another person fully human characteristics. In a review of 2006, Nick Haslam distinguished two forms of it. In the first, a person is perceived as less developed, “animal-like”. In the second, as mechanical — lacking warmth, emotion and individuality, similar to an object or a device. [9] This second, mechanistic dehumanisation is of particular importance for institutions. It does not require hostility. It is enough that the person is reduced to a function, a case or an item in a process.
Omar Haque and Adam Waytz analysed this mechanism in medicine. They identified the factors that favour it: the diffusion of responsibility, workload, standardisation, and also naming practices in which the patient becomes “bed number seven” or “the case from the ward”. [10] Their analysis is honest about the complexity of the phenomenon. The authors admit that a certain form of distance may serve a protective function — the surgeon must focus on the tissue, not on the patient’s fear, at the moment of operating. The problem arises when distance ceases to be a tool of the moment and becomes a lasting attitude towards the person.
Here the first tension of values emerges which Just Council takes seriously. Professionalism requires distance, and dignity requires presence. It cannot be settled once and for all. What can be required, however, is that the institution knows when distance stops serving the patient, and that it creates moments of return to the person: a conversation after the procedure, an explanation of a decision, a question about what the person needs.
The second source of dehumanisation lies on the side of the staff themselves. Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter described occupational burnout in three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism or depersonalisation, and a reduced sense of efficacy. [11] Depersonalisation here means precisely the adoption of a detached, cold attitude towards the people one serves. An important conclusion for fair judgement follows: dehumanising behaviour towards a patient or a petitioner is sometimes a symptom of the condition in which the institution keeps its own staff. An exhausted person has fewer resources with which to see the human being in another.
In keeping with the principle of compassion with discernment, this does not mean lifting responsibility from a person who treated another without respect. It means that the assessment must also take in the conditions in which that person worked. An institution that demands empathy from its staff while systematically exhausting it shifts onto individuals the cost of its own organisational decisions.
IV. History Reminds Us Where Change Begins
Polish history knows a moment when the fate of one person became a matter for the whole community. In August 1980 the strike at the Gdańsk Shipyard began, among other things, with the demand to reinstate Anna Walentynowicz, a crane operator dismissed a few months before retirement. From a protest in defence of one person grew Solidarity — a movement that changed the course of the history of Poland and of Europe. I do not claim that systemic change can be reduced to a single case. I claim that its moral source was the conviction that the wrong done to a particular person is not a private matter.
A year later John Paul II, in the encyclical Laborem exercens (1981), formulated the principle that work is “for the human person”, and not the person “for work”. [12] In the context of that time it was a challenge to a system that treated the human being as an instrument of the plan. That principle has not lost its relevance since the change of regime. Every system — market, administrative or digital — can reverse that order if it stops asking whom it ultimately serves.
Janusz Korczak, physician and educator, built his pedagogy on the conviction that the child is fully a human being now, and not merely a candidate for a human being in the future. His practice in the Orphans’ Home — with its peer court and a newspaper edited by the children — was an attempt to create an institution in which the weakest participant has a voice and can seek justice. His fidelity to the children to the very end, in August 1942, remains one of the strongest testimonies that human dignity does not depend on strength or usefulness.
One thought joins these three anchors. A community grows healthy when the fate of a particular person becomes the criterion by which the system is judged. It falls when the system begins to explain why the fate of that person does not matter for the whole.
V. Stewardship Instead of Possession
If the earth and its inhabitants belong to the Creator, then the role of a person who exercises authority is the role of a steward. A steward manages what is not his own, and gives an account of it. This notion can be carried over into secular language without losing its meaning: a hospital director, an office head or a company president manage resources that have been entrusted to them, and people whose dignity is not at their disposal.
European philosophy expressed the same intuition in the language of reason. Immanuel Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), formulated the principle of treating humanity — whether in one’s own person or in the person of any other — always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. [13] The word “merely” is key here. In every organisation people are, to some extent, means for one another: the employee carries out tasks, the physician delivers services, the official conducts proceedings. Kant does not forbid cooperation. He forbids reducing the human being to function alone.
Contemporary health policy has taken the same direction. The report of the American Institute of Medicine, Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), named patient-centred care as one of six aims of healthcare quality, alongside safety, effectiveness, timeliness, efficiency and equity. [14] The World Health Assembly, in resolution WHA69.24 of 2016, called on states to strengthen integrated people-centred health services. [15] The convergence of the biblical tradition, Enlightenment philosophy and contemporary quality standards does not prove the truth of any one of them. It does show, however, that a focus on the human person is not sentiment, but a conclusion reached by different roads.
Stewardship has also a second side, which is easily forgotten. A steward answers not only to those he serves, but also for the resources entrusted to him. A focus on the person does not mean handing out everything to everyone who asks. It means a just division of limited means, transparent criteria, and a readiness to explain why one need was met before another. A person who has been refused has the right to hear the reasons. That, too, is a form of respect.
VI. Five Places Where the Human Person Disappears Most Often
The disappearance of the person is not spread evenly. From experience in healthcare, administration and civic organisations, I identify five places where it happens most often. The table sets them out as a proposal for local verification, not as a research finding.
| Place | How the person disappears | The Just Council question | A possible first step |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transition between stages | The patient or petitioner falls “between” units, none of which feels responsible. | Who is responsible for this person right now? | Appoint a person who carries the case across the junction of stages. |
| Queue and waiting | Waiting time becomes a number in a statistic, not a period of uncertainty for a particular person. | Does the person waiting know what is happening and what to expect? | Introduce information on the status of the case and the expected date. |
| Refusal and negative decision | The decision is delivered without reasons, or in language the addressee cannot understand. | Does the person understand why the decision was taken and what he can do next? | Accompany every refusal with an understandable justification and a route of appeal. |
| Adverse event | The injured person and the employee after an error are left alone with the consequences of the event. | Who has cared for both sides, and who is talking to them? | Ensure contact with the injured person and support for the staff. |
| Everyday effort of staff | The work that sustains the system remains invisible until someone leaves. | Do we know who sustains this process and how we protect them? | Name the contribution, secure cover, assess the workload. |
In all five places the problem has the same structure. The procedure exists, but there is no person who sees the whole from the perspective of the human being on the other side. That is why the answer cannot be limited to yet another document. It requires naming someone who is responsible for ensuring that the person does not disappear.
VII. Just Culture as a Practice of Seeing the Person
In the previous text of this series I described Just Culture as a way of fairly examining errors and recognising merit. Here I want to point to its deeper meaning: Just Culture is a practice that does not allow a person to be reduced to a single event.
James Reason showed that an analysis of error focused exclusively on the individual overlooks the conditions in which that individual acted. [16] The systems approach does not remove responsibility, but it restores the person’s context: fatigue, an unclear procedure, a faulty tool, time pressure. In this way the perpetrator ceases to be an abstract “guilty party” and becomes a particular employee whose action can be understood and assessed proportionately.
Amy Edmondson described psychological safety as the belief that in a team one can ask questions, admit ignorance and disclose mistakes without exposing oneself to humiliation. [17] In a study of 51 teams it was associated with learning behaviours. From the perspective of this essay, psychological safety means something simpler: in such a team a person does not have to hide that he is human — that he does not know something, fears something or has overlooked something.
Just Culture, however, requires proportion. A culture of fair treatment distinguishes an unintended error from a conscious disregard of a serious risk. The NHS England tool Being fair of 2025 explicitly takes into account cases of recklessness, wilful neglect and intent to cause harm. [18] A focus on the person therefore does not mean giving up responsibility. It means that responsibility is determined after a careful understanding of the person and his situation, and not instead of it.
This distinction also protects injured persons. A patient who has been harmed is also an “inhabitant of the earth” of whom the Psalm speaks. An institution focused on the person cannot concern itself solely with the staff at the expense of the injured, nor solely with the injured at the expense of the staff. It must see both sides at once, respecting their different needs.
VIII. Technology as a Tool, Not a New Owner
Digitalisation and artificial intelligence are changing the way institutions communicate with people. They can reduce the workload of staff, shorten waiting and limit errors. They can also accelerate the disappearance of the person, if a decision is hidden behind an algorithm that no one can explain, and contact with the institution is reduced to a form with no possibility of conversation.
The European legislator has recognised this risk. Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council on artificial intelligence requires in Article 14 that high-risk systems be designed so that they can be effectively overseen by natural persons during their period of use. [19] The principle of human oversight has value, however, only when it is not a formality. The person overseeing must understand how the system works, have time to assess the result, and a real ability to depart from the recommendation.
From the perspective of Psalm 24, technology belongs to the “fullness of the earth” — to the gifts which a person may use. It must not, however, become the new owner of the person. The question I propose to ask at every implementation is: after the change, will the person on the other side find it easier to understand his situation, easier to obtain help, and easier to challenge an erroneous decision? If the answer is no, the implementation needs correcting, regardless of the savings it brings.
Honesty requires adding that the absence of technology can also dehumanise. A patient who has to bring the same test results three times because systems do not exchange data also experiences a lack of respect for his time and effort. The problem is therefore not technology as such, but whether its design begins with the person.
IX. The Limits of a Focus on the Person
Every value pushed to an extreme can do harm. A focus on the person does not mean consent to every demand, release from obligations or abandonment of standards. A physician who, out of concern for the patient’s comfort, withholds uncomfortable information about the prognosis does not respect the patient’s dignity — he deprives him of the right to decide about his own life. A manager who, out of sympathy for an employee, does not react to repeated risky behaviour protects neither him nor the patients.
In Just Council we call this balance compassion with discernment. Compassion without discernment turns into indulgence, which in the end harms the weaker. Discernment without compassion turns into procedure, in which the person disappears. Psalm 24 joins both elements in a single movement: after stating that the world belongs to the Lord, it immediately asks about clean hands and a pure heart. The dignity of the person and the demand made of the person flow from the same source.
There is also a limit on the side of the steward himself. Those who serve others also belong among those “who dwell on the earth”. A leader who sacrifices everything for the institution and expects the same of his team violates the very principle he wishes to realise. Rest, fair remuneration and the possibility of obtaining help are conditions of lasting service, not privileges.
I also acknowledge the limits of this argument. We do not have studies showing that institutions declaring a focus on the person always achieve better results. Our knowledge of mechanisms — psychological safety, social connection, burnout, dehumanisation — is firmer than our knowledge of the effectiveness of particular programmes. The proposals in the following sections should therefore be treated as a starting point for local testing, not a ready-made prescription.
X. How to Check Whether the Person Remains Visible
Values become credible through measurement that does not replace the person, but allows him to be seen. I propose a set of measures to be adapted in a particular organisation. Each requires a baseline to be established and cautious interpretation.
| Area | What can be measured | Condition for interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Continuity of responsibility | The share of cases or patients with a designated responsible person at every stage. | Check whether the responsible person really has the time and the authority. |
| Understanding of decisions | The proportion of addressees declaring that they understand the reasons for a decision and the next steps. | Separate the assessment of understanding from satisfaction with the outcome. |
| Information while waiting | The time from submission to the first information on the status of the case. | A quick reply must contain substance, not merely an acknowledgement of receipt. |
| Condition of staff | Results of a repeated survey of workload and burnout, absence, turnover. | Take account of changes in staffing and in the structure of tasks. |
| Connection with the loneliest | The number of people covered by contact after discharge, after a loss or in long-term illness. | Measure the quality of contact, not merely its occurrence. |
| Oversight of technology | The share of algorithm-supported decisions in which a human verified the result and was able to depart from it. | Examine the real possibility of departing, not merely a formal signature. |
None of these measures should become an end in itself. When that happens, the mechanism described by Strathern comes into play and the number begins to replace the person it was meant to show. That is why data should be set beside conversation — with the patient, the employee, the citizen — and beside a readiness to change the interpretation.
XI. From Values to First Changes
I propose six commitments that every institution can adopt and test within a year. They are a practical proposal of Just Council, not a legal requirement.
- Name a person responsible for the person. At every junction of stages in a process, appoint someone who knows what is happening to a particular patient, employee or citizen, and who can answer his question.
- Give reasons for every decision in understandable language. Especially a decision of refusal. The reasons should indicate the criteria, the data and the route for challenging erroneous findings.
- Examine events with both sides in view. Ensure contact and support for the injured person and for the employee whose action is the subject of analysis, keeping proportion in the assessment of responsibility.
- Protect those who serve. Measure staff workload, respond to signs of burnout and treat rest as a condition of safety, not as its cost.
- Design technology starting from the person. At every digital implementation, check whether the person on the other side will find it easier to understand his situation and to challenge a decision. Ensure real, not formal, human oversight.
- Reach the loneliest. Identify which users of the institution are most exposed to isolation — older people, the chronically ill, the bereaved — and plan for them contact that goes beyond the minimum of the procedure.
Implementation is best begun with a single process in which the disappearance of the person is most visible. Management should openly accept responsibility for the conditions of that change and for assessing its effects. The steward’s integrity is also revealed in the readiness to say: this action did not bring results, so we are changing it.
XII. The Measure
Psalm 24 begins with a statement that orders everything else. The earth, its fullness, and those who dwell on it do not belong to us. They do not belong to the system, to the institution or to any authority. From this sentence there follows not passivity, but responsibility: since we are not owners, we are stewards, and we give an account of how we treat the people entrusted to us.
In a world that increasingly easily measures, counts and processes, and increasingly rarely sees, this perspective has practical significance. It reminds us that behind every number in the queue statistics stands a person waiting for a diagnosis, behind every post — a person who may be on the verge of exhaustion, and behind every adverse event — at least two people in need of fair treatment.
Polish history has shown that change begins when a community recognises that the fate of one person is the concern of all. The tradition of the Torah and the Gospel shows that the enjoyment of the world begins with the acknowledgement that we did not create it. Science shows that the bond between people is a factor in health, and dehumanisation a symptom of an overloaded system. These three voices lead to the same conclusion.
The measure of an institution is not only how much it accomplishes, but whether the person who passes through it remains visible in it — as someone, and not something. That is the measure Just Council proposes: truth allows us to see the person, responsibility requires us to answer for him, and hope reminds us that every institution can begin with one change in one process, tomorrow morning.
An essay from the Just Council series on the human person as the measure of institutions.
Sources and Literature
Research findings, conceptual studies, institutional documents and legal acts are marked separately. The proposals of Just Council contained in the essay are the author’s own ethical and organisational application.
Biblical text. [1] Psalm 24:1–4. King James Version.
Rabbinic tradition. [2] Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berakhot 35a (juxtaposition of Ps 24:1 and Ps 115:16; the blessing before enjoying the gifts of the world).
Biblical text. [3] First Letter to the Corinthians 10:25–29. King James Version.
Conceptual study. [4] Strathern M. “Improving ratings”: audit in the British University system. European Review. 1997;5(3):305–321. DOI 10.1002/(SICI)1234-981X(199707)5:3<305::AID-EURO184>3.0.CO;2-4.
Institutional report. [5] World Health Organization. Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death. Announcement of the WHO Commission on Social Connection, 30 June 2025. who.int.
Meta-analysis. [6] Holt-Lunstad J., Smith T.B., Layton J.B. Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLoS Medicine. 2010;7(7):e1000316. DOI 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316.
Social survey. [7] Kujawski J. Zaufanie społeczne [Social Trust]. CBOS, survey report no. 30/2026, March 2026. Fieldwork: 5–16 February 2026, N=967.
Social survey. [8] Litwin D. Polacy o altruizmie [Poles on Altruism]. CBOS, survey report no. 28/2026, March 2026. Fieldwork: 5–16 February 2026, N=967.
Theoretical review. [9] Haslam N. Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2006;10(3):252–264. DOI 10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_4.
Analytical study. [10] Haque O.S., Waytz A. Dehumanization in Medicine: Causes, Solutions, and Functions. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2012;7(2):176–186. DOI 10.1177/1745691611429706.
Review. [11] Maslach C., Leiter M.P. Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry. 2016;15(2):103–111. DOI 10.1002/wps.20311.
Source document. [12] John Paul II. Encyclical Laborem exercens. Vatican, 14 September 1981, no. 6.
Philosophical text. [13] Kant I. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten). 1785, Section II (formula of humanity).
Institutional report. [14] Institute of Medicine. Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2001. DOI 10.17226/10027.
Resolution. [15] World Health Assembly. Resolution WHA69.24: Strengthening integrated, people-centred health services. Geneva: WHO; 2016.
Conceptual study. [16] Reason J. Human error: models and management. BMJ. 2000;320(7237):768–770. DOI 10.1136/bmj.320.7237.768.
Field study. [17] Edmondson A. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly. 1999;44(2):350–383. DOI 10.2307/2666999.
Institutional guidance. [18] NHS England. Being fair tool: Supporting staff following a patient safety incident. 2025.
Legal act. [19] Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act), Article 14 “Human oversight”. OJ L, 2024/1689, 12.7.2024.
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