Newspapers daily document the violence that rends our times. Who can account for its relentless pervasion? Why is it also found fascinating or gripping? What is wrong with societies that produce it? Answers are elusive and fragile, renowned ethicist Huber believes. For, even apart from the gross brutalities of crime and war, he finds more subtle and covert violence in childrearing, family intimacy, schools, employee relations, entertainment, and competitive sports. Huber shows how the constant, everyday disregard of human dignity is a root of violence in all spheres, how the inviolability of dignity is the one absolutely necessary premise of countering violence, and how we can become personally vigilant in the service of human dignity. Huber's clear, sweeping creed articulates principles of a planetary ethos, a public theology for rebuilding personal and political culture rent by violence.