GEOFF BENNETT: As partisan battles play out here in Washington, Judy Woodruff introduces us now to someone working to bridge America's divides by placing dignity at the heart of conversations between everyday citizens.

It's part of her series America at a Crossroads.

TIM SHRIVER, Co-Creator, The Dignity Index: Americans are widely in agreement on one thing, and that is that we're much too divided to be productive, much too divided to be healthy, much too divided to be optimistic about the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tim Shriver is a long time disability rights advocate... TIM SHRIVER: We don't ask for pity for our athletes.

We ask for a change of heart from the world.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... who for decades has led the International Special Olympics, an organization his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded in 1968.

His father, Sargent Shriver, oversaw the creation of the Peace Corps.

And his uncles President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, were all iconic figures of the Democratic Party of earlier eras.

TIM SHRIVER: Obsessed with this idea of, is there a gradient?

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, today, Shriver is focused on a pervasive problem that he argues goes beyond party politics, a problem he looks to ordinary Americans to help solve.

TIM SHRIVER: We have a new issue.

And that is how we treat each other.

And if we don't solve that issue, I'm afraid, Judy, that the country will continue to find itself less happy, more lonely, and less effective at doing the things America's always been great at, which is leading the world with freedom and optimism and hope and practical idealism that makes things happen.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But this country's been through division.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, we have been - - Civil War a long time ago... JUDY WOODRUFF: ... Vietnam, our whole civil rights -- the ongoing debates over race.

What do you see today that makes you look at this question of how we treat each other?

TIM SHRIVER: Well, I think there's a couple of factors that are new.

The first is social media, especially for - - social media for our young people.

Young people are picking up their phones and they're seeing it.

He's disgusting.

She's a jerk.

What an idiot.

And all the name-calling and the relentless surround sound of contempt, it has a corrosive effect not just on our political debates, but on the mental health of our country, and especially of our young people.

I think the second thing that's different is the virulence of our disagreements in the past have been serious and painful and destructive.

There's no question about that.

But what we seem always to have had is this sense in which the American spirit would somehow get us through.

Today, that optimism has receded.

And now we're looking at a situation where people think the division is not just about a policy issue or about a cultural issue, but it's about us.

It's -- we're in an us-versus-them country, an us-or-them country.

And that level of despair about our capacity to solve problems and heal is what leads to increases in violence, the risk of family division, mine included, that have been torn apart by this level of contempt, this surround sound of judgment and dehumanization.

So we have had tough times in the past, but this is our time.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In 2022, Shriver helped launch The Dignity Index, a method of evaluating language that on one end of the spectrum shows contempt for others and on the other affirms their value as a person.

TIM SHRIVER: What is contempt?

Contempt is othering.

Contempt is, you're too different.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He's since been touring the country, sharing it with politicians, businesses, houses of worship, and schools, trying to create a culture of dignity that can eventually impact our national dialogue.

TIM SHRIVER: At the bottom is a 1, which is I treat you with such dehumanizing hatred that I think you should be killed even, and then you move gradually up the scale of less and less contempt.

Maybe I just think you're morally evil.

Maybe I think I'm just better than you.

And then you get up, and I think I want to listen to you, and then even higher, I want to explore where we agree and maybe even where we disagree.

I want to be open to change.

And at the highest levels of dignity -- you see this in great leaders in our own country -- no matter what, even after horrific violence, I want you to know I will treat you with dignity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Who do you want to adopt the index?

TIM SHRIVER: In the best of all worlds, I think we'd have political leaders who'd say look, as we have a few, who've said, I'm going to take a pledge and make sure my political speech is what they call 5 or up.

And we now have schools that are teaching what they go 5 and up on The Dignity Index.

In this school, we're asking, when you disagree, whether it's on the playground or in the lunchroom or in the classroom, when you disagree, use 5 and up language.

And fifth and sixth graders can learn this.

So it's not complex.

It just takes a little will.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Can it have an impact and effect, though, when the voice is coming from Washington, D.C., which are in the news all day long every day on virtually every channel, every platform you can turn to, are mostly negative and contemptuous?

TIM SHRIVER: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you make a difference when that's most of what people are seeing in the news?

TIM SHRIVER: So, look, it's a social change challenge.

I'm not going to deny it'll be a heck of a lot easier if we had political leaders who seized the moment.

And I want to say, if a political leader is watching this, you can win by treating the other side with dignity.

You will see your constituents, I believe, respond to this.

We have seen this in spots.

Look at Governor Shapiro, governor's mansion firebombed by someone motivated by political hatred, driven surely by political rhetoric.

So here we have an attempt on the governor's life and his family, an attempt to destroy state property, to destroy human life.

And how does he respond?

I want to continue to bring all faith traditions into the governors' residence, and Republicans rushing to join him in that statement of solidarity around these things.

So, when we see these things, we can't shrug them off and say, well, the real power comes from being hateful.

The real power comes from treating people with dignity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you're not just up against political leaders in Washington.

You're up against an entire social media culture that feeds on and promotes... TIM SHRIVER: Yes.

Yes.

That's right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... ugly language, anonymous, so much of it anonymous.

JUDY WOODRUFF: People can say anything they want, the uglier, the better, the meaner, the better.

TIM SHRIVER: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you even begin to stand up to that?

TIM SHRIVER: I mean, Americans are free still, and we're free to choose.

And no one's forcing anyone to use that kind of rhetoric.

No one's forcing anyone to dehumanize anybody else.

We got to make some choices, and we got to invite people to recognize the severity of this challenge in this moment.

We don't have a country in 25 years if we stay on this path.

Many people say we almost don't have a country already.

I'm not willing to stand by and not give it my best.

And I know there are hundreds of millions of Americans who also would like the moment to be called into a different way of thinking about it.

But it's going to be tough and we're going to have to make change.

My uncle President Kennedy famously said, we're going to go to the moon not because it's easy, because it's hard.

JOHN F. KENNEDY, Former President of the United States: Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because... TIM SHRIVER: So, yes, this is going to be hard.

But our country depends on it.

I mean, look, what's the alternative?

Let's just say I love my country and I just hate everybody in it?

The best of the American spirit always says there's something new to be done here.

There's something new to be done here.

This is not acceptable.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington.