Respect
If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think everything you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told you should want? Get out of your apartment. ¬Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned … Tyler– Warning Disclaimer from Fight Club
Respect is an assumption of good faith and competence in another person or in the whole of oneself. Depth of integrity, trust, complementary moral values, and skill are necessary components.
Respect adds general reliability to social interactions. It enables people to work together in a complimentary fashion, instead of each person having to understand or even agree with every in a good place respect is very important to the community because people must have respect to get along with other people.
– From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, English version
Respekt brukar användas som exempel på socialt kapital. I denna mening handlar respekt om det värde som omgivningen sätter på en persons handlingar och dennes åsikter. Respekt kan sålunda inte utkrävas, endast förtjänas.
En annan mening med respekt är att behandla omgivningen med artighet, välvilja, god tro et cetera. I denna mening kan respekt sägas handla om det som Kant kallar det kategoriska imperativet: handla så att maximen för ditt handlande kan upphöjas till allmän lag.
Respekt anses ur personalistisk filosofi vara en kärleksfull handling. D.v.s. handlingsakt sådan att den andre blir till. För att respektera något eller någon måste man ha sett värdet hos det respekterade. Du kan inte visa äkta respekt för någon person utan att inte samtidigt älska det ty det slutgiltiga målet med att respektera någon är den andres tillblivelse. Respekt är som karma, what goes around comes around. Om du respekterar dem i din omgivning, får du respekt tillbaka.
– Från Wikipedia, den fria encyklopedin, Svenska versionen
I have taken out three quotes above, one from my favorite movie and two from Wikipedia, one in English and the other in Swedish. As the title of this post suggests as well as the quotes it’s all about respect, but different kinds of respect.
The first quote isn’t really about respect to begin with; it’s rather a mocking text so the reader who reads it shall almost feel insulted. Its lack of respect and its way to mock with the common views, the society and other things is an apparent theme throughout the whole text. And in the end it changes its tone to more a agitation with a warning, in a way that we sometimes call a threat. So in other words the text is about lack of respect for the current ways of the society.
The second and third quote is more about what respect is. Here the text tries to explain what respect is, in a general way. In the English quote it says that we have to get along with other people and therefore we must respect all who isn’t ourselves. In the Swedish quote on the other hand it’s almost something else they try to describe. They do take up the same thing as the English quote but they talk about three types of respect. Respect as a social capital (value), respect as behavior and respect as a deeper insight and understanding of the things or peoples reason and soul. So as I see it, they talk about three completely different ways to respect someone or something.
All of these ways to respect, all three, or five (depending on how one sees it), are ways I respect people. Different kinds of respect depend on relationship I have, want to have or have had to the persons as well as what they can do for me or what I can do for them.
Examples on my own categories of respect;
Overrespect1 – To respect someone as more as myself. This kind of respect is very rare for me. If I respect someone on this level, it means that I look up to this person and that this person’s opinions and thought is very important to me. If I respect someone like this I may even change myself just because of the respected ones opinions.
Standardrespect2 – This is the most common level of respect I give someone. I respect them for who they are, with all their flaws and stupidity (which we all have, just more or less on different subjects). As a hedonist and egoist I don’t think that their opinions and thoughts is worth anything if they don’t prove it. And with prove in this case I mean that they need to discuss and stand up for their beliefs, if they can’t do that I can’t respect their opinions and therefore it’s not worth anything. And if the person seem to have a vague knowledge of their own opinions and with the first budge gives up then all my respect for that person is almost gone. If you don’t trust on yourself and start to doubt yourself, then you have a long way to go. You must respect yourself before you can get respect from others. That’s my way of life.
Comraderespect3 – Most common when I’ve learned to know someone. If I know someone, and have gained some personal insight on how this person thinks, talks, act and so on I can respect him/her more. This is its gets complicated, but when I respect a person as a comrade I even start to build up expectations and assumptions. Everything that goes against this is budging for a further relation, and everything that happens changes the relation a little. This makes the level of respect and relations on this level different in most situations. But what I consider a comrade relationship is when I actually start to trust the person and really respect him/her instead of just disregard him/her.
These are some of my respect levels. I have a few others and a few unique too, but these are the ones I chose to describe.
My general view on respect is that this is very important.
Respect is they way things works and the more respect, the better response. The more I respect someone, the more I trust that person. If they respect me I respect them and the more we respect each other the better our communication and relationship in the whole works. But people don’t think like that. I haven’t met more than two-three persons that really think like that. Most think that they just want someone to selectively choose when and what that shall be mediated and respect is more like trust to most people.
“I trust you; therefore you can now take a part in my problems”. Or something like that.
Respect, is what trust is all about. But the trust most talk about is more like faith. I believe that you will keep this to yourself therefore I can say it. Or I believe that you won’t make fun of me when I tell you this or I believe that by being like I want to be you won’t take offence. I would like to make a distinct line between trust and belief.
Belief is assumptions based on trust and loyalty, not respect. And it’s just assumptions AND it could only be one-way, a wishful relationship. Respect is a relation, two-way, and trust and faith and loyalty back and forth.
If I should be able to respect someone, note that this is from my own view, I need to understand and respect the person. If I can’t understand the person and he/she won’t open up or really return the respect I will consider them as the rest of the world. Drones of the society, disregard them because they aren’t worth to much time. Just because people builds up their relationship on trust and belief after the “social capital”, I first start to observe and understand the person from his/hers actions instead of questions and answers until the one in question starts to open up by themselves trying to seek contact.
If the understanding and trust system is on its way it’s the understanding part I base most my respect on. If someone can understand why I do things, and how I do things I have much easier to respect them further. If they don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, I take it as a rejection or denial for a further relationship and then the process halts and until the person is able to or want to understand I continue to observe. Otherwise the relation dies and I disregard the person, just keeping him/her in mind as a potential contact to use in the future.
As they say in GTA 2;
RESPECT IS EVERYTHING!
Best regards,
Herid Fel
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