Respect

[forgotten_aria]

How do you think respect is earned?

I used to think that it was by working hard and being a person with integrity, but now I'm starting to think it's more like charisma. It's a combination of what you do, what you ask for and what you are born with. Or is respect one of those weird social lies that no one really has it, just passing moments of recognition at almost random times?

I know the world isn't fair, and I used to try to fight unfairness when I saw it and be as fair as I could be, but now I'm starting to think I just need to accept that there are things that I can never have in our society, just because of a mix of physically who I am and mentally having some wrong ideas for just too long.

I'm in the process of trying to fix some of the fallacies of my belief system about the world. One of the hardest is retraining the things I've been programmed to want.

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Maybe it depends on the individual doing the respecting...?

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

Different people respect different things, so I think that how you go about earning respect depends on whose respect you are trying to earn.

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

Thinking about myself, I respect people who can figure out what they want and make it happen.
The making it happen often involves some amount of hard work, but hard work is not sufficient. I think the self-knowledge is the part that's hardest for most people.

But I also know lots of people who respect completely different things.

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

I second the comments that different people respect different things, sometimes VERY different things. There are a lot of people in the world, possibly even most, whose respect you actually don't want. Then again, there are behaviors that go with respecting someone--the only definition of "respect" I found that isn't a moral judgment is "to leave alone." One can leave someone alone for a variety of reasons: admiration, fear, boredom, shyness.

If I say, "I want respect from people," I could mean I want them to leave me alone. Or I want their admiration. Or I want them to consider me valuable or good. Most often it is the latter ones, for me personally. Because people are so different, the form of respect I want from them itself varies with the person.
Really annoying people, I want them to respect my privacy and space and leave me alone.
Thoughtful people, I want them to value my ideas.
Kind people, I want them to value my character.

One doesn't often pick a person and say, "That one. I want their respect." Instead one tries to win the respect of a category of people with certain traits.

I hope this makes sense.

[kelkyag]

This makes sense and is well said, thank you.

[dcltdw]

Earned? Respect is not earned.

I could be a person who lives a life of great integrity - and works quite hard at it - and get anything from polite silence to outright scorn for being, say, an anti-progressive religious fundamentalist.

Respect, I believe, is not so different from popularity in that both are externalities. There are many sub-cultures whose members will not respect you, to which my response is a completely emotionally detached "okay". It's a similar response that I might have to the fact that there are some tasty pepperoni pizzas in the world that I will not be able to try. There's probably a great one somewhere in NYC right this very moment, but even if I flew down, it'd be 1-2 hours cold or stale by the time I got there. My response? "Okay", with maybe some slight bewilderment to why anyone is asking me why I care about some random pizza in NYC. :)

Do some people respect me? Sure. Because of what I do? Mmm in the example I'm thinking of, sure. What I ask for? I don't ask for anything. What I'm born with? Hahaha noooo. The example I'm thinking of: I believe some people respect me for being a runner. I don't run for that respect. I try to be very gracious in acknowledging in; I try very much to pay it back by being supportive and a resource, both for new and established runners. I am so not a natural runner (I'll spare you the litany of data).

I have very similar answers for a very different arena: larping.

In both cases, do I try to earn others' respect? Not directly, no. I'm doing stuff I want, and I am invested in groups of people who also want similar things. Not surprisingly, this tends to lead towards mutual respect. It would be trivial in the case of both larping and running to find groups where that mutual respect would not exist.

[feylike.livejournal.com]

i think respect is a behavior of other people towards you, and not an intrinsic quality. it is also contextual. my approach is to value the respect of people whose values i share.