Part 2 of The Tao of Josh - Respect

What is respect? To me respect is evaluating someone or something to see if it is worthy or has worth. We are asking is this person or thing worthy of my time and energy? You are saying to yourself, “Do I need to pay attention to it or them?” So, telling others of your respect for someone or something is a declaration of it or their worth to you.

Some other words that have similar meanings are: deference, high opinion, admiration and value.

Respect starts with giving it to oneself first. How can you value others if we don’t value ourselves. Also, respect is earned you can’t just demanded it from others, and some think that if you carry a gun you get respect. If you are not worthy the gun my get respect but not you.

There are to types of respect that you can bestow on someone. The first is what I like to call personal respect. Personal respect is the respect that you give someone because of your opinion of them; i..e., you find them worthy.

The second is what I like to call positional respect and this is respect for the power of the position that the person holds even if you don’t respect the person in it. Example of this would be The President of the United States of America, your boss and your parents. Now these people are worthy of your time and attention based solely on there position and how much power they have over you. Now, I would hope that they as individuals would be worthy of your respect in their own right.

You can also bestow respect on inanimate objects. Anything that can hurt you if you are not paying attention to it deserves your respect.

Is everyone worthy of your respect? That’s an individual’s choice. I only give my respect or let others know that I respect someone if I find them very worthy. I do believe that you should be respectful to everyone. What I mean by this is I show respect to every one by having good manners. Having good manners, etiquette and showing decorum is the social lubricant that allows us all to live together without killing each other. Just because you don’t respect someone personally doesn’t give you the right to be rude to them.

You can value others opinion and ideas without agreeing with them just hear what they have to say evaluate where or not you agree and make your case. Most people do not make choices in a vacuum. They have reasons for doing the things that they do. If you have empathy and understand “why” they believe the way they do, it will better help you make decisions when dealing with them.

Discrimination is having a lack of respect for something, some group or some one. Now we all make some form of value based judgments every day. Do I like this or do I not like this. Do I like this person or do I not like this person. We as a society have determined that it’s not OK to make value based judgments on whole classes of people, as this shows a big lack of respect for the individual. Individuals should be judged on their own merits.

In my opinion you can not fix racial, gender or other large group discrimination with discrimination, or tilting the playing field in one groups favors. As I have said this practice shows disrespect for the individual. As I think Martin Luther King Jr. would of wanted we should judge a man or woman (got to be PC now or not) by “the content of his character and not the color of his skin,” sexual preference, gender or any arbitrary reason are little minds come up with.

Respect it’s the one thing we cherish receiving and the one thing we relish bestowing