Feb 21 - We’ve Got Respect All Wrong - Daily Drop #5

I keep noticing these days, that whenever we talk about the value of respect, it’s nearly always about the statement: “Don’t let others disrespect you.”

I mean, the statement is not bad. It’s about having boundaries. It’s maybe even about respecting yourself. More often than not, however, it’s about power. It’s about creating an appearance of dominance.

But, this focus on respect loses a lot of meaning.

For a start, it’s a focus on the negative. It’s a focus on not being disrespected. We might know what being disrespected looks like (being betrayed, lied to, mocked), but, do we know what respect is in itself?

What is Respect?

The etymology might help: to look (specere) back (re) at, or to re-gard (look again). Respect means to look at someone in a special way, maybe even double-take them. We “see them again”.

Respect is especially important when people are disrespecting you, then.

When you feel disrespected, you can still look at them again. You can still respect them. Respect is not conditional on how we are treated by another.

This doesn’t mean we allow ourselves to be mistreated. We can still have boundaries. But we can also attempt to re-see this person, to see them in a deeper way. We can perhaps try to understand (re-see) what might be going on for them. Even to the person who is disrespecting us, not seeing us, we can look deep into their behaviour and attempt to understand.

And it is this that I think is very lacking, especially online, today. It’s so easy to disrespect, to not see, each other when we’re online. In both a literal, and a cognisant way, we fail to see each other. And that has a huge cost.