I've been pondering the nature of respect lately as we've
been sort of hammering the notion into my wayward teenager to demonstrate that
quality towards his elders and teachers (and obviously parents) but then I look at a certain call to arms, a slogan that has haunted my online profile for the better
part of a decade.
"Challenge Convention, Question Authority."
I'm forced to reflect on all of the occasions in life where
my inherent issues with authority figures caused me genuine hardship.
Surprisingly, I don't have an actual issue with authority as
a feasible concept. If you're lucky, you will have met in your lifetime a
particularly deserving individual, be it teacher or master, someone who
commands respect by their very presence, a natural-born leader who exhibits
wisdom and fairness or at the very least even-handed pragmatism, doing their
perceivable best in guiding others towards a goal but for all the positions of
assumed authority in our current society: business managers, educators, law enforcement, politicians, religious leaders - the actual amount of deserving people who
genuinely retain these qualities are scarce and few.
Understand, I fully subscribe to the notion that we should
afford one another a default, case by case 'common respect' that you'd just as
well assume that you are treating others as you'd like to be treated but when
it comes to this elevated homage, this 'bending of the knee' if you will,
people in these positions, often unqualified ones, have always been able to
pick up on my quiet dissent. We smell each other, two opposing tribes, the ardent standing inquiry of character and justification versus the typical answer of, "Because we
say so" or "This is not how we do things here".
To our credit or shame, we say the right words, follow directions, nod, and smile
and yet in many cases, it is not enough. Some less-than part of them
consistently zeroes in on the fact that we're just not buying it and from there familiarity fosters contempt.
