Respect…

Respect, it’s such an overused word these days. Schools teach it, politicians bleat it, the police fill in forms about it, companies run courses on it and street gangs kill for it.

I have little respect for a lot of the people in established authority, even less for my elders and so-called betters. The police, the army, priests and politicians, doctors, judges; what makes them think they automatically have the right to the respect of people? Is it their hats, their guns, their bibles and bills, their drugs, their silly powdered wigs? Automatic respect is nonsense, something belonging to the forelock touching past driven by fear without any basis in reason. Respect needs to be earned. Of course this means that the people who become policemen and soldiers and priests and the rest can be respected, but it doesn’t automatically follow that they should.

When I was young we had a vicar in our town who abused children, what he did was known about but nobody did anything because he was respected. Another man, a local councillor, regularly got completely smashed and then drove home from the pub. One time he ended up smashing into a Belisha beacon, he wasn’t even breathalysed. The local bobby regularly took sweets from the sweet shop without paying for them, the doctor took his own drugs and my old headmaster dished out punishment for no reason other than he could.

‘I demand that you respect me.’ How many times have I had that bellowed in my face? Ditto: ‘Show me the respect I deserve.’ Thing is, I did. I showed exactly the respect that was deserved. I base respectfulness around what people say and how they act rather than what job they do, how much money they have or if they related to me.

Should we respect old people? What all old people? Even the ones who lie and cheat and bully and steal and use others to do their dirty work? Should we respect our parents simply because they happened to give birth to us? What even the ones that neglect their children? And what about all the others that command our respect; the TV presenters, sports stars, the bankers and the bullshitters?

For my part, it matters not if people respect me or not. That isn’t how I measure myself. I measure myself on how much self respect I have – and therein lays another and much more complex tale.