Respect

First published in Column 8 on the 25^th August, 1993

A caption accompanying a photo of the Tokoiti School children receiving a computer from Mr Bolger was unsure whether the children were more in awe of the computer or of Mr Bolger. After all, he is the Prime Minister.

In the same week, however, we were told that yet again politicians had made it to the bottom of the list when it came to being trusted as a group.

I rather think that answers the question. Nevertheless, this isn’t going to be a column putting down the worthy people in Parliament – they spend enough time doing that themselves. Rather I want to look briefly at the whole matter of respect. (I note that Miles Singe had the same idea in his last column.)

There’s a prevailing theory that no one should be given respect as a matter of right. They have to earn it.

I don’t know when this idea arose, but I don’t think it was the norm in my youth. In those distant, halcyon days, if a person held a position of respect, you didn’t spend time questioning their motives, their behaviour and their attitudes. Rather you just got on with life and assumed they held that position because they’d been entrusted with it.

There have always been some people in authority who have demeaned their positions by poor behaviour. But the poor behaviour of some isn’t a reason to question the behaviour of all.

I believe there’s a place for questioning some in authority, but equally we have to assume a person holds a position more for a good reason than for a bad one.

Television is a prime mover in the demeaning of all sorts of groups, and not just demeaning them, but shoving their faces in the mud.

Television interviewers, in fact, would have to be considered leaders in the ‘earn-your-right-to-respect’ stakes: the normal approach to interviewing a person these days is to drag down all their defences.

Don’t let the person finish a statement; don’t let them contradict what you think they should say; mock anything that smacks of opinion; run down anything that hints of taking a stand.

Unless, of course, that stand is itself one that mocks authority.

When this approach becomes the norm for everyone, no one can do their job properly: someone will always question the behaviour of others, including their proper and good behaviour.

No authority group is immune from this questioning: police, judges, ministers of religion, teachers, civic authorities, parents – the list could be extended for pages.

In my more opinionated moments, I’ve blamed teachers for the way kids behave, and the way kids knock everything that was given due respect in the past. Teachers no doubt blame parents for allowing their kids to go their own way. Wherever the blame lies, both groups suffer, and as they suffer, so ultimately do the kids.

I know some authority figures have let us down, and others will continue to do so. In the end, however, an attitude that says you can’t tell me what to do because you haven’t earned the right to do so, is self-destructive.

A society where no one trusts those in charge, whatever that charge may be, is a society that will wind up trusting no one.

A backstabbing, name-calling, tongue-lashing, slur-casting, lampooning, scoffing, sneering, carping, critical and cynical society. Sound familiar?

Not the place to bring up the kids.

 

Respect across generations
courtesy AlgerianFrames

It’s disturbing to read this piece after thirty odd years: on one hand there is now virtually no respect for any authority, and on the other, there is virtually no authority that deserves respect. Every avenue of society has been affected by this disarray. Worse, for me, is that fact that we all join in this to some degree, in spite of knowing that we are soiling our own trousers in the process. The buck stops firmly at each of our doors.