This is a lil personal, but just how the brain’s musing before I get to story time.

I don’t really admire a certain family member.  This makes me sadder, then cold to point out.  He’s done goofed so many times, I feel like I’m a pretty easy guy to get to know, I have a low tolerance for people who manipulate information, or subjugate it to their ego, and make that step more important than y’know . . . the integrity of information. That kinda thing drives me nuts.  Further, it occurs to me that this individual is a bit crippling and negatively critical when it comes to their finding things to say.

These are horrible things to feel and recognize.  Especially about family . . . especially when you don’t want to.  To me the word horrible gets used, cause it’s a horrible reality with folks like this that if you DON’T recognize these things – respect them, in my vocabulary – that I’ll set myself up to get screwed over and used up. It’s been a VERY clear  and consistent pattern that this is what this person does..

I’m a bit too old for “waah waah I don’t like someone society n nature predispose me to love.”  So let’s compromise and do that without the wah’s, cause that’s the case.

It’s making me think a lot about respect.  I’ve known for a lil while now that my definition of respect is different in that it’s more acknowledgement – “To show regard or consideration for.”    Most of us grow up learning respect as a form of courtesy. While politeness is a form of respect – it acknowledges that we all have feelings and opens and welcomes communication without obfuscating it with negatives – I’m still pretty sure it’s not the same thing.

Cause see, I’ve learned courtesy too.  That came with society, mock trial, and being a weirdo just trying to get along.  Also for some reason Chinese-American roommate Peter Lo was a great example of courtesy in college.  He didn’t admire many people he was still courteous too. And that, in addition to his being able to beat me at 3rd strike, and his ability to have a laugh, are the main things I appreciate about him.  Somehow he’s become one of the most judgemental guys layered in politeness, and in college he managed very well by enjoying his own time and company and not relying on others from what I can tell.   Seemed healthy, I appreciate this.

Meanwhile, dumb ole me’s been spelling it “Curtesy” until an hour ago.  The word is obviously rooted in courting.  Hooray, polite society.

Well, I like and stand by my definition.  I also think courtesy > rudeness. . . . but only sometimes.  Like I do love rudeness, I fuckin love people who enthusiastically tell it like it is, and they’re often rude.  I love my buddies I can talk smack with.  I love the ones who’re so respectable that I can make a game out of saying horrible, atrocious things and it’s just so ridiculous it’s funny.  And that’s a fuckin rude thing to do, and yet we still share the love. That’s awesome.

I also appreciate a person who’ll tell you “go fuck yerself” MUCH more than someone who’ll knife you in the back.  Like waaaaay more.  The Go Fuck Yourself person is very likely to be easier to work with, and a direct communicator, and it’s probably super likely that if they’re getting destructive there’ve been an ass-ton of warnings.  These are traits of someone who’s more likely to work with you when they’re not feeling like disregarding you (Or, or, they’re a nutter and a psycho.  Cause they’ll disregard you too.)

But what’s a point to consider – respect – is that the first definition of respect is to esteem or honor.  Many places DEFINE respect as a positive regard.

Well . . . . I use honor in that place.  And honor’s such an old school topic.  You’ll sound like a klingon or a barbarian or some sorta hoot if you start talking about honor. But that’s the word I use when I think about the type of respect most people want.

(I suspect that people who can’t parse respect and admiration also confuse profanity with cursing. Anyone who watches south park knows that there’re much greater degrees of profane behaviors and attitudes than a lil shitty fuckidy fuck fuck.)

Anyway . .  . .so I’d have to say the ultimate disrespect is pretending someone doesn’t exist. Ignoring them. Murderlize their significance. It can be, but not by definition being rude. To me, if something bothers you enough that you want to call it out, well, you respect it enough that it’s unlikability is disturbing.  That’s how I see it.

Which doesn’t mean a whole lot in the end.  It’s just a semantic argument. But I do think – and this’s the theory part I’m gonna live by as an experiment to see how it works – but I think if you respect things you don’t like, say feeds on facebook that’re filled with things that inspire dismay, but you spend so much time perusing anyway, if you constantly expose yerself to a manipulative person and respect how manipulative they are underneath their layers of stories, if you constantly respect a job that you actively acknowledge is bs on top of bs and respect the money from it that doesn’t satisfy you . . .  well I think it gets in the way of letting your brain focus on things you actually do respect.  I’d even say that there kills a lot of creativity.

Or maybe that’s just me going wah wah and doing that thing I’m not supposed to do by the age I am.   Ah well.

But the point still stands, esteem, admiration – these regards ultimately inspire more positivity.  They polarize ideals in such a way that they lift sentiment, and set it in a way that you’ll be happy to see and generate more of that.  This is one reason I really like a society with honor.   This is why klingons are motivated to do so many pushups.  Warriors have honor.  Can America go back to being a bunch of guys who were obsessed with honor and shit?  Honor > business.  I mean, business came FROM honor, not the other way around capitalists.  Gosh.

But that converse of admiration – things we don’t like? Just the opposite of positive inspiration.  I’d argue we spend our days habituating our brains about what to respect. If we acclimate towards environments and conditions that brew resentment more than admiration, well that positive inspiration is gonna be crap now, isn’t it?  Instead of approach and nurture behaviors, it’s only logical from here that you’ll end up with squelch and withdraw.

 

Spose that’s the major reason why I don’t spend my free time fact checking Donald Trump.