Respect - given or earned? (Page 2)

Here's another example, Haffo, of respect as it should be .. to thy ownself first. Only in this scenerio, the respect is being looked at according to another's perception:

You have this female friend and she is very dear to you. The two of you do lunches, and the families gather for holidays and you might chat on the phone. She follows through on her word to you, doesn't lie to you and treats you exactly as you wished to be treated, so because she treats you according to your standards .. you have great respect for her.

Then one day, you find out that she allows her husband to beat the crap out of her all the time. People give her a place to go, she doesn't HAVE to endure this abuse, but, she does take it because she believes that her husband loves her. You offer to help her out of the situation .. but, she tells you that she respects her husband.

Can you still respect her? She hasn't changed towards you. For years, she's treated you the way you want to be treated .. so can you respect a person who doesn't respect themselves? Can you respect a person who's standards of respect is so different from yours NOW that you have this knowledge, eventhough nothing changed between you and her?

If respect is indeed earned .. then can just having knowledge that her views are different than yours in terms of respect, eventhough her actions towards you speak otherwise .. how can this be measured?

"By quitting your job because you can find no tolerance?

That is what I mean by self-respect, Haffo. In that scenerio .. that was YOUR job. You made a committment to your employer, irrespective of who was the supervisor and to show a lack of integrity by quitting the post due to a difference in values shows a lack of respect to yourself and your reliability to complete your task.

See .. respect of self comes first. Once you have that, then the rest becomes clearer."


What? I'm not the guilty here. It is boss' irresponsibility to introduce "unqualified" factor to working arena without thinking of compatability issues of coworkers. It's an IRRESPOSIBLITY of boss. Who is breaking integrity here first? Me? BS! People can question my integrity only then, when I quit my position without a reason. That's what I call "lack of integrity". But when someone introduces such intolerable part it's their problem. I can say this, whenever I find myself in such a irresponsible situation, it's usually not something that bothers just me. It's usually something that bothers everyone except the boss. This shows that I have most common value system with most of people around. If something like that happens, then it's the other side who is an ass.


I do have values and then integrity. My values come first, then comes integrity. Not the other way around. If something is happening against my values, there is no point in proving my integrity for an ass in front of me, because they usually don't deserve my time.

I also find this self respect thing a bit strange. By self respect you probably mean respecting yourself. How can a person respect himself if they work in a working enviroument that pisses them off? Even if a person quits a job that causes distress in them, they do not brake their self respect. They just present their services for a more valuable person and enviroument which elevates self respect actually.

"Can you still respect her?"

No.

But the reason why she's dear for me, might be because she's sweet and caring. And this has nothing to do with respect you know?

"If respect is indeed earned .. then can just having knowledge that her views are different than yours in terms of respect, eventhough her actions towards you speak otherwise .. how can this be measured?"

I understand the contradiction you try to point out here P-Angel. All I can say is this; I always stumble on people who are nice initially, but later on I find some of their qualities that I do not see fit (or lack of respect as you shown here) and I brake up with them. According to your point of view, I'm wrong. Because they didn't actually do anything bad to me, I just chosen to disregard them because of their ways. I say this, yea this is very disappointing and frusturating and also ineffective. I actually lose alot of people due to this. But I know this; if I'm going to be forced to disregard what I belive is true and thus be able to stay with those people.....I will definetly chose to be a loner P-Angel. This is my destinity then and I will not try to change it. I will accept it.

for me it is given; I can only affect my own actions.