Can too much respect be bad?

[LastPoet]

I usually hold basic human respect for anyone I meet. Either that person earns greater respect or loses that basic respect. If someone has a religion and in Portugal its quite tame (some ponctual exceptions), i won't lose respect as a fellow human being. I offer respect, it's up for other people to lose or gain. I expect they do the same for me.

[EgoDeath]

@EgoDeath Fair enough. I don't think I equate respect with power or honesty. I think I would equate respect most closely with diligence. I work harder for people I respect. I'm more conscious of how I use a more respected person's time. I'm more earnest about topics of conversation. I feel the relationship is more steady when it's a mutual respect, therefore I'm more than likely going to defend that person.  All those things to me sum up diligence.  

A lot of people do equate respect with power, or respect with honesty. It's obvious, from what I can see of you, that you equate respect with honesty. I believe respect is a social construct and tool, where honesty is a morality thing. Two separate spheres of work, from my opinion. I'm just as honest with my wife of her wardrobe choices as I am to the stranger on the street, so I don't think honesty is even in the ball park with respect for me personally. What do some other people relate respect with?

So, if you do not correlate respect with honesty, does that mean you will lie to someone you respect?

[tackattack]

I usually hold basic human respect for anyone I meet. Either that person earns greater respect or loses that basic respect. If someone has a religion and in Portugal its quite tame (some ponctual exceptions), i won't lose respect as a fellow human being. I offer respect, it's up for other people to lose or gain. I expect they do the same for me.

then you are a better optimist than mean. I  think it is human nature to classify things as quickly as possible. Therefore you're being sorted and classified as soon as you enter their brain. That's why we form preconceptions about people when we listen to gossip. I don't think the vast majority of people put a whole lot of thought at this level and prefer to form preconceptions instinctively. I believe intrinsic respect isn't beneficial to current societal survival instinct, and therefore is rarely given. If we were baboons fighting over bannanas then the respect afforded the biggest baboon would be far more "instinctually real". Kudos to you.

@EgoDeath  I would lie to someone I respect or someone I don't respect. I'm saying respect is not a factor in why I would lie. I would lie because there's a purpose to the lie, not because of the person's place in some societal hierarchy. I might feel more guilt upon lying to someone I respected over someone I didn't respect, but that plays into the cognitive dissonance of telling the lie in the first place and is assumed in the cost of lying.

@Gae Bolga no need to bet, we do. I was just exploring your great wealth of your philosophical understanding, as it far surpasses mine. Why is it that our shared opinion that equality of outcome is not a good thing a surprise? I thought we discussed this previously. I don't think either of us actually prefer equanimity of outcome to equanimity of opportunity. No one wants a world of plain jane automatons when they really think about it. But equality of outcome would be better than total anarchy and is better than what we have now. This is why when, we're jerking the philosophical gerkin, the idealist principles we would prefer align more. You and I may not agree on the methods to achieve those goals, but we can agree on the goals I think.

[EgoDeath]

@EgoDeath  I would lie to someone I respect or someone I don't respect. I'm saying respect is not a factor in why I would lie. I would lie because there's a purpose to the lie, not because of the person's place in some societal hierarchy. I might feel more guilt upon lying to someone I respected over someone I didn't respect, but that plays into the cognitive dissonance of telling the lie in the first place and is assumed in the cost of lying.

Here you're conflating respect with power again. I thought we were past that.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's surprising only for it's subtle placement in a shared understanding that does also, elsewhere, insist that equality is a uniform good. We don't like to say it that way, hear it that way, or think of ourselves that way. It's surprising because even in trying to minimize the dissonance we inevitably express ourselves with yet another commitment to equality. Equality of opportunity, which is the good kind (I guess?), and equality of outcome...the bad kind. Equality of opportunity tacitly assumes that there at least -is- the possibility of equal acts generating equal outcomes, which literally -is- equality of outcome and can;t possibly be the case when the example is explicitly set up to reject it.

No matter how many layers of obfuscation we wrap around it, for our own benefit or the amusement of others..we just don't believe in that either, and particularly not in the case of respect and desert. Both of us can think of circumstances and people which don't warrant equality of opportunity. The guy who joined for a paycheck does not, in your opinion, deserve either the outcome or the opportunity for your respect as described, particularly compared to some guy who joined for the right reasons, whatever they are. He doesn't have the opportunity and shouldn't expect the outcome because he lacks the required personal quality in comparative desert. That's baked in from before he ever joined.

[tackattack]

@EgoDeath I wasn't conflating anything. You clearly see a major aspect of respect being power. No where did I mention power. I was simply answering a questioning of my character. I don't equate respect with power or truth was my entire point.

@Gae Bolga I'm not certain that equality is a uniform good. I believe we are all built/raised/trained differently for good reason and value shouldn't be placed on an individual's circumstance. I believe I would respect a racist as much as I would respect a non-racist, until such time as their deeds proved the position of their labeling. Equality of outcome or opportunity both imply that it either is achievable. We've seen that equality of opportunity increase diversity of outcome. We have seen, small scale, that equality of outcome without inclusiveness creates more awareness of diversity in opportunity.

I believe your argument is faulty in the tacit implications of equality of opportunity. It doesn't imply that equal acts generate equal outcomes. It supposes that equal opportunities are achievable by extremely unequal acts. I could imply that the "end point" for equality of outcome is some sort of quota for everyone to be. I believe the true measure though for things like happiness, healthy, moral, etc. are so individual specific that it's more like "I want equality for everyone so everyone can end up as happy as they could possibly be in the long run". as opposed to "Everyone should have an opportunity to be as happy as possible in the long run". I could restate that to "I want equality for those deemed worthy, so they can end up as happy as they could possibly be in the long run" if that is more palatable. I think I do believe the last, and try and live that way, and hope that all would be found worthy of the opportunity for their best selves. The realist in me though, does agree with your usually pessimist prerogative that not everyone is worth of respect, equality or opportunity.

[The Grand Nudger]

Equality for those deemed worthy is not equality. You would respect a racist as much as a non racist, but you wouldn't respect a soldier that joined for a paycheck as much as one that didn't?

I'm not giving you shit for rejecting equality in desert, it might help to keep that in mind. I was mentioning how surprising it is that we do so. All of us. It doesn't have to be about racists or anything particularly weighty. Two kids do the same thing, they might not deserve equal amounts of candy. Equality, reciprocity, and equanimity are floating variables in our calculation. We might not think that people should get what they deserve. It's common for us to think, explicitly or tacitly, there should be no necessary equality between what a person deserves and what they get. We might think they deserve less...yes, but also that they deserve more. Sometimes, inequality is generosity. Thing is, is that our outrage or frustration over outcomes can be directly and consistently predicted by exactly how far off of what we think some act or circumstance x deserves, and what a person got.

In the case of your soldier, you think less, in the case of your racist, more. Two axis, three views. Can you think of any act or circumstance which should generate -exactly- the deserved consequence, no more, no less - as a representative of the third view? The fundamental view of equality in desert. It's going to be difficult, that's what tickles me about the subject.

You've got my viewpoint all wrong, though, brosef - I'm an optimist that absolutely loves people. Even the weird fucked up things we do - that only endears us to me.. more, lol. When I tell you that there's a disconnect between desert and equality, I offer it as an endlessly amusing quirk of human moral reasoning, not a criticism. So, lets take a look at something in the abstract that directly relates to the op q. Can a person do a list of "respectable" things...but not deserve a full count of respect for those things in any 1 for 1 comparison? Well, yes. Maybe this person is a respectable act factory, cranking them out left right and center all day every day...but we operate on a sort of ceiling policy for do-gooders. We don;t have to imagine some negative outcome where a person or entity gets more respect than they deserve because they're not as respectable as the perception of them happens to be (for this board and this discussion, religious institutions are a common example) - we can and do also maintain that there is a level of respect that no one deserves no matter how many maidens they save from trains. Hell, there's even a point where a do-gooder grates on our nerves and starts to wander into negatively valued territory. Or where doing good happens so often for some person that it becomes very clear that it's just easy for them to do, and maybe they aren't even trying - then the value of their good acts can drop to nil. Billionaires engaging in philanthropy.

We might think to ourselves that a usually shitty five year old kid, staring in the store window at a toy they want, but dropping their ten bucks in a hobos cup..is (at least in that moment) more respectable than the millions of dollars routinely dropped into so many cups by a guy like bill gates.

There are alot of hypothesis as to why we do this, but a great demonstration of what the shape of any of our graphs - and which of the three views we subscribe to in a particular metric - will be is to pose q's like: all other things being equal, should a prisoner serve more, exactly as much, or less time than their crime would suggest? All other things being equal, should a person receive more, exactly as much, or less reward than their good act warrants? All of our answers, no matter what they are, end up telling us more about a person than just their ideas of comparative desert - they give the rough shape of how we wish the world to be. If we, for example, heavily favor "more" for reward and "less" for punishment (lets call this the orbital leftist view just for shits and giggles) - then we are describing an abstract proposal for behavioral modification. Entire cultures can be categorized by how they jumble around those basic assertions, and so can any given religion. Christianity, for example, asserts maximum punishment -and- maximum reward. Fundamentally lacking any equality of desert whatsoever. There's nothing a person could do to deserve heaven or hell. Christians (and people in general) want to live in a world where good people get even more than they deserve, and bad men get got even if they (maybe) don't deserve it.

Or, at least, we think we do.

[tackattack]

Ok, sorry if I mistook your cynicism/tone/style of humor with me personally over our conversations elsewhere as an indicator of your general pessimism. To be clear, since the topic of soldiers seems a sticking point between us. I would respect an unidentified racist or soldier with the same basic respect. A soldier, for his duty (an action), IMO deserves more respect, for their duty. When ephemeral identification solidify by observance of reasoned action or general deed, that respect is reevaluated. I grant a soldier who did X(good) for good Y as being more respected one doing X(good) for bad Z. I grant a racist who did X (good) for good Y as being more respected one doing X (good) for bad Z.

I would agree that it's interesting that we all do seem to have upper and lower limits. "No one deserves...." and "That can't be real..." are the usual indicators. While the lower end seems to just be a base evaluation of shared human decency, I find the top threshold vastly more perplexing. In your case of Bill Gates vs the 5 yr old I think that the example highlights the value of the level of sacrifice being a compensable trait to identify in others. I think growing inequity between the image of who the observed person is believed to be by the observer and the demonstrable difference in what is observed ("He can't be that nice/good looking/rich..) created dissonance in our perception of that person, which induces doubt "that it's real". Most people then normally revert to their already solidified beliefs as they've been what's "real" for so long, rather than re-evaluate our new perspective on what's "real". idk, though, it's nice to stretch the mental legs and think about these things though.

[mordant]

It is somewhat subjective who is "deserving" of, or has "earned" respect, but it seems imprudent to afford the same respect to all actors. Most people afford an initial default level of respect on the assumption the person is an honest actor / good faith arguer, and adjust up or down from there based on subsequent experience. This seems a reasonable approach, assuming that "deserving" is based on acted-out integrity in lived experience rather than on some kind of snap judgment based on, say, tribal or appearance considerations.

One thing I am certain of, is that religious ideation has been given unearned respect in the marketplace of ideas until very recently (in the context of recorded history), and this has accustomed it to not ever having to evidence or justify its views or even very much to reason concerning them. Blasphemy laws are one big historical expression of this unseemly hegemony. Modern fundamentalist persecution narratives are another.

As a former evangelical I have actual understanding and empathy for where they are coming from but do not respect their claims to moral high ground or of occult knowledge. They are and always have been conscienceless bullshitters, which partly explains their morally reprehensible tolerance for Trump and Trumpism.

[roofinggiant]

i agree with you