Unfortunately, respect in our society is associated with empty social status and based on nothing more than premature judgment of class. The categorization of class in itself is counter productive.
Key Points
- Habits take consistency. Stay at it to adapt to it
- If you want respect from someone, learn to genuinely give it first
- Lack of respect is very dangerous
- Unless you know someone’s circumstances, there’s very little you can say or do
- Ego gets in the way of respecting each other
- Practice getting to know someone. Listen genuinely without intent of judgment
- Don’t generalize. It often leads to premature judgments
- Don’t make an assumption based on nothing
- Labels don’t belong on people. Make sure you understand someone first
Respect
In our society people tend to judge others immediately based on appearance, financial status and a lot of times career choice. The unfortunate thing is that in our society, these are acceptable, therefor very easily adaptable habits. People look at someone’s job and judge them as a person regardless of knowing ANYTHING else about them. He/she could be the nicest person in the world, but a lot of people have this simple, general association system.
The problem with labeling people all around us is that we miss many chances to see the uniqueness in others. Most people just want to be respected and understood. A lot of people don’t like to respect others because they feel like they’re losing something or that they need to be respected first. Those traits are signs of confidence issues. Again, this is mostly due to growing up in a competitive, over simplified, black and white society.
Class
Being categorized socially is something that happens naturally in our society. Even the most aware people subconsciously categorize others. The trick is to be able to control our actions since we can’t control our initial reflex (until it becomes habit). We will begin to see each situation individually and eventually, each person individually.
If someone works at a fast food place, they just work at a fast food place. Nothing more can be said about the situation realistically. A ton of assumptions can be made though. “He/she probably didn’t go to college, they can’t get another job, they don’t know how to do anything else, etc”. Unfortunately these are all assumptions that have no basis or relevance to anything except your own momentary ignorance. The ignorance isn’t in making the assumptions. That happens out of habit, but taking it to the next level and actually believing our own assumptions and treating the person differently based on those assumptions is where the ignorance comes in.
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