To an almost infuriating extent, our society is obsessed with respect. “Respect your elders, respect our leaders, and respect the rules.” With the exception of that bit about leaders, those kinds of principles are still adhered to. And I cannot figure out why. Why should someone get special respect or treatment just because they are old? What kind of blind trust am I supposed to have for the previous generations that I am missing? Goodness, considering the rules they’ve set in place I don’t think I want to be affiliated with many of these people, let alone waste time pretending to respect them.
Every generation has its grand pissing contest with the former. We see it all the time, every time millennials get pinned for another business or business practice going under. “Kids these days!” And then millennials fire back that the former generations just can’t keep up with the growing technological trends. Then all we get to hear about is how not only are they destroying the world and everything once held dear, but they are disrespectful pricks too! No reverence for the people who built the world around them. But I don’t think it is that complicated, really.
Respect is not something you are automatically entitled to when you hit a certain threshold. I was taught that respect is earned, and by that same idea respect is something everyone must earn. Respect is also something that you can lose, or fail to earn. Just because someone is wrinkly does not mean they get to knowingly treat everyone like trash. Key word there: knowingly. My grandma was incredibly rude to a number of people around her by the end of her life. She was also someone who suffered greatly from dementia, among other things. I’m not at all trying to say we throw someone under a bus when they are fighting a battle in their own minds, indeed they should be given our respect and understanding for the hard circumstances they are in.
But don’t expect me to look at every gen x/boomer II who treats their waitress, or gas station attendant, or member of the service industry like a piece of trash like someone who has “payed their time.” What the hell kind of idea is that anyway? Old doesn’t mean dead. Prick doesn’t go away with time, some people are just jerks who want to rub their bad mood off with the world. So no, I will not be respecting my elder without question. Hell, I won’t do anything without question.
Which leads me to my next point: rules. From a young age we are taught to follow the rules because they some kind of special safe guard. When we question the rules we are trouble makers or boat rockers, but why? Nothing in life is certain, other than I guess death, so why should we believe that a rule made by the same lovely generation that brought us abstinence education and the idea that Satan was trying to reach us from Iron Maiden albums.
That doesn’t mean throw every rule out the window, certainly. But stop acting like everything around us is set in stone. The rules our parents made for us were for our safety (and so they could get some sleep), the rules set by schools are mostly so they don’t end up getting sued, and laws can be theoretically changed with the will of the people over a period of time. Why? Because times change, people are different from their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.
That doesn’t always come from a place of hatred for the way the world was run. How arrogant does one have to be to believe every young person in the world is pissing on the bones of their ancestors? There was a time when alcohol was the devil, so it was outlawed. There was a time when sex was a conversational taboo, and oh boy did that fly out the window. Every day there are thousands of people who consume cannabis for an assortment of reasons, and they are trying to get idea of it being the “devil’s lettuce” removed from our society.
Rules weren't made to be broken. That is a silly idea, like saying music was made to be recorded, put in a hole, and forgotten about until someone digs it back up. But rules shouldn't be seen as the code of your favorite deity. They were made by people, people who at some point were just as stupid as you were. They have flaws and certainly their rules do. And the longer those rules enter into a modern era they should be given greater scrutiny by those who will have to decide if they want their children to live under them.
Obviously, respect is an abstract concept. What I've put down here can be dismissed as the mouthy ramblings of a child who never actually learned respect, or as a guy who wants to see the world do better for the ones who will come after him. I'm not asking you to treat everyone like a contestant trying to win the prize of honor, or take your magnifying glass to every rule in the book. But rather to look deeper, into the people that demand our respect and the impact they want to make on those that came after us.