Response

Respect

There are many different definitions of respect.  Many believe that it is the way people interact with eachother, and others believe that it is how people simply speak to one another.  Some people also believe that respect is earned, and others believe that it is simply deserved.  There are also some people who believe that respect and courtesy go hand in hand, whereas some others believe that those are two seperate entities.  There is no right or wrong answer, and each individual's idea of respect is based off of their upbringing and ideals.

Typically, everyone interacts with others on a daily basis, whether it is going to the supermarket, or school, or work, or yelling at someone while commuting due to road rage.  It is all human interaction.  However, different amounts of respect are shown when interacting with different people.  Such as the person at work interacting with their boss: they typically will show more respect towards their boss than the person yelling at another motorist due to road rage.  But the question is: how is that respect shown?  The employee talking to their boss may use words such as "sir" or "ma'am" when speaking to them, or they may simply speak in a tone that is not derogatory.  In this situation, it is anyone's guess as to how the respect is shown, but it is clearly there.  But with the road enraged individual, it is clearly in how they speak to the other motorist, due to the curse words that are typically used in such scenarios.  

The two conflicting ideals of respect being earned and deserved are both legitimate ideals in their own right.  When it comes to respect in situations such as a friendship, most people typically think of respect as being earned, similar to trust.  However, in situations such as instructors or bosses, some people believe that respect is deserved, due to how much time those individuals have put in to that particular skill or job.  It is a decision that must be made on an individual basis, whether or not respect is earned or deserved, and depending on the situation.  It is up to each individual to decide for themselves if simply investing a large amount of their life in something, or being in a certain job position, justifies them deserving respect, or if they should earn respect as well.

But whether someone has earned respect or deserves it, the next question is whether or not courtesy is necessary to show respect.  Many believe that courtesy goes hand in hand with respect, meaning that in order to be respectful towards a person, one must be nice to them and at least act like they like them.  For example, a parent, or a tudor.  However, there are those who believe that this is not strictly true, such as drill sargeants in the military for example.  A drill sargeant's job is not to make the soldiers like them, but to turn them into fighters.  And because of the drill sargeant doing this, they are respected by everybody, including the soldiers they train, but due to the methods they use, the soldiers they train also hate them.  This makes courtesy an open topic for discussion when compared to respect.

Due to the fact that there are so many different styles of upbringing in today's world, there are many different views of everything such as politics.  This makes respect being just another idea that is based upon beliefs on an individual basis, with there being no right or wrong answer.  It is therefore up to each and every one of us to decide for ourselves what respect means to us, not what it means to others.