Ever witness a person say “you gotta earn my respect”? Sometimes in friendships and romantic relationships, one treats the other badly until the other one decides to stand up for him/herself. One man told me that his girlfriend was taking advantage of him. She had taken advantage of many other people as well. He said that when he stood up for himself and stopped accepting her bad treatment, he gained more of her respect. If you ask me, he would not have had to stand up to her if she were a good person.
Imagine a situation in the workplace where a pretty young lady in the work group is not being treated with much respect or being taken seriously. She decides to stand up for herself and talk back to them. She also proves that she is smart and knows what she is talking about. Now imagine the group proclaiming that she has officially “earned their respect”, and so they accept her as an equal. I imagine some members of the audience thinking “Good for her! That young lady showed that she is tough, and now the rest of the group respects her. What a happy ending…” What such members of the audience do not understand is that this young lady should not have had to earn their respect. One should consider that if she really did have to earn the group’s respect, then why is it that no other members of the group had to earn her respect?
People who make you have to earn their respect are placing themselves onto a pedestal above others. In their mind, they are on this grand high pedestal while the other people are down below looking up at them. They act as if their respect is a trophy carved out of gold, and that anybody who earns this trophy must feel good about him/herself for such a great accomplishment, as if it were equal to winning the Nobel Prize. One can only imagine that magnitude of arrogance and perhaps even narcissism behind this ridiculous behavior.
When a friend treats you badly, and you stand up for yourself, the friend may have more respect for you afterwards. Your friend may also start to treat you better and be nicer to you. Does this mean that the friendship is good now, and we can all live happily ever after? I say no. The friendship is meant to be terminated. The friend has shown his/her true colors. Even if your friend is nice to you now, it is not because he/she cares about you, but rather because he/she knows that he/she cannot get away with treating you badly. He/she knows now that if he/she treats you badly, there will be consequences. Evildoers often will only do evil to others when they think that they can get away with it. The niceness that your friend shows to you after you stand up for yourself is no manifestation of goodness. Your friend is still the same bad person that he/she was before.
Disrespectful people are generally less worthy of respect
Below is a hypothetical conversation between person A and person B.
A: Now that you have stood up to me and proven that you are tough, you have my respect
B: That’s funny, because as of now you have earned my lack of respect. Only second-rate human beings make others have to earn their respect.
A: Well, I guess I will have to earn your respect back. What do I have to do to earn your respect back?
B: Never make anybody have to earn your respect ever again. But I know you would never do that. You would only respect everybody when you are in my presence, and then revert back to your old self when I am not looking.
A: I guess you will have to trust me then.
B: Why would I trust you when I do not even respect you? It is too late. You have already shown your true colors…
In this scenario, person A has initially placed himself on a pedestal above person B and many other people for that matter. Person B is proclaiming his loss of respect for person A, thereby bringing person A off of the pedestal and into some ditch below person B. Person A, in response, tries to bargain. Person A figures that if he cannot be on his pedestal as he originally planned, he will try to at least be level with person B. Person B is not falling for it, though. Person B knows that person A is most likely doing whatever evil he can get away with, and is not buying person A’s claim that he is somehow going to become anything remotely resemblant of a decent person overnight.
When people make you have to earn their respect, they just are not worth your time of day. They are not good people and you are better off not having any relationship with them at all.
Sometimes when a person criticizes a person or thing, the person has the illusion of superiority over whatever it is that he/she is criticizing. In reality, we do not become superior to an entity by simply criticizing it. People criticize things they do not understand all the time. Furthermore, criticism usually occurs because of a disagreement, and certainly disagreeing with someone or something does not make you superior to it. The same goes with disrespect. When a person disrespects another, it does not make that person superior to the other person. Disrespect usually says more about the one doing the disrespecting that it does about the one being disrespected. Indeed, the disrespect is usually unwarranted.
The definition of respect varies
In the dictionary, respect is defined as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. Based on this definition, it would make sense that respect has to be earned.
Let us say that you are on a team of software engineers, and a new guy has just joined the team. Are the other team members supposed to assume by default that this new guy can’t write code to save his life until he proves himself? I think not. To make such an assumption is an insult to the higher-ranking people who decided to hire him. The team members should welcome him and presume that he would not have been hired if he were not good at what he does to some extent. A more appropriate attitude would be one of excitement and anticipation as to what this new guy will be able to bring to the team.
In some contexts, respect simply means seeing someone else as an equal and recognizing the other person’s intrinsic worth. This kind of respect, in my opinion, should not have to be earned. One thing about evildoers is that they often fail to recognize the worth of fellow human beings.
Taking advantage of someone’s niceness
Sometimes when someone is really nice, others mistake it for weakness. They figure they can take advantage of the nice person. If the nice person gets harmed as a result, then, well, it was his/her fault for being “too nice”.
When you take advantage of people who are nice to you, you are essentially creating an environment where niceness is punished and meanness is rewarded with respect. In such an environment, people will not be as nice.
People who take advantage of nice people may say that niceness is rare. In reality, it is not that niceness is rare, but rather that nice people would never in their right mind associate with jerks who take advantage of niceness…or at least if nice people are in the presence of these jerks, they will not behave as nicely as they usually do, because they know that their niceness would be returned with exploitation. These jerks who take advantage of niceness do not realize that there are plenty of nice people, they are just somewhere else far away from the vicinity of the jerk.
Summary
When a person makes you have to prove that you are an equal or prove your worth as a human being, that person is living in a dream world. There is no reason to view another person as inferior by default. If anything, it is often recommended that people view everyone else as a superior.
I am no psychologist, but I would imagine that people who make you have to earn their respect are insecure. They are trying to reduce their feelings of insecurity by placing themselves on a pedestal above others. This article discusses some other factors that can make people be disrespectful.