R.E.S.P.E.C.T.!

Respect.

You may remember Rodney Dangerfield's trademark complaint: "I don't get no respect!" It's a complaint most of us find ourselves making from time to time. And who can forget Aretha Franklin's "All I'm askin' is for a little respect?"

Respect is a highly desirable, often elusive commodity. In my classroom, students often demand it (although they aren't always good at giving it). In the workplace, supervisors expect it and employees crave it. Mutual respect is a hallmark of healthy interpersonal relationships. Respect is important.

So if it's so important, and pretty much everyone wants it, why don't more people have it? If people know how valuable it is, why don't more people render it unto others? According to popular wisdom, you've got to give respect to get respect...if people really believe that, why aren't they more generous in giving respect? Because if you're paying attention, you've noticed that most people seldom and reluctantly give respect.

I think that, for whatever reason, we humans are under the impression that the intangibles—respect, love, consideration, good will—are limited resources, the way tangible resources are. It isn't true, by the way: the human psyche generates things like respect, love, and good will on demand and to any extent needful. They aren't really finite resources. Yet we tend to think of them the way we do finite resources like oil and coal and chocolate. Because we think of them as finite resources, we only want to render them when they are "deserved." We know that in an economy based on scarcity, it's important to be careful how we spend our finite resources.

I totally get that. I do. I am as much a product of our cultural conditioning as anyone else is.

The problem is, not all resources are scarce. This is a lesson we're having to learn in the digital age. Information used to be scarce; it took enormous time and energy to make a discovery, and then it took more time, energy, and material resources to duplicate it. Ask any college student about the cost of textbooks, and you'll get an earful on how expensive even mass-produced duplicated information (a.k.a. "texbooks") is.

Even in the digital age, it may take enormous time and energy to make a discovery. Once it's been committed to digital form, however, it becomes quite inexpensive to reproduce it for consumption. The information economy is going to have to come to terms with abundance.

When dealing with intangibles like good will, love, respect, we have to come to terms with abundance. When we give someone love, it doesn't deplete our own "love account." On the contrary, it tends to increase the love we have. When we give good will, we don't lose anything, and we often gain good will in return. When we render respect to another, it doesn't make us respect ourselves less; it doesn't cost us anything.

I don't want to say that we should respect all people in the same way or to the same degree. I've actually imagined a hierarchy—a kind of layer cake—of respect. It looks something like this:

1. all people are due a certain baseline respect by simple virtue of their humanity
2. some positions (firefighter, police officer, volunteer military, supervisor, president) are due (a somewhat abstract) respect for the position
3. excellence or competency earns additional respect
4. respect for others when it is due earns additional respect
5. kindness and generosity earn additional respect
6. integrity and honesty earn additional respect
7. "goodness" and selfless sacrifice earn additional respect

I try to render at least baseline respect—the respect due all human beings by virtue of their humanity—to everyone, regardless of whether or not I like them, regardless of whether or not I feel their choices are "good," regardless of whether or not I think they're good at what they do. Anyone who additionally holds a position that I think merits respect gets at least that much additional (somewhat abstract) respect. My highest respect, however, is reserved for those who are "good," have integrity, and are kind. Those who mistreat others (even me) have less of my respect than those who do. Those who don't render to others (even me) the respect they are due have less of my respect than those who do.

Like just about everyone, I crave respect and I am lucky enough to get it. I don't get it from everyone I ought to, and maybe sometimes I get it when I don't deserve it, but I am blessed with respect. Sometimes I forget that—sometimes I say, like Rodney Dangerfield, "I don't get no respect!"—but whether I forget or remember, I am respected, even highly respected.

How lucky I am!