Respect for the elderly
So I went on a bus. And accidentally went ahead of an elderly gentleman.
I said accidentally, because that was what it was. The bus-stop was full of people, I had forgotten my glasses, and I was late for something. This man then started to yell at me. This is fair enough, I did after-all cut in before him. I said something apologetic, told him I hadn’t seen him, and let him move in ahead of me. But he continued to yell.
Apparently i am personally responsible for all that is wrong with the youth of today with their bad manners, teen pregnancy, drinking, skiving, and lack of respect for the elderly.
Wait a sec… Respect for the elderly? This man was in no way old enough to have fended off the nazis singlehandedly, had a far as I was aware not himself produced any of my textbooks, was from his vocabulary not much to look up to in the form of intellectual capacity, had just said that I was going to get drunk and then pregnant ENTIRELY based on my age and an accidental queue-jump, and he demanded respect. Not as a human being, but as a member of a group(Of which there are some members have the greatest respect, but that is by the by), and that his belonging to this group gave him the right to publicly insult members of another group. Due to a hierarchy of status and inherent worth between them.
No matter which groups are considered more or less worth others, and no matter how old the person having these opinions are, I have very little respect for that sort of thinking.
Of course, I could have confronted him with these opinions and drawn lined between his group-hierarchy way of thinking to far less pleasant systems of discrimination, and thus challenged his world-view, perhaps brought a new perspective to him, or have his opinions explained clearer, put in a context…
Some would say that this would be cruel to an old man who is set in his ways and who will never change his ways of thinking. Or in other words that his opinions are of little importance since he is going to die soon anyway, so we might as well humour him. That would be respectful to the elderly.
So I showed him that respect.
David Mitchell agrees:
http://www.channelflip.com/2009/02/26/david-mitchells-soapbox-the-elderly/
@Filip Roshauw And he is, as we know, a genius.
Next time…remind him you’re paying his pension. Harsh but true. Retired people’s income comes from current wealth generation (eg dividends), bank interest (largely at the expense of borrowers) or from taxes (yup, the workers again). It doesn’t fall out of the sky and doesn’t appear in response to the moral superiority of account holders.Whatever the Daily Mail would have us think.
Excellent post. Why do people base respect or lack of for other people on which group those people belong to? Just use the old principle of the Golden Rule instead (“do to others what you would like to be done to you” / “do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you”). For once, it really is that simple.