Who gets the respect?

In1513, NiccolÒ Machiavelli wrote inIl Principethat when everybody can tell you the truth, you fail to get respect. So, what does it mean? Respect is when you play hide and seek with the truth. Don't smoke in front of your parents. Don't curse in front of elderly people. Never challenge the authority of a powerful man. Hold it if you are going to tell a friend that he sucks. Respect has a lot to do with suppression of facts. It is much about lying to others.

Like it or not, that is the truth. If you admire someone, it's not respect until it translates into obedience. That is why people don't give respect unless you command it from them. It's not enough to be adorable, unless you are also fearful at the same time. Respect is when you can stand in public, and nobody dares to tell that your fly is down!

We respect age, we respect authority. We respect everything that is awesome, anything that makes us feel weak, inferior, inadequate and overwhelmed. When we respect someone from a distance, we worship him. Gods, holy men and celebrities are entities so far-fetched that we obey them without question. But then we have political leaders, relatives, teachers, mentors, village headmen, and neighborhood goons, whom we respect not because we adore them but because we are afraid to draw their wrath. You can't tell the truth in the face of a minister because he has the power to strike you back. It's fear, not admiration, which is call of the day.

Respect is, therefore, a vague term, a creation of those who demand it, yet claiming that it has been given to them. You can't tell what you think of them, fear leading to silence, silence leading to misunderstanding, misunderstanding leading to arrogance that you must obey because you adore. Respectable people often demand unconditional allegiance, trust and silence. Never question. Never doubt. Never cross with them. Leaders demand you follow. Teachers demand you learn. Superiors demand you do as told. Holy men demand you believe as they tell what is revealed.

But none of them is ready to hear the truth. Sometimes they know the truth and cling to it like a secret code. That secret gives them power and control over others. Listen to them. Obey their orders. Never differ with them. Never argue with them. Never tell them they are wrong. Respect is a fragile plant that can't grow on the arid soil of criticism.

Do you see the connection now? Respect is a magic spell that gives way to the incantation of truth. Truth is to respect what the cross is to Dracula. Truth is to respect what water is to salt. Anybody who can tell the truth in your face isn't afraid. Anybody who isn't afraid can't be manipulated. Anybody who can't be manipulated isn't willing to dance to the music of respect.

Slavery comes in many forms. It comes in the mind and it comes in the body, man shackled in his longings as he is shackled in his limbs, constrained in his movements as he is constrained in his thoughts. But in either case the restriction comes in the freedom of choice. He is told how to think, he is told how to act. He must follow instructions and carry out orders. Respect is the false air that some put on to exploit others.

Unless it is mutual: If you respect me, I must respect you. If you leave me alone, I leave you alone. If I criticize you, you criticize me. There is no protocol of fear or subservience. The respect is on equal terms, unbiased or unfazed by rebuke or reward. Here truth doesn't suffer, and both sides are honest to each other. Taken from here, truth is nothing but love and tolerance subsumed within the semiotics of mutual appreciation.

Respect is perhaps one of the most overused words in any language, one that is also most misused. It actually means obeisance in the most conventional sense. The rich want it, the powerful want it, the strong, the superior, anyone above the cut demands allegiance, acquiescence, and attention. Kings wanted subjects to bow in respect. People weren't allowed to open umbrellas or wear shoes while passing in front of the house of a fief lord. Respect is differential calculus of preferential treatment, a privilege in the name of piety and predilection. In the ultimate analysis, respect is a kind of exploitation, subjecting young to old, rich to poor and strong to weak.

It's the fear to lose respect that has caused so much bloodshed in history. Monarchs, tyrants, dictators didn't want to give up power, because it could bring them face to face with truth, that they were cruel, unjust, exploitative, illegitimate and powerless. During the French Revolution, when the henchmen were executing the French aristocrats, they lifted the skirts of noblewomen in full view of the cheering crowd. Respect is a delicate business that falls prey to ribald laughter under slightest duress.

Respectable people often are ludicrously obsessed with respect. When the revolutionaries gathered the Russian Czar Nicholas and his family in a dark room on the pretext of taking their picture so that people in Moscow would know they were safe, the Czarina Alexandra demanded that they were shown some respect by bringing chairs so that the family could sit down to pose for the camera. Little did she know that the revolutionaries were about to line them up for a firing squad, soon to riddle their bodies with bullets.

A Persian saying goes: “If you love the rose, you must respect the thorn.” Respect is nothing but the price of love, the patience, tolerance, sacrifice and humility that one is obliged to show in order to prove one cares. Respect must be unconditional, unfettered and uninhibited, much like the air which smells foul if restrained in circulation. Respect is the natural course of mutual empathy, distant from sympathy because it is not compassion, distant from antipathy because it is not contempt.

So, when hands are folded or legs are knelt, it's not always the sign of respect. If there is an aspect of fear or foul play, then respect is a suspect. That is why there is a difference between the money given to coercion and the money given to charity.

One is extortion, another is donation. Allegiance in fear is subservience, obedience in respect is devotion. Respect is not respect unless it respects the dignity of man.

Respectable people wouldn't terrorize others and call it respect. Respectable people wouldn't bribe or blackmail others and call it respect. Respectable people wouldn't suck up to anyone and call it respect. They wouldn't compromise their values and call it respect. Respect grows in dignity, and only he who respects himself can respect others.

Those who flatter, those who intimidate, those who entice and those who confiscate, they can neither give nor get respect. Look around and tell me what you see. Either too much respect verging on insincerity or too little respect verging on insolence. Think, think, and think. Who should give it if nobody knows who should get it?

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.