Nothing is more despicable than
respect based on fear.
Albert
Camus
A couple days ago, the net went into
a buzz over the “Mother of the Year,” a woman who found out her son was
involved in the Baltimore Riots. She went to where he was and started teaching
the young man “discipline.” That wasn’t a lesson in discipline; it was a lesson
in violence.
We complain about the violent nature
of society, about men who resort to violence as a way to solve problems or to “inspire”
respect. We see it in the police officer who enforces respect of the law through
fear, the guy down the street who wants his rights respected through intimidation,
the husband who expects respect in his home through domestic violence, or the
mother who teaches her son respect by beating it into him.
And that’s where the problem starts.
Most violent men learn to equate violence and respect, not in the streets, but
at home while they were still kids. The belt or the “chancleta” (flip-flops)
don’t teach respect, they teach fear. So we end up with men whose fear of getting
caught doing the wrong thing is greater than their love of doing the right
thing. We don’t want to create good men but simply to punish the bad out of
them.
That doesn’t work.
Unless men are taught about respect
with respect, their view of what respect is will be distorted. We will end up
with men who don’t really care about doing what’s right, but care about not
getting caught doing what’s wrong. We will end up with men who think that you
have to beat respect into your loved ones, as they assume that fear and respect
is the same thing.
Does this mean we shouldn’t punish
those who do wrong? That we should accept unacceptable behavior? No. Wrong
should never be accepted or condoned. But as a man, I have no right to demean a
person in their own eyes, I have no right to undermine a person’s self-respect
in order for them to respect me.
Only my enemies should fear me, not
my loved ones.
Maybe if we focused more on what a
man can do right than what he is doing wrong, maybe, just maybe, we might end
up with men doing more right than wrong. If we teach this lesson to our boys, we
might end up with men who strive to be more.
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