Respect theory
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- Respect theory is a theory about how people perceive respect and distribute their respect to other people based on their deeds or properties. It also studies implementations of the respect within a society (descriptive), and properties of a theoretically optimal implementation (normative). Respect theory claims to be a major solution to the dilemma of economic growth and sustainability of resources: It is a method to redistribute resources based on the intrinsic value of things, unlike economics that measures utility. In addition, economics gives higher value to scarce utilities, while even if being good to others is abundant, it is still highly respected. Thus, respect theory captures the most important things better than the economic theory in a wealthy world where most people have already fulfilled their basic needs.
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Scope
What are the properties of respect, how is it perceived, and how does it form, accumulate, and distribute in a society?
More specifically, respect can be thought as a social activity, where voluntary, individual expressions of respect about things and deeds are handled with specific rules in such a way that a synthesis of these individual expressions tends to converge towards the social respect about the things and deeds. Specific questions about respect theory include:
- How and in what format should the individual expressions of respect be collected?
- What are the rules for handling the expressions?
- What does "social respect" mean, and how can it be measured?
Definition
Data
All the current currencies basically measure resources or services that can be traded to other resources or services. However, Eric S. Raymond[1] has noted that in a society where the basic needs have been fulfilled, social respect cannot be gained by collecting more wealth but instead giving something for common good. Therefore, it is actually necessary for a society to have some currency for social respect, in addition to the measure of resources. Otherwise respect remains implicit or hard to recognise, and it is inefficient in motivating people to work for social development. It is not enough to have the current focus on efficient resource distribution by using money as a means to create trust between people within the society.
There should be a currency for respect. The respect currency should measure the amount of respect a certain act gains from the society. There exists some primitive examples of such a currency already. Honorary and other medals that are given to respected people e.g. on the 91st independence day of Finland (which is the day when the first draft of this page was written) are one kind of respect currency. Gifts in general also show respect. However, these currencies are not quantitative (i.e. they do not actually measure the amount of respect), and they are not (easily) tradeable to material benefits.
Economics
Respect theory relates to externalities, which are benefits or costs to people that are not involved in an economic transaction. For example, a piece of freely available information may benefit anyone irrespective of who actually paid for producing it. An external cost occurs when the production of goods cause pollution that is not charged from the polluter in a form of e.g. a pollution tax. Respect theory may be able to capture some of these externalities and thus create an economic system that is more efficient than one without respect. Respect theory, if properly applied, may be more efficient way of capturing externalities than many traditional methods such as taxation, criminalisation, government provision, or tort laws.
Ethics
The above mentioned economic tools are not refined to actually capture efficiently the ethical aspects of actions. There are lots of things that are ethically questionable but still do not trigger any tort, not to mention criminal, laws. Also, ethically respected deeds are not at all covered by laws, which focus on forbidding bad things rather than rewarding good deeds.
Personal experience of a trialogue
Respect can be viewed as a "trialogue" of a good property or deed, respect given by someone, and the good feeling of the owner of the property of deed by recognising the respect by others. Even babies are able to understand that someone is happy about something the baby did. And small boys are happy that their dads are proud of their skills in football. Respect is a very strong motivator of human life and endeavour. Actually, Robert Baden-Powell has stated that the true road to happiness is to help other people[2]. This is also a trialogue of respect, assuming that other people give value to your helpfulness (which is, usually, a reasonable assumption).
Coherence of social respect
There is a hypothesis that social respect, and also social valuations, MUST be coherent within the society at a given time.[3] (Actually, this can be viewed as a definition for a society: society is a group of people, who accept the idea of belonging to the group given its coherent social valuation structure.) This coherence requirement does not apply to individuals, who are allowed to have inconsistent valuations, and they are also allowed to disagree with the social valuations.
If this hypothesis holds, it means that when starting from inconsistent individual expressions of respect, the rules must make a synthesis that is internally coherent.
Rationale for rules
The rules of respect should follow general patterns of thinking that are deep in the brains of human beings. The ability of thinking about respect is inherent to humans (and probably other mammals, too). Therefore, the main source of information about the rules of respect lie in our own brains.
- An individual should be allowed to express respect about anything. Also disrespect should be allowed, because it clearly exists in human thinking of respect.
- An expression of respect is more valuable if
- the giver is highly respected,
- the expression is a large fraction of the total expressions of respect by the giver,
- the expression is informative ("I respect the whole world" is very uninformative and therefore not valuable).
- The expression of respect reduces the respect of the giver, if the object of expression is disrespected by others.
Result
The respect currency should have the following properties:
- ⇤--0: . How is this respect currency actually any different from traditional money? --Juha Villman 11:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (type: truth; paradigms: science: attack)
- ⇤--5: . The point is not that respect currency has similar properties to money. The point is that it has some properties that money does not and cannot have. The major difference is that money measures scarce things, where someone's negotiating power sets prices of goods to high enough a level where people are interested in transactions. Respect currency works in situations where there is no scarcity (e.g. public information), so nobody has negotiating power, and the money price is zero. Respect currency works because it is free to give away but valuable to receive. --Jouni 22:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (type: truth; paradigms: science: attack)
- It should show the respect of the giver about an act of the receiver. ----1: . Traditional money already have this property --Juha Villman 11:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (type: truth; paradigms: science: comment)
- Once given, it should gradually diminish in time, so that the respect should be gained constantly. ----2: . Traditional money already have this property (See time value of money) --Juha Villman 11:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (type: truth; paradigms: science: comment)
- It should be tradable to some material benefits, such as traditional money.
- Highly respected people should be able to show more respect (i.e., their respect is valued more by the society).
- There should be some kind of accounting, so that the acts worth respect are documented (i.e. it should be difficult to create fake respect by e.g. two people falsely respecting each other more and more and thus accumulating respect currency). ----3: . Traditional money already have this property --Juha Villman 11:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (type: truth; paradigms: science: comment)
- A person doing respectful deeds full-time should be able to live with the respect currency he/she receives and trades for traditional money. ----4: . Traditional money already have this property --Juha Villman 11:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (type: truth; paradigms: science: comment)
The respect theory, combined with trialogue, is able to describe many complex societal and inter-individual relationships. The descriptions are based on the trialogue of respect, which is defined as follows:
- The basic actors in the respect situation are you, I, and the topic. "You" and "I" are interchangeable, as the difference is only the point of view. They can be individuals or groups. The topic can be anything, e.g. an act, a personal skill, a feeling, a valuation, or an object.
- The topic is "owned" by me, i.e. it is my act, skill, feeling, valuation, or object.
- Respect means the you give value to the fact that the ownership of the topic belongs to me.
- The trialogue of respect occurs if and only if I give value to the fact that you give respect to the fact that the topic belongs to me.
Although the definition sounds complicated, everyone knows the feeling created by the trialogue of respect. Just see the examples in the definition.
The respect theory is also able to explain and operationalise ethics systems. Then, the topics are valuations shared by a group of people, e.g. a society. There are valuations that are shared by all members of the group and that are seen as indispensable valuations. Such a valuation forms a trialogue of respect with any two individuals from this group. The trialogue of respect strengthens a certain value system within a society. Another society may and will have another set of indispensable valuations.
The valuation structure may be hierarchical so that a society divides into subgroups with additional indispensable valuations shared within the subgroup but not necessarily outside the group. Cultural clashes can often be explained by understanding the indispensable valuations and how the trialogue of respect about these valuations does not exist between some groups.