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).

Scope

What are the properties of respect, how is it perceived, and how does it form, accumulate, and distribute in a society?

Definition

Data

All the current currencies basically measure resources or services that can be traded to other resources or services. However, Eric S. Raymond 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.

Result

The respect currency should have the following properties:

• It should show the respect of the giver about an act of the receiver.
• Once given, it should gradually diminish in time, so that the respect should be gained constantly.
• 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).
• A person doing respectful deeds full-time should be able to live with the respect currency he/she receives and trades for traditional money.

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:

1. The basic actors in the respect situation are you, I, and the topic. "You" can be a single person or a group. The topic can be anything, e.g. an act, a personal skill, a feeling, a valuation, or an object.
2. The topic is "owned" by me (or you), i.e. it is my (or your) act, skill, feeling, valuation, or object.
3. Respect means the you (or I) give value to the fact that the ownership of the topic belongs to me (or you).
4. The trialogue of respect occurs if and only if I (or you) give value to the fact that you (or I) give respect to the fact that the topic belongs to me (or you).

Although the definition sounds complicated, everyone knows the feeling created by the trialogue of respect. 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. The trialogue of 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. This is also a trialogue of respect, assuming that other people give value to your helpfulness (which is, usually, a reasonable assumption).

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.