We Respect What We Can't Do

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Sometimes things are so obvious that writing about them seems not worth doing. But at the same time when something is so obvious it seems never to be really expressed and thus completely unknown.

I am, as usual, most concerned with what Artists respect (in which group I place writers and musicians and other creative types), but the point holds true in that most people respect what they can’t do.

Respect can manifest itself in many ways, there is of course what we normally think of as respect, saying nice admiring things about what has been done, but there are also negative aspects to respect, such as envy, which can even turn into hatred for the ability that one does not have.

Being admired for one’s writing and being hated for it are two sides of the same coin, just ask a Satirist.

Respect and It’s Lack overall

One time I was hanging out with a guy who was a handyman at the coffee shop and, for various reasons, I discussed Symbolism with an artistic person who came over to our table, when they left he expressed his admiration and envy of my ability to abstract concepts which for him was not something he handled well. I downplayed it, although I am reasonably proud of my knowledge of artistic movements and the ability to expound on them at the drop of a hat, and I of course wished I could do what he did so easily.

This is of course not always the case, often people who cannot do something and denigrate the people who can. Hence hatred of intellectualism among non-intellectuals and sniffing disdainfully at people who work with their hands and see the wrong movies by intellectuals in turn.

But I think an honest evaluation of those behaviors would say they are the negative expressions of envy. And really negative envy is the default in our society, because envy is an expression of weakness, and hardly anyone has the ability to admit in what ways they are weak.

That is why the greatest hatred and greatest respect in our society is for those who can admit a weakness.