Respectful Behavior

When there’s no social pressure behind it, respectful behavior becomes a decision, an individual choice. Americans, even when they pay pious lip service to Judeo-Christian rules of moral behavior, tend to regard moral behavior as a personal decision… This is morally problematic when personal decision is confused with personal opinion. A decision worthy of the name is based on observation, factual information, intellectual and ethical judgment. Opinion — that darling of the press, the politician, and the poll — may be based on no information at all. At worst, unchecked by either judgment or moral tradition, personal opinion may reflect nothing but ignorance, jealousy, and fear…

…When applied in moderation and with judgment, the social requirement of respectful behavior to others, by repressing aggression and requiring self-control, makes room for understanding. It creates a space where appreciation and affection can grow.

Opinion all too often leaves no room for anything but itself.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Diminished Thing” in No Time to Spare

More from 06-19-2023

There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

Oliver Sacks, “My Own Life”

ZT 06-19-2023

Fear is seldom wise and never kind.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Diminished Thing”, No Time to Spare

ZT 05-13-2023

Do we ever tell ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, so help me God,’ as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don’t even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn’t this why we can’t help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven’t been?

Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs