A truly intelligent person respects everyone who is sincere and accepting of others.

But still I think respect is a very primitive way of thinking, the way we interpret the way nowadays. Everybody deserves respect, it is a human right, but in our modern time the word respect is now associated with gangst's with bling or other daft words like that.

what an nice poll - and interesting views posted so far!

as many opinions have been gathered here, already, there's not much more
for me to say. kon-tiki diplayed my view on this topic quite well, but with my
english skills i would never have been able to express it in such simple yet
clear words like he did!

anyway, i'd like to tell you about how i think about respect.
first of all, i voted for the option, that you first have to be repectful towards others
before you are able to receive it...

however, i think that there's another important point which might be considerable
in this discussion: self-respect.

it's not possible to show appropriate repect for your fellow human beings without
respecting yourself. of course this might easily be confused with vanity but i'm sure
we all know the difference (although the border between these two aspects can be
thin).

if you pretend to be respecting others without having a certain level of self-
consciousness, your behaviour could turn out to be more hypocritical than
respectful, imo! if you're honest and critical enough to appraise your own character
and your deeds properly, without hyping or dumping yourself falsely, then you
will come to see where your position towards yourself is ranked. according to this
sort of "evaluation" you will develop a certain level of self-respect.

from this position you will define your way of dealing with others. a decent level
of self-respect and a stable and healthy sense of moral, interaction with ppl around
you more or less automatically leads to social interaction basing on respectful terms.

of course, there are still other factors which have to be included such as hierarchical
structures or cultural differences which are strong dynamics in today's society.
but despite these aspects, it's always possible and required to uphold the respect
anyone deserves - it simply is a matter of insight, self-reflection, honesty and morality...

i hope my explanation was not too confusing.

Oh my god, I oversaw a thread by you? :blink: OMG
My deep apologies, I'm underway now. :tomato:

Edit: but where is your work? I can't find anything... :unsure:

See you have found it Freddy :D

Sorry, just oversaw it. Nobody is perfect. :ph34r: :tomato: :D

I think we all just need work hard for respect...

It`s the start of a good life :angel:

What about moi? :(

RESPECT...

What can I say?
To respect something means that you won't go aginst it. So to respect a person simply because it's another fellow human would be basic respect and would mean that you won't do anything to harm that person (phisicaly or mentaly).

But how to gain respect?
That depends on the crowd you're in. If you're the single purple three leged bug in a crowd of xenophobic five leged greeneyed slugs then you won't get respect no mater what you do.
Otherwise you can only be who you are. If people don't respect that (if being who you are doesn't mean you're a disrespectful basterd) they can just go kiss the white lines in the middle of a busy highway during street race.
But one should never try to change just to get respect from someone. Then you're going against who you are and that's bad. Then you'll lose the respect for your self and no one can respect you then.
Personally I don't care iff strangers do or do not respect me, but from the people I work with it's importaint to have a certain amount of respect otherwise they would backstab me.
It's really something that depends on a certain situation.

One comment on respect...to me it's one of the most important things to have that CAN be earned. As we go through life, most people want to be liked/loved by everyone. If I had it my way, I'd be everyone's best friend. But, I realize that it's not possible. Someone is going to dislike you, no matter how hard you try to rectify the situation. However, even people that don't care for us can still have respect for us. To me, respect is almost more important to have than feelings of like. It shows trust, not blind faith.

Ex. I really dislike Michael Jordan...don't ask me why. But, I RESPECT him for the amazing athlete that he is (was) and that can't be taken away from him.

Well there's one problem with that.
You just said you respect something that someone did, not the person itself.

But I hope you realize that someone must be quite intelegent to feel respect toward someone. Otherwise it's either fear or admiration.