What is Respect?

Banners for boys' day festival
By Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川 国芳)

What is Respect?
Wednesday – April 29, 2026

Respect is one of those words that seem to apply in a rather peculiar way: should a thief show some kind of respect to his victims; should certain criminals be respected, while certain other criminals should expect no consideration, no respect, at all, etc?

    Indeed, respect is a funny thing, a funny concept that seems to be a fairly loud expression of the modern deviation, particularly of individualism and a kind of American individualism. There are of course many other implications here: of course the humanist notion of individualism plays the biggest role, read "My Views on the 'Rights of Man'", and I guess most other things in the modern world tend to be derived from this notion; in fact, it is actually quite hard to separate anything from the notion of individualist humanism; you see this everywhere, and I guess this is why the quantitative point of view lends itself so easily to these people, because indeed things do tend to get easier and less "messy", if you will, form a purely mathematical point of view when you attempt to "order the world"; but again, these people are missing out on the world in their attempt to order the world so perfectly that the entire thing has to be disregarded. Besides, what kind of individualism is this? The kind where everyone should be completely equal in essence and substance, because you need to have something essential about the character of a man, if that man is to be respected. Yes, I have never stated that the moderns attempt to get rid of essence; it is rather that the moderns simply do not know of what essence is, when when they try to construct away all "flaws" that they sense in the world, they essentially lose sight of the world, but I am arguing in circles at the moment so allow me to put it this way: if a man is to be respected, he is to be appreciated and considered on the same level as the observer, but this is quite impossible, even in our days. Yes, it is true that from a metaphysical point of view all of the essence as manifested in our world tends towards one single point, the light or the summit, and in this regard all essence exist from the beginning on the same ontological plane, but it is also quite another thing to consider essence from the corporeal point of view and then go on to assert that all essential manifestations are equal, when they clearly are not. Again, you do not need to be special in this regard: every man can sense that there is a qualitative difference between each individual, and this is truly wandering in the foothills of the supra-individual order, something that very few people have any true conception of. Why should it be that everything in the end, should tend towards the same uniformity, read "My Views on Egalitarianism"? Would it not be quite preposterous to consider extending any respect to a stranger, even if such respectfulness could help to avert a possible and often adverse confrontation? In that case, it must be stated: respect seems to be cowardice and really an action derived from fear and anxiety, rather than from the genuine recognition of qualification, read "Hierarchies". Also, in that aforementioned case: it seems clear that respect, since it is something derived from emotionalism, cannot prompt action, for action without justification is, by definition, foolish or animalistic; only animals react in this way. So, what I am attempting to explain is that respect—being a very modern concept to begin with—is actually quite monstrous, because people seem to extend respect as some kind of social signal because they are afraid and because they need to disarm themselves socially. Well, again this is not truly respect; this is fear. Also, a truly qualified man, a master, commands respect not out of fear, intimidation, or manipulation; a master commands respect out of true admiration, admiration not for by others for his person, but by others for his ability to live in harmony with himself and the world, and only this is why he is masterful, but this is a topic outside the scope of this post.

    So, do certain criminals, for instance, deserve more respect than other certain criminals? Of course not, and I say this because that entire question is predicated, through and through, on modern assumptions. First of all: why should a criminal of any kind be regarded with respect; perhaps because of your own "preferences"? Sure, but in that event you would need to admit that you, only you, prefer certain criminals, and then it would be up to you to deal with those implications. Yes, you may say that you only prefer certain criminals over other certain criminals, and this would perhaps be more legitimate, and besides, who decides who should be a criminal in the first place, read about the state and the government here and here? Well, again you deal with the implications, but the notion of admiring a criminal seems to me to be quite a bad idea, and if you, assuming again that you respect certain criminals over other certain criminals, are not motivated by fear, then perhaps you are motivated by that crime yourself, or why not by cynicism? Cynicism indeed, because it seems quite clear, from modern movies in particular, that criminality is promoted as a good and righteous thing, and this should be expected from all that populist signaling included in most of those movies/films, because of course what I failed to mention in my post on Cynicism, already linked to above, is that this kind of populist zero sum mentality really relies on very inferior modalities that necessarily lends themselves, because of their primitive and infra-human nature, to this aggressive and stupid behavior that includes extending respect to quite reprehensible people. In what time, other than our own, was it considered good and normal for bad and evil people to create, nay be upheld as the founders of, the entire of the moral cannon? This is simply a monstrous development! Yet most people extend respect to such monsters, and the fact that most of them are criminals, the monsters, is just as well, at least for the moderns. Talk about how histrionically pathetic the state of morality is, but then again, morality without principles is just the exterior shell of an almost erased and forgotten tradition.

    So, should you extend respect to criminals or anyone else? No, you should not extend admiration and recognition to anyone who is manifestly unqualified; only the truly criminal person deserves respect, the criminal who is metaphysically bound with his criminality, but then again, no such can ever be manifested in the modern world, as the state, read about Nation-states here, has no legitimate authority to speak on behalf of The Creator. Also, read about Temporal Power here.

    Lastly, if you decide to treat another man as you expect to be treated yourself, you may extend limited respect, but this has to be earned and should never be extended without proper judgment. There is no such thing as being "deserving" of respect and admiration; either a man commands respect or he fails to command respect, and in this sense respect is a form of justice.

Reginald Drax – April 29, 2026.