I’ve recently been in some conversations with my peers about the College. One discussion was about the students and their attitudes towards completing some work. Another discussion was in reference to an issue about employees filling out some required work with a deadline. In both cases, the issue ultimately boiled down to why people did not seem able or willing to do what was required of them.
The issue is that we, as a culture, now lack a true grasp on the nature of respect or authority.
My friend and mentor, Sandy Shugart, says that in his opinion, we’ve entered a time in our culture where everyone has serious doubts about institutions. To him, people no longer hold any trust about the ability of large-scale operations to come through, to work with integrity and follow through as promised. That decline contributes to this issue of lack of respect.
You can see this play out in parking lots across the country. One of my peers recently had her car hit in a sort of “hit and run” experience. Someone, maybe a student, maybe just a visitor, hit the professor’s car in the parking lot and then raced off leaving no note. When we spoke, I softly shared that I too had at least two dents in my truck due to parking issues. And, while I can see how this is just sort of how things happen in parking lot situations, at the root is an issue of no respect. First, the offending driver actually has little or no respect for their OWN possessions. I mean, when I park, I take great care because I don’t want my own vehicle to get dinged. Secondly, of course, is the reality that the person also has little to no respect for another person or their possessions.
How did we get here? I mean, as a nation, we’ve never been perfect. No people ever had, but we used to have better manners. We used to care more about each other, even if it was the courtesy of formal manners that privately we discounted. Publically, we’d politely interact with each other, tip the hat, hold the door, respect the other person’s possessions and person.
Well, our journey to this place is fairly easy to see once you look back into the 1960s. The further we moved away from a common set of values and began to embrace a “if it feels good, do it” mentality, the worse things got. In the 1970s, the idea that person alone was right, that individualism trumped the group values, had begun to take root, showing up in many places including the churches. People began to choose their own way and demand the right to express it. That doesn’t sound bad, does it?
Well, except that once there was no longer a common group value, there could be no common glue that would lead to some level of courteous respect to one another. If anyone’s views held equal merit, then no one’s views could be held up as a model. So, thus, if my view is that your vehicle doesn’t matter to me, then I might hit it just because. If my view is that your institution or its rules are corrupt, then I will probably choose to reject the direction of the institution. If my view is that I will live only by my own rules, then I will see no reason to turn that work in on time or complete the task assigned by my boss.
And worse, if I believe those things, then I really cannot teach my children to follow any common values or mores. If that is true, then I’ll probably not respect the institution of education or the teacher who leads my child’s class, so that if the teacher questions my child’s work, I won’t support them but rather question the teacher’s motives. I will show disrespect to the teacher, perhaps even in front of my child because, well clearly, my own views on life and learning are the only ones I should follow and support. So, the teacher had better pass my child or else.
Can you see where this is headed? We actually are there now. The level of disrespect in our society is the worst it’s ever been, at least in my 50 years and in my own understanding of our nation’s 400-year history. Even on the frontier in days long gone where there was no “law” or “decent society,” there was a basic understanding of how humans should interact with each other. There was a common view that we had to work together to be successful…in fact, this was better known on the frontier than back in the established, settled lands.
Sandy and I were speaking about this topic generally, as we talked about what the best interactions could look like in a business. We had been talking about the fabled Round Table of King Arthur and the role of the sage and jester in the king’s court. I said, in one exchange, that to get to the place where we can best interact with each other, then I must “realize that I may not know best, and thus, to find “the best” I must listen to others with courtesy and honest engagement. Meaning, I should not merely be courteous while listening silent yet all the while I am forming my devastating rebuttal to their views, protecting my own position.”
He replied saying “I love that the root of the word courtesy, is couer – heart. Genuine courtesy isn’t good manners, but a good heart toward others…”
That is the root of finding our way back as a country, back to some level of respect to each other…..”a good heart toward others.”