Respect for someone — or even something — is maintaining an attitude that this person, or thing — this being — has something to teach us. Normally respect consists in a general mood of regard, maintained by various formal (etiquette) and informal signals.

This ambient background mood of respect is sometimes activated in an appeal to be heard and trusted on some matter that might not be considered if the one making the appeal is not respected. — “Hear me out…” “Trust me on this…” “Stay with me…” “Think this over…” — The “object” of the appeal might be a prediction or a plan, or a counter-intuitive fact or difficult concept, or maybe a gut sense or incipient insight, or a feeling or ineffable experience, but the activation of respect always involves some kind of extension of faith beyond the personal limits of the respectful, whether experiential, cognitive, predictive, practical, judicial, etc.

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There are situations where an appeal for respect reveals false signaling of respect. The person was treated in respect a respectful manner, but was not actually respected. The appeal is denied, and what the person has to say is disregarded.

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There are people who are so profoundly disrespectful they are not aware that respect is a reality indicated through the signals of etiquette. They think respect is etiquette.

If a person has a rigid and unfaithful mind that resists learning, etiquette will be the closest approximation to respect they can muster, and it is far better than nothing.

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There are also situations where a person intentionally treats a person with contempt while maintaining perfect manners of respect. This is a delicate game that requires both mastery of the formal rules of respect and control over one’s own emotions. The players in this game compete to provoke the other to produce damning evidence of formal disrespect to present before a judge. This is a game of polite contempt.

The trick to surviving this game, if you lack one or both skills needed to win it, is to know how to change the game.

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A kind of elevated, benevolent contempt can develop across power differentials — where the powerful go so long with so little sense of vulnerability to their inferiors that respect slips away unnoticed. It is simply a known fact that the disrespected do not know, are unaware they do not know, and are not even aware of the factors that obstruct or distort their knowledge. Their views can be safely dismissed. But not letting them speak is impolite, so the superior listens patiently — very patiently, because this is an act of waiting for the other to finish saying things that are known to be wrong. It is all done in innocence, but innocence is grossly overrated.

This is a variation on the game of polite contempt. Let’s call it benevolent contempt.

This benevolent contempt is often present in pity and exercised through charity.

It is why recipients of charity so often hate their benefactors.

The fact that the crime is committed innocently with conceit of equality with no trace of ironic self-awareness makes things far worse.

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Contempt dehumanizes, alienates and infuriates. Even polite, benevolent contempt.

People treated with contempt will win back respect, one way or another, sometimes violently. “You thought you had no need to listen to what I had to say, didn’t you…?”

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I am terrified at the ubiquity of contempt.

Everyone already knows everything, including why their opponents mistakenly think they know everything.