*sigh* . . . "kids these days"

I was musing over this blog post by a friend of mine, where she was talking about chivalry and how annoying it is that it has all but died.

Reason: Respect

Or lack thereof. The reason that chivalry is all but dead is that no one has any respect for anyone else. Period. They do not care about the other person's opinion, as seen by the all too common:

"You can believe what you want, but don't try to change my opinion."

This statement might, to some people, sound as if the person is accepting the other person's opinion. But it is really just the opposite, there is no more rude way to deal with another's opinion then to say it does not matter to oneself.

They do not care about the other person's parents. This (to me) actually sounds odd but is very true. How many times do you hear "Oh, common they'll never know" or "Psht, they don't mean that" or any sort of statement bearing the "Who cares what your parents said? They don't actually care.". In actuality, they do care. They care if you are watching a movie they said not to. They care if you are hanging out with people they don't want you to. They care whether you do that they tell you to or not.

Do NOT tell yourself "Well they told me not to then.. but it is later now." You know what? Maybe things are later. So go ask their permission now. Just because they say you can now does not mean they are letting you do it in the future. The biggest deal here is not "can I handle the R rated movie?" but "I am disobeying my parents." and do not tell yourself that you are not in the wrong, because then you will soon lose the ability to see the difference between right and wrong.

They do not respect anyone's integrity. Even if they say: "You can think what you want, I won't try to change that..." How many times does someone try to get the other to do something they do not want to do. I would be willing to bet that most of the relationships that end with the boy moving on to another girl, and the girl left with an unwanted pregnancy, would not have ended up that way if the boy (and maybe sometimes the girl) had not asked more than once and respected the initial response and not pressured again and again to get the person to do what they did not want to do.

That is forcing your opinion "that it is okay" or "good" or "best" or (God forbid) "my right" onto the other person, c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y disregarding the other's opinions, integrity, and moral convictions.

A HUGE problem with the internet is that people can find someone SOMEWHERE that agrees with them exactly on one subject or another. So they feel as if they do not need to communicate with their family, and who could have otherwise become local friends, beacuse they feel that their opinion is accepted by someone, probably many people, so they can't be completely wrong . . . right? Wrong.

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This sounds preachy, but I'm only writing this because most of these problems are things that I deal with myself.

-Joel Watson