Respect is an abstract concept for people nowadays. We're so cheap when it comes to wasting our unlimited resources that we've forgotten how good we felt when the big R was around. It all starts small, within us. We lose respect for ourselves, for our primordial status as human beings, and for our nature. So, we resort to plastic surgery; we take a beating but tell the doctor we banged our head against the door; we let ourselves be humiliated everyday by someone who is a little less cheap but a little more selfish about his self-respect and who places himself above you in some made-up, inconsistent hierarchy. We become trampled under the feet of our own will to cut back on our expenses. It's all economics, our failure.
From then on, things can only go downhill. Once you've lost respect for yourself - or simply ignored the initial acquirement of some - you've also lost your status as a human being. You are now officially "Lucy"'s daughter, the australopitaecus in original form, and you have bred many species within your race. You might be the Ignorant, you might be the Rude, you might be the Meek, but you're still regressing.
You're still part of a movement you've started somewhere around your stomach. Now you're burping the fumes of self disrespect all over the place, infecting everything. You spit on the street, you throw a wedding on the street and ignore your neighbours' pleas to turn the music down, you seek revenge by slamming a shameful grade in the register next to the name of just another collateral victim.
Slowly, you're turning into a hyena, losing whatever regard you had for all things holy to mankind like honour, culture, kindness, gentleness and - God forbid we forget - cleanliness. You have no respect for neither the dead nor the living. You eat your way to the top of yet another chimera of a hierarchy.
Let's hope against hope that there is hope, that the metaphorical cancer of modernity hasn't spread so wide inside our body. Let's try and be human again, even if it means silly things like not littering and smiling to children on the street.
Let's repent for freedom..., whatever that means.
I wonder what they meant when they said "repent".
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