usha manohar wrote:

Sanjeev Gupta wrote:

We are living in a culture where we assume that elders know more than us but sometimes it's not true. Respecting our elders is what we are taught from our childhood and we remember it till we have little knowledge but once we get mature we think we know more than our elders and then the problem arise. In my opinion we should respect everyone irrespective of his/her age to get respect from them too.

 

I agree with you in that we Indians automatically feel that no matter what the elders say we have to follow it .I give an example of a case that happened here - A young minor girl from our school had lodged a complaint in the police station saying that her mother had beaten and banged her head against the wall. This had been an ongoing thing with the girl attending school with bruises and swollen face and eyes many a times. The police called a couple of us teachers and the parents. The mother lopenly looked guilty but the police gave some pearls of wisdom by telling the girl that she shd not mind such treatment from her mother since she knows best and she is afterall your mother. When we teachers told him that the girl was being beaten almost everyday, he said this is common and not to be made much of and that when angry his mothet too slaps him ! Honestly what does one say ? we later lodged a complaint with women's group and they did a better job of handling it...Such is the misconception of elderly wisdom and knowledge.

We no doubt need to listen to our elders but blindly believing and doing what they say is foolishness.We earlier had a discussion on this topic here where the topic starter wanted everyone to agree that parents shd never ever be questioned and if you did you had no love for your parents which to me sounded stupid and an extreme view !

 I agree Usha. Just because our parents are elder to us does not necessarily mean that we should listen to them blindly. Of course, they deserve our respect but it does not mean they would automatically be wise in all matters. World is changing fast and many elders are yet to become accustomed to the changing pace and many are still ignorant about many things. Listening to them in most matters only out of respect would not be wise.

age, wisdom, experience- all are combined for respecting age.  We respect elders for age even if they have less wisdom.  However an average old man will have more age and experience than an average young man. When we walk in street, we don't know knowledge or experience but only age is known from physical experience. 

Life is a great teacher. The essence of life teachings are grasped bad assimilated more by the senior citizens. The knowledge of the senior citizens act as reference books for the younger generation.

rambabu wrote:

Life is a great teacher. The essence of life teachings are grasped bad assimilated more by the senior citizens. The knowledge of the senior citizens act as reference books for the younger generation.

True...but nowadays more and more elderly are becoming quite reluctant to share their knowledge and wisdom with the young. More than willingness to share, it is also seen that they are rather quick to castigate the young on various issues rather than themselves trying to understand the young. Which makes it rather difficult to respect them!

True Kalyani. Such knowledge of the elders is useless and this knowledge is a waste to them as well as to others like moonlight in the wilderness.

I do not believe that being an elder automatically qualifies one to be respected. Respect has to earned and not claimed on the basis of age alone. There has been a paradigm shift in the light of explosion of knowledge, its sophisticated delivery mechanism and easy accessibility. One can live a hundred years without either growing mature or wise. Well, we have to treat our parents at a different plane altogether.

chinmoymukherjee wrote:

I do not believe that being an elder automatically qualifies one to be respected. Respect has to earned and not claimed on the basis of age alone. There has been a paradigm shift in the light of explosion of knowledge, its sophisticated delivery mechanism and easy accessibility. One can live a hundred years without either growing mature or wise. Well, we have to treat our parents at a different plane altogether.

''respect is earned not claimed'' I agree with the point but what to do with elders who doesn't understand it. May be they need understand it better to get respect from others.

Sanjeev Gupta wrote:

chinmoymukherjee wrote:

I do not believe that being an elder automatically qualifies one to be respected. Respect has to earned and not claimed on the basis of age alone. There has been a paradigm shift in the light of explosion of knowledge, its sophisticated delivery mechanism and easy accessibility. One can live a hundred years without either growing mature or wise. Well, we have to treat our parents at a different plane altogether.

''respect is earned not claimed'' I agree with the point but what to do with elders who doesn't understand it. May be they need understand it better to get respect from others.

 

There is no need to make the elders who claim respect. As you said, it should be earned.

 

rambabu wrote:

Sanjeev Gupta wrote:

chinmoymukherjee wrote:

I do not believe that being an elder automatically qualifies one to be respected. Respect has to earned and not claimed on the basis of age alone. There has been a paradigm shift in the light of explosion of knowledge, its sophisticated delivery mechanism and easy accessibility. One can live a hundred years without either growing mature or wise. Well, we have to treat our parents at a different plane altogether.

''respect is earned not claimed'' I agree with the point but what to do with elders who doesn't understand it. May be they need understand it better to get respect from others.

 

There is no need to make the elders who claim respect. As you said, it should be earned.

 

But that's not practically possible as our society does not permit that.

 

 

chinmoymukherjee wrote:

I do not believe that being an elder automatically qualifies one to be respected. Respect has to earned and not claimed on the basis of age alone. There has been a paradigm shift in the light of explosion of knowledge, its sophisticated delivery mechanism and easy accessibility. One can live a hundred years without either growing mature or wise. Well, we have to treat our parents at a different plane altogether.

 

Exactly my feelings ! Give respect and take respect always works no matter what age ...Parents and grand parents are loved and respected when they have shown love, care and understanding, otherwise we get to read and hear about old people being treated shabbily by their children and grand children which may be partly because of their own doing.Personally, I feel that no matter what, we have to give some extra leeway to older people because of the failing and slowing down of their physical and mental state.