Growing up in Belgium, our country was considered to be a very 'modern' society. Part of that meant that we were 'multi-cultural' with many people living in Belgium coming from various different cultural backgrounds and religions. With this, we were taught to be 'tolerant' and `Respectful of other people's beliefs'. Only if we take on such an attitude along with one of 'minding your own business' approach - can we live 'peacefully together'.
When you're being taught all these things, it all 'sound nice' and 'seems to make sense' (because you don't necessarily want other people to question your beliefs). Afterwards in my life, especially during teenage years and later -- this 'Freedom point' and 'having to respect others' freedoms' started bothering me. This was because I would for instance ask someone for help or ask someone to assist me with something, where without their assistance i would not have been able to pursue the point, and they would simply say 'No' and when asking further as to 'why not' -- it would simply be a matter of 'because I don't want to / feel like it'. Or if I would question friends' behaviour I would get a response of 'I can't change who I am' and ' either respect and accept who I am or don't be my friend' type of response.
What I did not like about these points is that I felt powerless within these situations. I could sense something was 'off' but had these rules that we lived by such as 'respect anther's beliefs' and 'respect other people's choices/freedom' which pretty much told me that I was not allowed or supposed to ask questions any further - but leave it at that and would have to merely 'swallow' whatever response I had gotten as this was the collective agreement that had been made. It was really more of a compromise everyone had accepted to live by, where "there's going to be people doing and saying things that you don't like, but as long as you leave them alone they will leave you alone as well and then we have 'peace' ". So we're never really completely satisfied and actually disagree 'but we'll take it' -- and now we have twisted and turned this act of 'just taking it', into some 'benevolent' and 'integrity' dimension -- where it has become a 'good' and 'positive thing' to do -- while it's really just a matter of avoiding each others’ disagreements for the sake of avoiding conflict because we can't really trust each other to behave 'rationally'. So as long as we 'play nice' we do not have to be faced by and with our underlying unpleasant and irrational behaviour. So this whole 'respect another's opinion/freedom/beliefs' is really actually a negative manifestation, as it finds its origin within negativity itself -- but now we've brainwashed ourselves to believe that 'it is a good thing'.
To be continued
