• Mocking authority for me would be a red flag as it’s a sign of immaturity. The people in my life that do this are the ones that tend to be emotionally rash, and inability to control emotions is a huge red flag.

    However not just submitting to authority and being confident enough to stand up to it while being respectful, that’s a green flag.

    • why respect someone who’s threatening you? That’s the implicit case with authority “bow to me or I will make you suffer”

      Who gains anything there except the authoritarian? Why do you want people to respect that?

      We get on with each other fine without it.

      •  Shadow   ( @Shadow@lemmy.ca ) 
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        8 months ago

        What do you gain from treating them with disrespect, other than escalation? Nobody likes being disrespected, regardless of whether or not they deserve / have earned that respect. By operating on a baseline of “give people the benefit of the doubt and treat them with respect by default” you open a world of constructive / logical discussion that would be closed if you were emotional.

        To me, mocking someone is a person’s way of saying “I don’t have a well thought out argument against X, so I’ll just give it a nickname and talk shit about it”.

        If you have to think of one person who is famous for mocking anyone / anything they don’t like, who would it be? For me, the first person that comes to mind is Trump. Is that someone who is worth modelling your behaviour after?