My wife is worried about me.

She says I sound crazy, running around blaming the whole world for offending me with subtle and overt signs of disrespect. She is especially worried that I am no longer suppressing my offense. For instance, I have been ending conversations without warning whenever I have been disrespectfully talked over.

Shit’s getting ugly and awkward, and I am 100% ready to make it even worse.

My wife is an insightful, reasonable woman, and her concerns are grounded in the best sense.

First, as a general rule, if a person has problems with the entire world, we should not only hypothesize but fully assume the problem is with the person, not the world. We will rarely go wrong following this rule.

Second, I was born into a respect vacuum. My psyche knows and detests this kind of disrespect ethos and fears being sucked back into it. There is every reason to expect that my mental malfunctions will take disrespect as a theme.

Third, I am battered beyond belief by the work I have been forced to do for the last several months. I am not well. It is indisputable that I am crazy to some significant degree. The question is how much of the disrespect I perceive everywhere is real, and how much of it is craziness.

All I can say in defense of my perceptions is that history teaches us that there have been times and places where respect has, in fact, broken all the way down. Entire generations have come to biological adulthood without training or cultivation of mutual respect — or even exposure to it. These generations have felt no respect for the past, for the institutions that hold their life together, for anyone who wishes to preserve or defend these things that still work, however imperfectly.

This kind of radically disrespectful generalization destroys civility on their way to destroying civilization.

I believe we are in such a time and place, facing a disrespect pandemic.

To feel human, I need exchanges of respect, but in a world where people only know domination, submission, cynical suspicion and revolt, this need will not be met.

So, that is truth as I know and perceive it, laid out for judgment. Judge away.