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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3671 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The great white shark has an image problem

Personally I would say acknowledging the risk of surfing in areas with great white sharks and taking care not to deliberately provoke them isn't a showing of respect but of measured caution. Respect would be something more like acknowledging their importance in the underwater ecosystem and refraining from killing them for that reason.

But I understand we may have differences in semantics with respect to those words.





OftenBen  ·  3671 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's precisely it, a matter of definitions.

user-inactivated  ·  3671 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I just don't like when people say they "respect someone (or something) for their power" or "for the fear they evoke". As I mentioned below in my own thread, it reeks of sycophantism and power worship, even if it's because their connotation is different from mine.