Your uncle says something at dinner that makes you cringe. Maybe it's about how people should just 'toughen up' instead of talking about mental health. Maybe it's something dismissive about how things were better back in his day. Your mom catches your eye and gives you that look — the one that says just let it go, he's older than you.

You've been here before. Most of us have. And behind that familiar tension sits a genuinely interesting philosophical question: does someone's age actually give them moral authority over you? We're all taught to 'respect our elders' almost before we can tie our shoes. But what does that phrase really mean — and when you look at it closely, does it always hold up?

There's a useful distinction hiding inside the word 'respect.' On one hand, there's basic courtesy — holding the door, listening without interrupting, treating someone with dignity simply because they're a person. On the other, there's moral deference — accepting someone else's judgment about right and wrong over your own.

We blur these two things together constantly, and it causes genuine confusion. When someone says 'respect your elders,' they might simply mean be polite — which is perfectly reasonable. But they might also mean don't challenge what they believe — and that's a completely different ask. Politeness is about how you treat people. Moral deference is about who gets to do your thinking for you. Mixing them up leaves you feeling like disagreement itself is somehow disrespectful.

Aristotle would have spotted this confusion immediately. In his virtue ethics framework, respect is a character trait — something you practice toward everyone because of who you are, not because of who they are. Being warm to your grandmother at Thanksgiving and agreeing with her views on immigration are completely separate moral acts. One reflects your character. The other outsources your conscience. You can absolutely do the first without doing the second — and recognizing that difference is where clearer ethical thinking begins.

Takeaway

Courtesy reflects your character; moral deference surrenders your judgment. You can treat someone with genuine respect while still disagreeing with them — and knowing the difference keeps your thinking honest.

Here's where things get genuinely uncomfortable. Many of the moral advances we now take for granted — civil rights, gender equality, the recognition that children deserve protection — happened precisely because younger generations refused to simply defer to their elders' moral views. Automatic deference would have meant accepting the status quo as permanent.

Think about it this way. If every generation simply adopted the moral framework of the one before it, we'd still be living with values most of us would find horrifying today. Moral progress required people who loved and respected their parents and grandparents to nonetheless say, I think you're wrong about this, and here's why. That took real courage — and it took a willingness to separate the courtesy they owed their family from blind conformity to their family's beliefs.

This doesn't mean older generations have nothing to teach us. They absolutely do. But it means tradition alone can't be the final word on what's right. The philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that moral truths aren't discovered once and preserved forever — they're tested, challenged, and refined across time. Each generation inherits not just wisdom but also blind spots. Honoring your elders might sometimes mean carrying their best insights forward while gently, respectfully setting their worst assumptions aside.

Takeaway

Moral progress has always depended on people who could honor their elders as people while questioning their elders' assumptions. Loving someone and agreeing with everything they believe are not the same act.

So if age alone doesn't grant moral authority, what does? Experience matters — but only when someone has actually reflected on it. A person who has lived eighty years without ever questioning their assumptions hasn't accumulated wisdom. They've accumulated habits. The years only count if you've done something with them.

Genuine moral insight has a few recognizable qualities. It tends to arrive with humility — a sense that the person has wrestled with hard questions and isn't entirely certain they've found perfect answers. It shows up as nuance rather than certainty, as curiosity rather than dogma. And here's the crucial part: it can come from literally anyone. A twenty-year-old who has navigated real hardship with thoughtfulness might have deeper moral insight on a given topic than a seventy-year-old who has never faced that situation.

The real skill isn't deciding whose advice to follow based on their birth year. It's learning to recognize good moral reasoning wherever you encounter it — in a grandmother's quiet observation at the kitchen table, in a teenager's passionate argument about fairness, or in your own careful reflection during those honest moments when you're willing to question what you've always believed. Wisdom doesn't carry a timestamp. It carries a quality of thought.

Takeaway

Wisdom isn't a reward for getting older — it's a product of reflection. Look for humility, nuance, and genuine wrestling with hard questions, not simply gray hair.

Next time you're at that dinner table, you don't have to choose between being rude and being a pushover. You can hold two things at once: genuine courtesy toward people who've lived longer than you, and genuine commitment to thinking for yourself about what's right.

The question was never really should you respect your elders? Of course you should — the same way you respect everyone. The better question is: who has earned your moral trust, and why? That one's worth answering for yourself.