How did it come about that the issue of "face" became so complicated that a foreigner that has not been brought up in Asia, by Asians, cannot understand how it all works?
That’s a tricky question, I‘ll have tentative crack at it!
The few Thai friends I have tried to ask about this have admitted that they to do not fully understand it – they live it - but they cannot explain it in the manner in which you are seeking. To me, in that respect ‘face’ is like a cultural grammar ie, one may very well speak a langue, even if they cannot state the ‘rules’ and the ‘whys’ of that langue.
As Mont Redmond writes in ‘Wondering into Thai Culture’: ‘The only people who can be philosophical about their ‘face’ in Thailand are those who have lost it or never had it’ - that would include we falang trying to understand it, and that would exclude the Thais living with it!!!!
Many human traits are positive when executed in a balanced manner, but destructive when take to extreme. To me ‘face’ falls into the latter!
I may be wrong, but I think ‘face’ came about via (or is linked to) ‘Bunkhun’. Thais encourage interdependence. They have they idea of ‘Bunkhun’ (indebted goodness) - this is like a currency of obligation – I did you a good turn, now you owe me a favor…My rice crop failed, but you gave me enough to eat, so now I owe you...
Now we have established a relationship! As I am owed a good turn by you, I do not wish to offend you, and as you are indebted to me, you do not wish to offend me – that is not a bad situation in itself, but if taken to extreme, then we can end up with me denying the fact that I stole rice out of your store, and you actually vouching for me despite catching me red handed! Preserving our relationship of ‘Bunkhun’ is perceived by both us as more important to our long term survival than admitting any temporal wrong doing or guilt. That being so, we need some mechanism by which to preserve our interdependence through lives daily dramas. In the west, we rely more on truth and forgiveness (when things go wrong), while the Thais instead seem to place the emphasize on innocence and denial. ‘Face’ seems the muddled up results of this….
Now back to your question! Why is face so complicated and difficult to understand? Any mode of behavior biased on deception and in covering up the truth has by its very nature to be difficult, if not impossible, to understand from the outside, it also has to be complicated. Just think of a child telling a lie, to uphold that lie, she then has to tell another lie, then another again, until the whole story is grows complicated and difficult to understand! Now the child will adamantly say that her version of the universe make scenes, and has a logic and consistency all of its own, she may even believe that! But try as they may, the kids parents are never going to get into that world…
I have lived for a while in southern Africa and worked with the desert Aboriginals of Australia and in both cases it did not take me long to understand the people and their rules in life…. it was realatively easy to predict how people would react to a set of cicumstances. This does not seem to be the case in Asia!!!
‘Face’ is predominantly used as a way of telling a lie or denying the truth. One lie leads to another lie and there does not need to be an external consistency and logic between lies and the ‘rules’ and ‘reactions’ that follow from them.
Cultures that are not bent on deception must surely be easier to understand than one based on a deceptive smile on a concealing face.
Man I ramble on!
