>>- backing down in any way, shape or form, even if it's just the ILLUSION of backing down, is BAD. It "hurts their reputation". BLEEEEEP that. Reputation is MORE than just "other people do what he says. He's always right."<<
"Reputation is what other people know about you; honor is what you know about yourself."
Reputation is a slippery bitch. It is what people THINK it is. It may have nothing to do with facts or social function. If people think that giving a fraction of an inch is bad, they will treat it as bad, and penalize each other accordingly. This is especially visible in gender policing when males ruthlessly enforce maximum machisimo. It can get people killed. It is nevertheless rather common.
So when someone says that apologizing may damage their reputation, they may be stating a fact of social dynamics in the context they live. When you're protecting your reputation, you're taking action based on what you think will allow you to continue living with other people. It may not be factually or morally right, but it is what your local subculture says expects of you. You refrain from apologizing, or you apologize, because you are socially penalized if you violate people's expectations of you.
This is the opposite of honor. What you do for honor is taking action based on what will allow you to continue living with yourself. Everyone else may condemn you, make it difficult or impossible to participate in society, may even kill you in extreme cases. But you are following your own code of ethics and abiding by your expectations of yourself. You apologize, or do not apologize, because you feel it is the right thing to do on a moral basis. It alleviates a distress signal from inside, not from outside.
>> - "Face" is VERY different at least from this Westerner's viewpoint. It's about doing the 'right' thing, not 'being right'. VERY, VERY big difference there. <<
Face is generally considered a point of social standing, akin to reputation; and it's about expectations rather than necessarily being about morals. People may say that it's about what is right, but it's really about what people think.
>> - Fear of looking foolish is a BIG DEAL to most people. <<
This is what happens when you allow kids to attack weakness instead of protecting it. If you don't teach them that it's not okay to make fun of each other and make people cry, they'll go right on doing it. If you fall and people laugh at you or kick your books out of reach, you learn to fear failure and hide it. If you fall and people help you up, you learn that failure is just an ordinary thing that you get over with a hand from your friends.
What starts with a slip in the school hallway, however, grows into adults who have clandestine affairs or cover up their company's dangerous product flaw that could kill people. They've learned, for sake of survival, that showing any weakness is too risky. So they hide their mistakes, their poor choices, and in the process of all that ass-covering, a lot of small problems become big disasters.
>> When you're already half-crazy from the biochemical madhouse we call "adolescence", and living in a society that openly mocks anyone or anything different than "they" are -- whatever the subgroup labeled "they" might be in a particular situation-- it's a recipe for disaster. <<
Agreed.
>> - Kids grow up in households where NO ONE apologizes. <<
That's a huge problem. Everyone makes mistakes; you need to learn how to handle that in a relationship. Or you wind up with no relationships. Look around at the extreme fragmentation of society. More people than ever are living in ones or two. Many of them wish they have more connectivity but have no idea how to create it, or even that relationships require WORK.
>> The attitude in my area is "forget it", not implying, "It's minor, I've gotten over it," but "NEVER, EVER MENTION THIS TOPIC AGAIN." In that case, fewer people even understand the distinction between the two definitions I've given for "forget it." <<
You need to know, not just when and how to give an apology (or not) but also how to accept one (or not). If someone apologizes to you, then you need to think:
* What did they do to upset you, if anything? * What practical or emotional harm did it cause? * What if anything needs to be cleaned up? * How upset are you, if at all? * What will it take to make things okay between you?
If it really didn't bother you or it's a minor matter, you say something like, "It's no big deal. We're okay." (Sometimes people worry about different things. They need to KNOW that it's okay.)
If it bothered you a little, but a verbal apology is enough, then you say, "I forgive you."
If it's more serious, then you probably need to talk about it, to make sure the same problem won't happen again. You may want to ask for some kind of recompense: "I appreciate your apology, but my schedule is still messed up. Because you were two hours late yesterday, I didn't have time to do the housework, and now I'm frustrated. You could make it up to me by helping with that." A person who cares about you will, if the lateness was really their fault, say something like, "Yeah, I really screwed up. Howbout I do the dishes and laundry that you usually do?"
If you aren't sure you can forgive the offense, or you're sure you can't, that also needs to be said; and you should include what that does to your relationship. "I don't know if I can get past your affair. Maybe, but it would take a lot of couple counseling." "You borrowed my car without asking and you wrecked it. This friendship is OVER. Don't contact me again."
Most people do not know how to do this kind of self-assessment and negotiation. If one person knows and the other is willing to learn, they can manage. If one knows and the other is unwilling to learn, or neither knows, then the problem is unlikely to get solved. It may seem to smooth over, but the buildup of resentment is why so many friendships and marriages fall apart after a few years. You're "fixing" things with spit and baling wire instead of making real repairs.
And they don't understand how this process undermines society as a whole, so they look at the melting social glue and wonder why nobody gives a fuck about each other anymore.
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dancing_serpent
Re: from the notes:
Date: 2014-05-03 02:30 am (UTC)"Reputation is what other people know about you; honor is what you know about yourself."
Reputation is a slippery bitch. It is what people THINK it is. It may have nothing to do with facts or social function. If people think that giving a fraction of an inch is bad, they will treat it as bad, and penalize each other accordingly. This is especially visible in gender policing when males ruthlessly enforce maximum machisimo. It can get people killed. It is nevertheless rather common.
So when someone says that apologizing may damage their reputation, they may be stating a fact of social dynamics in the context they live. When you're protecting your reputation, you're taking action based on what you think will allow you to continue living with other people. It may not be factually or morally right, but it is what your local subculture says expects of you. You refrain from apologizing, or you apologize, because you are socially penalized if you violate people's expectations of you.
This is the opposite of honor. What you do for honor is taking action based on what will allow you to continue living with yourself. Everyone else may condemn you, make it difficult or impossible to participate in society, may even kill you in extreme cases. But you are following your own code of ethics and abiding by your expectations of yourself. You apologize, or do not apologize, because you feel it is the right thing to do on a moral basis. It alleviates a distress signal from inside, not from outside.
>> - "Face" is VERY different at least from this Westerner's viewpoint. It's about doing the 'right' thing, not 'being right'. VERY, VERY big difference there. <<
Face is generally considered a point of social standing, akin to reputation; and it's about expectations rather than necessarily being about morals. People may say that it's about what is right, but it's really about what people think.
>> - Fear of looking foolish is a BIG DEAL to most people. <<
This is what happens when you allow kids to attack weakness instead of protecting it. If you don't teach them that it's not okay to make fun of each other and make people cry, they'll go right on doing it. If you fall and people laugh at you or kick your books out of reach, you learn to fear failure and hide it. If you fall and people help you up, you learn that failure is just an ordinary thing that you get over with a hand from your friends.
What starts with a slip in the school hallway, however, grows into adults who have clandestine affairs or cover up their company's dangerous product flaw that could kill people. They've learned, for sake of survival, that showing any weakness is too risky. So they hide their mistakes, their poor choices, and in the process of all that ass-covering, a lot of small problems become big disasters.
>> When you're already half-crazy from the biochemical madhouse we call "adolescence", and living in a society that openly mocks anyone or anything different than "they" are -- whatever the subgroup labeled "they" might be in a particular situation-- it's a recipe for disaster. <<
Agreed.
>> - Kids grow up in households where NO ONE apologizes. <<
That's a huge problem. Everyone makes mistakes; you need to learn how to handle that in a relationship. Or you wind up with no relationships. Look around at the extreme fragmentation of society. More people than ever are living in ones or two. Many of them wish they have more connectivity but have no idea how to create it, or even that relationships require WORK.
>> The attitude in my area is "forget it", not implying, "It's minor, I've gotten over it," but "NEVER, EVER MENTION THIS TOPIC AGAIN." In that case, fewer people even understand the distinction between the two definitions I've given for "forget it." <<
You need to know, not just when and how to give an apology (or not) but also how to accept one (or not). If someone apologizes to you, then you need to think:
* What did they do to upset you, if anything?
* What practical or emotional harm did it cause?
* What if anything needs to be cleaned up?
* How upset are you, if at all?
* What will it take to make things okay between you?
If it really didn't bother you or it's a minor matter, you say something like, "It's no big deal. We're okay." (Sometimes people worry about different things. They need to KNOW that it's okay.)
If it bothered you a little, but a verbal apology is enough, then you say, "I forgive you."
If it's more serious, then you probably need to talk about it, to make sure the same problem won't happen again. You may want to ask for some kind of recompense: "I appreciate your apology, but my schedule is still messed up. Because you were two hours late yesterday, I didn't have time to do the housework, and now I'm frustrated. You could make it up to me by helping with that." A person who cares about you will, if the lateness was really their fault, say something like, "Yeah, I really screwed up. Howbout I do the dishes and laundry that you usually do?"
If you aren't sure you can forgive the offense, or you're sure you can't, that also needs to be said; and you should include what that does to your relationship. "I don't know if I can get past your affair. Maybe, but it would take a lot of couple counseling." "You borrowed my car without asking and you wrecked it. This friendship is OVER. Don't contact me again."
Most people do not know how to do this kind of self-assessment and negotiation. If one person knows and the other is willing to learn, they can manage. If one knows and the other is unwilling to learn, or neither knows, then the problem is unlikely to get solved. It may seem to smooth over, but the buildup of resentment is why so many friendships and marriages fall apart after a few years. You're "fixing" things with spit and baling wire instead of making real repairs.
And they don't understand how this process undermines society as a whole, so they look at the melting social glue and wonder why nobody gives a fuck about each other anymore.