Living in Thailand

Losing Face - the Solution

      by Capt Haddock

Just yesterday my wife mentioned me the problem has been solved. She did not speak directly to cousin Kob. Instead she went to sister Noi who is closer in age and closer socially to cousin Kob and asked her to make the request. And that worked as my wife explained because by going to Aunt Aom through Kob through Noi, each contact was through the person who was closest to the next in the chain.

So, it was exactly the opposite to the farang preference for direct-confrontation. No one lost face. When she sees Aunt Aom next time, neither of them need feel uncomfortable, even if Aunt Aom knows about her role as an instigator, which she probably doesn't. Aunt Aom also paid the outstanding 10,000 baht on the computer.

So what does it mean to lose face? I gather that losing face is nothing more than the shame that arises from the public failure to avoid conflict. As such, it accrues to all the public participants in marked contrast to the notion of guilt, for example. Nor does it have anything to do with self-esteem, which, like guilt, but unlike shame, one can experience at home alone.

I asked my wife why none of the other participants could figure out the solution. She explained that people like her mother, who was aware of the whole situation, and Noi were too low in the hierarchy and too conditioned to passivity even to look for a solution, since any failed attempt could easily result in some kind of blow up and then they too would have lost face. Loss of face is like motor oil; it just gets all over everything. I also asked her why Nut could not find the solution since as the principal victim she had so much more incentive to take some social risk than even sympathetic bystanders.

She thinks that Nut simply felt too constrained, living in a household where she has no opportunity for initiative of any kind. In some sense, doing nothing is never the worst thing you can do. Would my wife have found the solution if she had never left Thailand? She isn't sure that she would have. She has definitely developed more of the New Yorker's sharp elbows since moving here. And she doesn't have as much as risk either since she only visits once a year these days.

I also asked my wife what it would be like if we moved to BKK. If some family member turned up uninvited at our door, I would send her directly to a hotel. Would I be losing face all the time from actions like that? No, because I am a farang and the rules don't apply to me. To some extent, she is exempted as well since she can't be expected to control me.

So, the Thai social context places maximum, indeed exclusive, emphasis on avoiding conflict. Individual's feelings or entitlements would seem to take a distant back seat. Nor is the concept of guilt particularly relevant. Sort of like the old rule from driver's education, that the person most responsible for a traffic accident is the one who had the last clear opportunity to avoid it. And the traffic rule is like the Thai loss of face for the same reason: because the consequences outweigh all other considerations.

The Thai concept of loss of face is difficult to understand not because it is unknown to us farangs, but because loss of face is also very important to us. But when we say loss of face we mean loss of status. Such a loss of status could arise from conflict as well as other situations, but it would depend on culpability not the failure to avoid conflict.

Even if some farang were to get into a fight he could have avoided standing up for his rights, while we might regard him as foolhardy, he would not necessarily lose face. He might gain face as a tilter against windmills, for example.

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¹Kamnan - (pronounced 'gamnan') is a kind of rural mayor with a certain amount of status.