Face, What Is It?

[Hey Steve]

Given the fact that so many are born into a society that offers so little (and what little is offered is never a square deal), it's good to know many have a pleasant attitude and good humor (there's sometimes nothing like hearing "Good morning sir-how are you" as you go out to buy that morning pandesol) with a smile and a little small talk. It's putting the stresses of what they can't control aside (deflecting) and trying to find ways to look at the bright side of their lives-an atmosphere I truly enjoy at times. So staying away from and debating the darker side of their struggling lives sometimes can be well advised (as I learn here). As Steve summed it up, they know it-they know it-they don't need us there to remind them.

[Steve & Myrlita]

 

What it boils down to is they know their politicians are corrupt and not worth a pile of s**t. It's just they don't want to hear it from the mouth of a foreigner. Why? Filipino Pride! They will stand tall and say they are good while their boat has 3" holes and sinking from under them.

 

Quick Edit: Typo

Many Filipinos agree when I say it through Internet, but they don't want me to say it so OTHERS hear it when I'm in Phils   - at least not when they are close to me     :)

 

That's because they don't want to lose face.

[Methersgate]

Given the fact that so many are born into a society that offers so little (and what little is offered is never a square deal), it's good to know many have a pleasant attitude and good humor (there's sometimes nothing like hearing "Good morning sir-how are you" as you go out to buy that morning pandesol) with a smile and a little small talk. It's putting the stresses of what they can't control aside (deflecting) and trying to find ways to look at the bright side of their lives-an atmosphere I truly enjoy at times. So staying away from and debating the darker side of their struggling lives sometimes can be well advised (as I learn here). As Steve summed it up, they know it-they know it-they don't need us there to remind them.

That's it!

Let's take somewhere we all know - Metro Manila. Of its population of - what - 12 million people (11,855,975 in the 2010 Census) - how many wake up each day feeling that they can control what will happen to them that day? Only a very few of them can wake up with the pleasant thought that they are in some sense "in control". How many of them can reasonably hope for a better future? Again, very few.

Now, why does the population of Metro Manila keep growing? Because people move to Manila from the provinces. They do that because life is better in Manila than it is in the provinces!

 

Its difficult to argue that Manila is a beautiful city. It isn't. It is polluted, dirty, noisy, short on trees and grass and when it rains it floods. Most of it is two storeys high. Much of it is "informal architecture" - squatter tenements. 

 

Is it helpful to remind people of how miserable they are?

 

No, it is better to think cheerful thoughts!

 

Better to think of the Love of God, of the Saints interceding for us, of the many, many possibilities of magic, of the wonderful redemptive qualities of human love...of the chance that Luck is on Our Side, and to daydream that the jueteng ticket will win....   

[Thomas]

 

 

What it boils down to is they know their politicians are corrupt and not worth a pile of s**t. It's just they don't want to hear it from the mouth of a foreigner. Why? Filipino Pride! They will stand tall and say they are good while their boat has 3" holes and sinking from under them.

 

Quick Edit: Typo

Many Filipinos agree when I say it through Internet, but they don't want me to say it so OTHERS hear it when I'm in Phils   - at least not when they are close to me     :)

 

That's because they don't want to lose face.

Well. At least most of them I have talked with - when I have talked with them one by one with no one listening -  don't want others to hear because it can be dangerous. There are rather many POLITICAL MURDERS including several murders at protesting jounalists. Latest (?) in Bukidnon at a journalist famous for checking and complaining about corrupt politicians.

 

My gf want me to shut up in Phils, because she want me to stay alive   :)

[MacBubba]

Now, why does the population of Metro Manila keep growing? Because people move to Manila from the provinces. They do that because life is better in Manila than it is in the provinces!

 

Manila old-timers don't understand why they still do that.  Manila was not always the squalid place that it is now.  Up until the 1960's, Manila was still a good place to live, so people from the provinces kept flocking to Manila, as though money could be easily had.

 

Except for a few who succeed, the rest fail miserably, but will refuse to return to the provinces for fear of losing face.  So, they end up swelling the ranks of squatters, in a city that was not built to hold so many!

 

Are they happier in Manila?  I think not. 

[FlyAway]

I consider Face to fall into the Gangbanger mentality. Those that act on the so called Face thing are after selfish attention to themselves. Most of it is so trifle, very few would even remember what all the fuss was about the day after it happened anyway.

[Old55]

It is easy to dwell on the negitive aspects of face in the most part an excuse to lie.

Can anyone detail good that comes from face? Some of the last posts aluded to some I think.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Old55

[Tukaram (Tim)]

To me it just seems like the public image each person wants to maintain.  They love to appear saintly, god fearing, and compassionate.  And when you point something out that proves how false that mask is - they lose face, and you are the bad guy.

 

I don't see any real purpose to it except to try and maintain a false veneer if piety.

 

That is why when you have a problem with someone it is better to go through a 3rd party instead of a direct confrontation.  Somehow that goes down easier... but to many of us Westerners it is just airing our dirty laundry to others.  We generally prefer a more direct (and private) approach.    :tiphat:

[Jake]

To me it just seems like the public image each person wants to maintain.  They love to appear saintly, god fearing, and compassionate.  And when you point something out that proves how false that mask is - they lose face, and you are the bad guy.

 

I don't see any real purpose to it except to try and maintain a false veneer if piety.

 

That is why when you have a problem with someone it is better to go through a 3rd party instead of a direct confrontation.  Somehow that goes down easier... but to many of us Westerners it is just airing our dirty laundry to others.  We generally prefer a more direct (and private) approach.    :tiphat:

Well....my 3rd party was my wife, bless her heart.  She rolled down the window and shouted to all the witnesses

who refused to give us their eye witness account regarding this errand PNP cop who hit us in a traffic incident:

 

Putang -- -- --, walang bayag!  (profanity plus you all have no balls).  I was pleasantly surprised that she had my

back.  I was a good boy the whole evening.  Judy was on fire......he, he.

[Methersgate]

I see no merit in discussing whether "face" is good or bad. It is a fact of life that we have to deal with, like the climate.

In East Asia, and for that matter in South Asia, so for well over half the human race, "shame" is what matters, not "truth". "Face" is the visible aspect of "shame" as the important cultural value.

 

I have just been reading an account by a very successful banker, an Englishwoman of Indian descent, who has had, and is having, a brilliant career including becoming President of the Oxford Union, of the sexual abuse she suffered from an Indian man as a child, and how, when she finally returned to the Northern town that she grew up in and gave evidence against him which resulted in his prosecution, her own mother begged her not to do so, and eventually refused to speak to her, because of the "shame" that she was "bringing on her family" by getting a pervert, who had abused other girls, locked up.   

 

This is a good example of "face" at work and it reveals why people will tell a silly lie, or acquiesce in a silly lie, rather than suffer "loss of face". 
 

Macbubba makes a good point about the young people who drift into Manila and who fail, as they almost all do, but who cannot go home, because of the loss of face.

And Tukuram makes a good point about the use of intermediaries. The method is never to accuse or blame someone to their face and never to force your intermediary to agree with you that "x" happened, or was wrong. If you do that, they cannot act as your intermediary.
 

Example: "100 pesos is missing from the petty cash. I know you were not in the room, but I think that Bong was. Maybe he needed some cigarettes. I am going out now. It would be a good thing if the 100 pesos was back in the box when I count it again..." 
 

We won't change "face" - we have to learn to use it.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Methersgate