"face" - Gaining It, Losing It, And Indeed Regaining It, And Its Effects..

[Methersgate]

Are we discussing the possibility of killing the hen that lays the ........... No loss of face I doubt would go this far....begging for forgiveness more likely. To make up normal loss of face I think the situation must be reversed, in other words have the suffering soul be able to do likewise to the inflict-er. Most foreigners this does not matter and if it solves the situation great. From my experience the more....... how would I say, perhaps uneducated or provincial Filipino is far more likely to loose face quicker than an educated city dweller. Further with more severe consequences.

Good points. I agree that the provincial will be far more affected than the urban sophisticate.

Extremely good point on the "cure". We have to remember that the suffering is real. Most of us have not really felt shame since childhood, and we forget what a horrible feeling it is.

[Larry45]

 

From my experience the more....... how would I say, perhaps uneducated or provincial Filipino is far more likely to loose face quicker than an educated city dweller. Further with more severe consequences.

 

 Spot on.  I can walk around all day in Cebu and nobody gives a crap or even notices, but walking a single block here in Ormoc rewards me with catcalls and usually at least one "a**h*le!" from a passing tricycle.  CIty Filipinos tend to have much more confidence, while the provincial guys are super-insecure and a foreigner's mere presence results in them "losing face".  That's my experience.  Another passive-aggressive example of "losing face" is when there is videoke....they love to change the words around to trash any foreigners that might be present.  Unless you speak bisaya, you won't notice, but that's why they are all laughing.  You don't really have to do much to cause a provincial FIlipino to lose face.  Just being here is enough. ):

[Guy F.]

Hmmm. Never had such an incident in Bohol, but have had several in metropolitan Cebu. Since Bohol has so many tourists the locals are accustomed to seeing foreigners. That's the only explanation I can think of.

Edit: Maybe my turn has not come yet.

Edited February 1, 2015 by Guy F.

[Methersgate]

I am not sure that I am culturally alert enough to tell if I am being subtly "disrespected" in a social setting such as videoke. This may be a good thing, because for sure a reliable way to lose face is to show anger or discomfort in a social setting.

I grew up in the Arab world and lived as an adult in China. My experience has been that the Arabs will normally lose face by your mere presence and will usually disrespect you; the Chinese are quite different - they feel superior to you, so their face is not at risk, and if they choose to disrespect you they will do so "in your face", as an open assertion of their racial and cultural superiority, rather than indirectly, by changing the words of a song, and so on.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited February 1, 2015 by Methersgate

[Thomas]

It follows that if lost face cannot be recovered then, if one has once been bad, one may as well carry on being bad.

Well. I wrote:

 

 

Regain face

Well.  I suppouse possible for SMALL errors,

but for BIG errors  I find it can recover SOME, BUT NEVER recover fully...

So if after am "unforgivable" error, then DO many GOOD things , then can a BIG part be recovered, but never fully  (among them, who KNOW of the very bad. So after a bif error, it's still possible to get FULLY GOOD face/reputation among them who DON'T know.)

The other way round the problem is the flat denial, even when the facts are not in doubt. The person who has lost face will try their very best to persuade themselves that they never took the money, never slept with the sideline, etc. If confronted with a flat denial of something which to us is obvious, our first reaction is to "point out" the obvious truth. This may be a mistake. There may be a less direct way of dealing with it, which will avoid the catastrophic loss of face. but which still gets our message across.

Yes. That's "funny".

Well. A bit less direct way is to NOT tell the error IN PUBLIC, as many of us foreigners want to teach OTHERS too.

I suppouse I will get BIG problems to shut up   :mocking:  IF an employed missbehave.   I HOPE it will be enough solved by "sorting" away the not good ones by test period PLUS a SHORT contract for them who pass the passed the test.  I plan to tell them in START, that the goal is good workers can stay "for ever"  (but keep them on SHORT contracts, so they can't starting behabing bad after got a long   :mocking:

Which is contrary to the Christian doctrine of redemption and forgiveness.

It's a big difference between the protestantic type

and the catholic where they can BUY forgivness very EASY  :(

 

Forgivness is NICE, when the bad one SHOW MUCH changed behaviour,

but I will allways stay SUSPICIOUS   :)  against persons who have done very bad things...

[Thomas]

 

Likewise the wife or girlfriend of a foreigner who has a "sideline" local boyfriend (whom she is probably supporting with the foreigner's money) will, if the foreigner finds out, feel compelled to leave the foreigner and stick with the penniless "sideline" - here again murder provides a convenient alternative solution to the unbearable humiliation of having to see the man that she has "wronged".

 

Are we discussing the possibility of killing the hen that lays the ...........

 

No loss of face I doubt would go this far....begging for forgiveness more likely.

 

To make up normal loss of face I think the situation must be reversed, in other words have the suffering soul be able to do likewise to the inflict-er. Most foreigners this does not matter and if it solves the situation great.

 

From my experience the more....... how would I say, perhaps uneducated or provincial Filipino is far more likely to loose face quicker than an educated city dweller. Further with more severe consequences.

 

 

 

 Spot on.  I can walk around all day in Cebu and nobody gives a crap or even notices, but walking a single block here in Ormoc rewards me with catcalls and usually at least one "a**h*le!" from a passing tricycle.  CIty Filipinos tend to have much more confidence, while the provincial guys are super-insecure and a foreigner's mere presence results in them "losing face".  That's my experience.  Another passive-aggressive example of "losing face" is when there is videoke....they love to change the words around to trash any foreigners that might be present.  Unless you speak bisaya, you won't notice, but that's why they are all laughing.  You don't really have to do much to cause a provincial FIlipino to lose face.  Just being here is enough. ):

Well. 

Yes, often thave the more EDUCATED (and active) MOVED to big cities (because hard to earn their living elsewhere.

But DON'T mix up EDUCATION with CLEVERNESS.  Most of the MOST clever Filipinos I know have LOW/no exams.   (E g one of the few, who can count percent, DON'T even have High schiool exam.) The POOR HAVE TO be very "street smart" to survive. How many of us foreigners would manage to make a BIG family survive at only 5000-7000p per month?    :)

 

Concerning rural guys:   It's siimiliar in smaller places in our HOME countries   :)    Many of them count women from there as THEIRS, when they NEVER have been together too   :mocking:    so not odd they dislike when a foreigner come and get one of the best  :)

(I plan to "solve" this by geting a wife from one place, but settle in OTHER than her home place  :dance:

[UnCheckedOther]

Is it really "saving" face when the aforementioned face is a borrowed face, ie: false bravado, pretensions, images? I find the Pinoy concept of face quite similar to the Turks because its loss is often accompanied by stubborn grudges and contradictory length of memory. There was a Filipino dude on a tourist visa that we met at Harry Potter World in FL. Within five minutes, homeboy was bragging that he graduated from UP-Los Banos (the "Harvard" of the Philippines) in the top 20% of his class and that he almost received a call back for tech company interview. My friend doesn't really know Pinoy culture, so he mentioned that I graduated third in my class at Harvard and that we are friends with the founder of the tech company. He framed it as, "Maybe we can help you land an interview." Unfortunately, the Pinoy tourist lost face. I suppose he was trying to make us see him as an equal, that he wasn't a poor, "basta basta" Pinoy--he can hold his own against a half-Pinay. The thing was, we didn't really care about his qualifications or who went where/who knows who. He just seemed cool, and we approached him because my Pinoy radar went up (overheard him saying "ang-kel" instead of ung-khul for uncle) and he wore a Tupac shirt. Anyway...months later he e-mailed me about Harvard losing a game to a "not Ivy League" football game and an article about controversies over my friend's tech company's privacy rules. He ended it with, "Uy, how the mighty fall ha." Sigh.

I've always believed that insecurity is at tje core of this face business. Culture or not, if you're confident and secure about your worth, you'll know that short of plastic surgery, your face is firmly attached to your head.

[Methersgate]

What a brilliant reply!

There is a special form of "sorry" used in Southeast Asia which like several British forms of "sorry" means "not sorry at all" but is less subtle - I refer to "Sorry-ha!" which pops out when you catch someone out and their face "might be" damaged - i.e. their face has in fact been catastrophically damaged..

The stubborn grudge that arises when someone loses face is something to watch for - as in your example, it can arise quite accidentally and the person causing the loss of face may be innocently unaware of having done so.

Edited February 5, 2015 by Methersgate

[Jack Peterson]

Is it really "saving" face when the aforementioned face is a borrowed face, ie: false bravado, pretensions, images?

 

 

:) Thank You for this, I said as much in an earlier post but you have put it in a way I could never have said. :thumbsup:  I showed this to my Wife and daughter and now they can understand a little better my Statement, Two faced.

 

JP :tiphat:

[brock]

 Spot on.  I can walk around all day in Cebu and nobody gives a crap or even notices, but walking a single block here in Ormoc rewards me with catcalls and usually at least one "a**h*le!" from a passing tricycle.  CIty Filipinos tend to have much more confidence, while the provincial guys are super-insecure and a foreigner's mere presence results in them "losing face".  That's my experience.  Another passive-aggressive example of "losing face" is when there is videoke....they love to change the words around to trash any foreigners that might be present.  Unless you speak bisaya, you won't notice, but that's why they are all laughing.  You don't really have to do much to cause a provincial FIlipino to lose face.  Just being here is enough. )

 

 

 

Why would you want to live in a place like this ?