A culture of appeasing….

I have been spending much time in India ….at least 7-10 days per month for last 14 months from which i notice some aspects of relational tendency [observations from a non Indian eyes]….

It is a culture given to ‘appeasing’ perhaps in part due to their appeasing the multitudes of gods and how they worship their gods, largely out of fear.

I noticed that as a mother consoles a sleepy cranky child, she ignores the kid’s tantrums, and lack of display of respect for her as a parent[respect is a big thing in Confucianism].

In the work place, staff tends to appease their bosses instead of respect them. There is a big contrast between appeasing and respect. Respect is to be given to all persons older to us and to all authorities, sometimes out of fear but simply because they deserve the respect. In the olden times, even when an elder person was extremely unreasonable, the younger were still expected to respect. Over time, myself included, this unconditional respect gets more and more eroded.

Appeasing has a strange side to it. It is driven largely by fear but more so unconsciously by family and country culture. As someone not conditioned by the same forces, being not from the culture, I noticed that the act of appeasing demonstrates itself very similarly to the act of respect until….

An example best illustrates it.

When a person appeases one authority when suddenly another authority shows up, he / she has to appease both authorities out of fear and auto-pilot conditioning.  However, familiarity with the former and not knowing the latter cause a paradigm struggle in the person. Appeasing of the unknown authority consumes the person’s limited attention bandwidth and the earlier authority figure is unconsciously accorded 2nd place. All rational behaviours get subjugated – it does not matter if rightful behaviour means the employer under whom the staff is still getting payroll should be the stakeholder to be consulted, not the potential client who may or may not be a future stakeholder.

It took me much agony and analysing to figure this out. When one appeases, one will unknowingly be trying to accumulate a ‘returns’ bank [of expectations]. When that equation is sustained, all things continue as bliss. The moment the equation is rocked, the expectations are not met, the same sweet person can become the most hurtful and rude person.

So appeasing is not a healthy trait. To borrow a trainee’s sharing…we have to ‘wipe people’s bottom’ to be seen or known. I said to the trainee, we should never do that because it is disrespecting oneself. I strongly believe in working illustriously, sincerely and always working to make our seniors / bosses successful.