03.09.2006
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A Disease in Burmese Social Culture
_ by Aung Kyaw Soe
I think we Burmese are suffering from an infectious social disease. We are too submissive as subjects to superiors while in return we demand excessive respects from those who are poorer, less educated, and less powerful than us.
I know a Burmese lady who is in early 30s, earned a MSc/M.Phil in Engineering from an overseas university, she had been working as a engineer in a fortune 500 firm in Singapore but still dare not ask permission from her pensioner father in his 70s to marry her boyfriend because her elders sisters were still not married yet. She is a typical Burmese who will bow her head nearly touching ground while talking to her ex-professors or serving a cup of tea or walking across them.
Personally I observed a lot of elders don’t like people who openly, assertively and politely disagree with them.
Also, I once heard a graduate engineer working for governent telco (MPT) in Burma once bragged me how busy he was in weekend waiting tables for the minister and MD. And I remember vividly how an administration manager of an oil firm in Burma who once served to a senior level in a government ministry boasted how busy he was serving with his bosses in a golf tournament.
I know some people (who themselves are office holding ministers, celebrity actresses) who will not go through front doors when there are VIPs (more VIPs than them) sitting in living rooms in ceremonies, events. People pay unnecessary respects and recipients become used to this norm in social gatherings, ticket queues, reception counters, classrooms, family gatherings, trenches, offices, etc.
Those who pay excessive respects to their superiors in turn demand same respects from those who are lower than them in social, power, and prosperity ladder.
Yes we are keeping this vicious cycle as our culture. It is eating us alive.
If someone tries to break this taboo by just showing disagreement or merely airing of disagreement then it become us v. them, fusses and upsets. The receiving party will treat it as an act of adversary and may even regard him or her as an enemy.
There are mini-Than Shwe or Mini Ne Win in every villages, every towns, every families and every class rooms and every movement.
To be fair, this problem is not only specific to us, although this social pattern exists in western cultures and international workplaces, classrooms where respect is due too. After all, your boss is always your boss. But I think it demands less respects and submission from sub-ordinates compared with us.
We better cure this social disease or we will end up with another populist political clown like Mr. Chavez of Venzula or Mr. Estrada of Philipines even after we get democracy, though we are not even there yet.
Comments
Feraya said _
I agree. A lot of us are overly subservient towards people whom we think are "superior" to us and do not respect others whom we think are "inferior". It is an attitude that keeps us trapped in our old traditional mindset, which is of no use in other parts of world.
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