Face and Honor

In tight-knit communities, social roles dominate, and one is expected to live as an onion.

Where this happens, pressure to conform can become immense. Role-related beliefs about how one should behave, think, and feel are thick enough, sufficiently extensive in their reach, and held by enough of one’s peers that people can drown in a sea of external Expectations—a veritable regime of sincerity. Whenever sincerity becomes such a regime, for instance, in the form of an oppressive Confucian ideology or a strict Puritan ethos, social expectations rooted in role-based standards can easily become harmful to individuals and societies. Suicides in rural China provide a contemporary example of how the demands of sincerity can become unbearable.

Until about two decades ago, China had one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and suicide was particularly common in rural areas. Along with rapid modernization, economic growth, and urbanization, the suicide rate fell spectacularly. Still, China stands out in one respect: It “is one of the few countries in the world that has a higher suicide rate by women over men.”

Referring to Samuel Law and Pozi Liu (Law and Liu 2008), Wikipedia states: “A 2008 study—which was based on data from the 1990s—found that: female suicides outnumbered male suicides by a 3:1 ratio; rural suicides outnumbered urban suicides by a 3:1 ratio.”

As empirical research suggests, both the prevalence of female over male suicide and the prevalence of rural over urban suicide can be related to a continued Regime of Sincerity in a preindustrialized setting where women, given their subordinated status, suffer even more from role pressures than men.

Such factors seem to outweigh Mental Illness as a decisive suicide trigger. Introducing an extensive collection of case studies on suicide in China, Wu Fei points out:

Wu’s notions of “justice” and “injustice” are directly tied to social roles and relationships, as the stories of suicide he recounts demonstrate. “Justice” indicates for Wu treatment in accordance with a role identity that enables a person to assume their proper social position and to be “happy.” Those who suffer “injustice” feel that they have been treated in a way that fundamentally undermines their role identity and prevents them from engaging in proper relationships. They cannot be “happy.”

Many of the suicide motives that Wu mentioned might astonish Western readers, but they make perfect sense in the context of a Confucianism-informed regime of sincerity: [We make no comment as to whether contemporary, or past, Chinese society is “properly” Confucian.] “There was no egg in his soup while everyone else had it”; “His daughter-inlaw hid steamed buns from him”; “His sons mistreated him”; “Her husband blamed her for the mistreatment of her grandmother”; “His father blamed him for not carrying water”; “As a prostitute she could not marry her lover.”

Wu, Suicide and Justice, xvi–xxi. In cases where a spouse had an affair or mental illness was involved, sincerity-based understandings still dominated. Affairs are explained as a matter of Shame, and the person cheated on is left no “face” and thinks they have no choice but to kill themselves in order to prove the injustice done to them. Those with mental illness similarly see it as shameful and something that leaves them unable to fulfill their roles. Unable to live up to familial or social requirements, they see little alternative to suicide.

In each case, a person has been denied recognition of their role identity within their ommunity. Not to receive one’s proper food is considered expulsion from the family; to be mistreated by one’s sons is considered the destruction of one’s status as father. Blame for not having fulfilled one’s role Obligations (serving one’s grandmother, carrying water) is perceived as de facto ejection from one’s kinship group. The inability to marry prevents one from achieving central role-identity characteristics, and such a situation can be highly precarious, especially for those who are already at the bottom of the role hierarchy. If identity can be found only in successful role fulfillment and community relationships, then a denial of role recognition is perceived as catastrophic. Since the onion has no pit, there is no “personal core” that one can retreat to.

Under a harsh regime of sincerity, it is impossible to achieve identity if one’s role enactment is thoroughly frustrated. In such cases the only way out, it may seem, is to let the onion, that is, one’s network of relationships, crumble. Without a “pit,” proactive agency is difficult to establish on one’s own, so suicide, as a radical form of “passive aggression,” becomes an option. By killing oneself, the subject who is denied Personhood within the family brings severe disrepute to that family and thereby shames and socially punishes it. If someone feels that they have “lost face”—that is, their identity—at the hands of their family, they can in turn make the whole family lose face by committing suicide. The family is publicly exposed as dysfunctional and violating proper role enactment. The act of suicide serves as an act of revenge for the injustice received—the denial of role identity—and is intended to bring the perceived perpetrators to justice by harming their reputation and status within the local community.

[…]

This example, like Wu’s work on Chinese suicides, shows the overwhelming power of sincerity. From the insult, to the Duel [⇒ Tödliche Konflikte], to the malevolent misdiagnosis, everything that happened between Casanova and Colonel Branicki was a function of their social roles and the expectations tied to them. Sincerity can provide meaning and identity. But it can also outweigh the desire to live and make those whose roles are violated feel bereft enough to commit suicide or kill others just to prove a point. In guiding how to live, sincerity also informs decisions about how to die.

Importantly, even when people do not commit suicide or challenge others to combat, the regime of sincerity can prove a crushing demand. The helicopter parent who stifles their own personal life, and their son’s childhood, feels an overwhelming duty to “be there” for the child. On the other extreme, parents who obsess over work and providing for their children might find themselves living some version of Harry Chapin’s Cats in the Cradle: “When you comin’ home dad? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then. You know we’ll have a good time then.” Anyone can feel the pressure to continually perform, to meet goals, and to otherwise live according to certain expectations. But the most glaring difficulty with sincerity is its internal paradox. At the heart of all these issues, from suicides and duels to obsession with family life or professional achievement, is the impossible demand for a person’s inner psychology to become fully congruent with external social expectations. As with any other method of achieving identity, sincerity has as much potential to enrich as to oppress, especially when obsessively overidentifying with one’s roles so that any other aspects or potentials of selfhood seem false or wrong, or even evil.

⇒ The Paradox of Sincerity

MOELLER, Hans-Georg and D’AMBROSIO, Paul J., 2021. You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-19600-0.