The broader Australian culture doesnât, as a whole, have status-based respect. Some individual groups might, because theyâve brought it from other cultures theyâre involved in, but the general culture doesnât. Thereâs no sense that your boss or scout leader or the guy in charge of your country deserves more respect than you, or that you should behave differently to them than you would to any random person you know similarly well. (The very rare exceptions include ritualised settings, such as courtrooms, and for some reason the fact that children use âMiss/Ms/Mrâ honourifics for teachers at school.)Â
I donât mean Australians are a âstick it to the man, fight back against those in powerâ kind of people â weâre generally not. And I donât mean we have a âweâre going to do the status thing but pretend we donât and pretend to all be equal in mixed companyâ thing that middle-class Americans do. I mean the status-respect system does not exist, and if you try to use it, it weirds people the fuck out at best, and insults them at worst. Treating someone most countries would say is âaboveâ you differently in Australia is basically telling that person that you hate them; itâs saying âIâm forced to interact with you due to our current circumstances but I donât see you as a person and wonât grant you the basic respect of treating you like an equalâ. (When I was in America, I was constantly suppressing the instinct that random service people were sassing me because they overuse honourifics and were so keen to help me.)
This makes interacting with foreigners really baffling in a lot of circumstances. In university, my international friends would often describe Australians as âfriendly, but very rudeâ. They thought we were all arseholes because of the way we spoke to our PhD supervisors and soforth, and wouldnât believe us when we explained that our behaviour was respectful and that being deferential would be weird and awkward and insulting to them. Learning Japanese had a similar problem; everyone in the class could get the concept of different levels of formality and deference in language, ans was happy to memorise the usage of various words for Japanese people, but using them on each other was super weird, and weâd only ever use the most casual form of anything unless specifically instructed otherwise by the teacher.
The reason Iâve been thinking of this lately is because Iâve recently become aware that a lot of countries have like⌠a special respect for their countryâs leaders? I donât just mean âyeah, that guy makes the rulesâ, but that having that office makes them better than everyone else, somehow. Which I expect from countries with royal families, because Tradition, but Iâve recently found that Americans feel this way about their President, too. (Except the current one, who seems to be enough of a dick to break the system.) Like, if six Americans were in an aeroplane that was going down and there was only one parachute and one of the Americans was A Generic Non-Trump President, itâs just assumed that that guy gets the parachute? Like heâs automatically the life worth saving over the others, and theyâd just give up their chance in favour of him? And thatâs so weird to me. An Australian prime minister would have a 1 in 6 chance at the parachute; however the people decided, âthis guy happens to be the leader of the countryâ wouldnât be a factor.Â
When Americans donât like a President, they usually feel the need to work in how heâs ânot my presidentâ, either through sheer denial, or by finding some way heâs theoretically illegitimate (different ways votes are counted, wild conspiracy theories about birth country, etc.), and while making sure those rules are obeyed IS extremely important, Iâve recently noticed that part of the motivation seems to be that theyâre invested in whether heâs Really The President because being the President somehow makes someone Special rather than just a normal dick whoâs been put in charge of the group project. (You see the same thing in âTHIS IS TRUMPâS AMERICA!â, like him becoming President gives him superpowers or something).
This is getting off-topic. Point is, in Australia you can run into the Prime Minister and ask him to help you fix your phone and if heâs not busy but refused to help you out heâd be kind of a dick; of course he should help you out. And if I walk into your restaurant and you act like Iâm a movie star and youâre going to be super attentive to my every need because Iâm The Customer, Iâm gonna get creeped out. Weâre suspicious and insulted by what most people in the world consider to be basic manners, and vice versa. And it makes interacting with foreigners super weird because I always feel like theyâve got some invisible heirarchical flowchart in the back of their minds that I donât.