The broader Australian culture doesnāt, as a whole, have status-based respect. Some individual groups might, because theyāve brought it from other cultures theyāre involved in, but the general culture doesnāt. Thereās 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 useĀ āMiss/Ms/Mrā honourifics for teachers at school.)Ā
I donāt mean Australians are aĀ āstick it to the man, fight back against those in powerā kind of people ā weāre generally not. And I donāt mean we have aĀ āweāre going to do the status thing but pretend we donāt and pretend to all be equal in mixed companyā 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 isĀ āaboveā you differently in Australia is basically telling that person that you hate them; itās sayingĀ āIām forced to interact with you due to our current circumstances but I donāt see you as a person and wonāt grant you the basic respect of treating you like an equalā. (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 asĀ āfriendly, but very rudeā. They thought we were all arseholes because of the way we spoke to our PhD supervisors and soforth, and wouldnāt 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 weād only ever use the most casual form of anything unless specifically instructed otherwise by the teacher.
The reason Iāve been thinking of this lately is because Iāve recently become aware that a lot of countries have likeā¦ a special respect for their countryās leaders? I donāt just meanĀ āyeah, that guy makes the rulesā, but that having that office makes them better than everyone else, somehow. Which I expect from countries with royal families, because Tradition, but Iāve 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, itās just assumed that that guy gets the parachute? Like heās automatically the life worth saving over the others, and theyād just give up their chance in favour of him? And thatās so weird to me. An Australian prime minister would have a 1 in 6 chance at the parachute; however the people decided,Ā āthis guy happens to be the leader of the countryā wouldnāt be a factor.Ā
When Americans donāt like a President, they usually feel the need to work in how heāsĀ ānot my presidentā, either through sheer denial, or by finding some way heās 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, Iāve recently noticed that part of the motivation seems to be that theyāre invested in whether heās Really The President because being the President somehow makes someone Special rather than just a normal dick whoās been put in charge of the group project. (You see the same thing inĀ āTHIS IS TRUMPāS AMERICA!ā, 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 heās not busy but refused to help you out heād be kind of a dick; of course he should help you out. And if I walk into your restaurant and you act like Iām a movie star and youāre going to be super attentive to my every need because Iām The Customer, Iām gonna get creeped out. Weāre 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 theyāve got some invisible heirarchical flowchart in the back of their minds that I donāt.
