Why it's so hard to do business in Asia...

I had a crazy philosophy instructor in college who leveraged the thesis of incommensurability to justify a radically conservative, post-structural, Roman Catholicism - about the time he wrote this article - Lance Simmons (1994). Three Kinds of Incommensurability Thesis. American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (2):119 - 131.  In not so many words, his argument was, there's no way to rationally or otherwise adjudicate between claims, so look for historical consistency, and become Roman Catholic, preferable an opus dei members.  You have to make a choice, so choose us.  There's no rational-basis for selecting a religious, cultural or ethical correct position - cultures are incommensurable like the hypotenuse of a right-triangle to it's legs.


While that was interesting for about a semester or two, and I still find many thoughtful people saying that, "you have to choose, so pick one," some mutation of the thesis of incommensurability comes up everyday, doing business in Asia, Thailand in my particular case.  Specifically, in Thailand, in most circumstances, it is ethically wrong to publicly humiliate someone.  That wrongless trumps the wrongness of say, lying or, more commonly, giving unclear or misleading information.  In almost any meeting of people, the primary appropriate thing to do, is to save-face, or keep-up appearances.  It makes it nearly impossible to have accountability or information sharing, because that entails fault (loss of face) or a suggestion of unknowing or ignorance (loss of face again).  Importantly, we are wrong when we aggressively push those concepts forward and jeopardize causing someone to lose face.  We're savages.

So, we get daily doses of real incommensurability:


American diplomat to Thai Gov't official:  "We're deeply concerned about IP theft and piracy in your country, illegal copies are traded openly everywhere."
 z
Thai context: [booboo - wrong: already inappropriate because it's a direct criticism]
Western context: [excellent - super-clear way to articulate your concerns so that you can begin to work toward a solution]


Thai Gov't official: "We're doing everything we can to improve the situation."
Thai context: [right, divert criticism, show concern, and save face]
Western context: [wrong, I've just been lied to - they could close the place tomorrow if they had the resolve]

The same oddness must play out in the human-rights discussions in China.  Lance had a point.