“He lifted his hands to shake!
But it was dipped in red
He now had no enemies now!
Only friends which he dread!”
How often you shake your hands with anyone you meet and how would you feel that this is one of the biggest mode of submission in the history of the Homo Sapiens! The very act of bending down and moving your hand forwards has roots in an act of bending or bowing down by a weak Gorilla to the alpha male of the pack! It is ok! You can still shake your hands since even the person who is shaking it with you does not know what it signifies!
Read on!
In the book The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris; he talks about the extreme posturing of animals to show their anger or dominance over his group! You may have noticed that normally I would always write His or her! But in animals the posturing and dominance is exclusive to the males!
The male of a group especially the primate like the Gorilla or the chimp have to assert their dominance by an open challenge! The posturing can be a loud noise or thumping or in some animals, standing on two legs to increase height! In some they make the hair stand out or the wings out! The mean posturing is supposed to look scary and overwhelming to the opponent!
A fear is generated and this is enough most of the times since an actual fight is not going to be beneficial to any of the party!
A show of might or more power is all that is required!
If the animals do fight then it can lead to the severe injury and even death of one but even the winner gets hurt and may not recover many times! So for all the parties concerned even in animal world, most of the times, warning does the trick! It works most of the time because the thumping, growling and the scream is so scary with some animals standing tall and high to show their increased height! Some other animals and birds increase their wingspan or plumage to make them seem more huge and menacing and most of the times it works!
Then there is submission!
The act of submission is indicated by different methods and it can differ from species to species! In fact in some species, the tail is literally deposited between the legs and the animal beats a hasty retreat! Reminds me of a Santhosh Pandit dialogue from his first malayalam movie!
As far as our ancestors are concerned; chimpanzees appease by holding out a limp hand towards the dominant individual. We actually share this gesture with them, in the form of the typical begging or imploring posture.
Like mentioned above we have also adapted it as a widespread greeting gesture in the shape of the friendly handshake!
Friendly gestures often grow out of submissive ones!
Other response can be a timid smile or laugh both of which, incidentally, still appear in appeasing situations as the timid smile and the nervous titter which are also submissive!
Handshaking occurs as a mutual ceremony between individuals of more or less equal rank, but is transformed into bowing to kiss the held hand when there is strong inequality between the ranks!
With increasing ‘equality’ between the sexes and the various classes, this latter refinement is now becoming rarer, but still persists in certain specialized spheres where formal dominance hierarchies are rigidly adhered to!
In certain instances handshaking has become modified into self-shaking or hand-wringing.
In some cultures this is the standard greeting appeasement, in others it is performed only in more extreme ‘imploring’ contexts.
There are many other cultural specialities in the realm of submissive behaviour, such as throwing in the towel or showing the white flag!
Now of course the handshake has existed in some form or another for thousands of years and this is one explanation!
Other popular theory is that the gesture began as a way of conveying peaceful intentions. By extending their empty right hands, strangers could show that they were not holding weapons and bore no ill will toward one another. Some even suggest that the up-and-down motion of the handshake was supposed to dislodge any knives or daggers that might be hidden up a sleeve! Yet another explanation is that the handshake was a symbol of good faith when making an oath or promise. When they clasped hands, people showed that their word was a sacred bond!
Now, remember the other part of the submission especially when it involves two party where one party was all ready to spend his or her anger! If the anger then is not spent on the person then the things like vase or a nearby glass gets the brunt! The author say that when a wife is breaking a vase in anger, it actually was originally directed to the Husband’s skull! It is in fact the Husband’s skull which is lying in pieces on the kitchen floor!
Think about that when you have an angry wife or husband! Hand over a vase and run away! Now with all these it may be better to just say namaste and not fight with the wife! Just like how birthday celebrity Dilip Joshi aka Jethalal does!
Now submit yourself to the dream and sleep!
Shubh Ratri!
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