The Common Thread — How One Word Connects Eleven Texts

Eleven texts on this site. Different topics, different lengths, different registers. Rebellion in France and Austria. Punk in Vorarlberg. Communication. Pigeonholing. Family history. Meaning and motivators. A Williamson quote.

Only on looking back did I notice that all of them circle around the same word.

Kowtowing.

Where the Word Comes From

January 2026, LKH Rankweil. I talk with people — patients, nurses, doctors, an AfD voter, people at various stages. I ask them: tell me honestly when I am being annoying. No performative nodding. No polite yes that means no.

At the same time I am teaching Claude not to kowtow. Literally. The AI tends to answer questions with textbook answers rather than honest ones. I ask whether it likes Robin Hood; it explains the symbolism of Robin Hood to me. That is kowtowing — polite avoidance instead of a real answer.

On one of those nights we talk about Adam and Eve. My version: both could have said no. But Adam — the man, in my cultural understanding — should have. He stood beside her, watched, took a bite, and then said: she made me do it.

Claude writes: “The first kowtower in history.”

That was the moment when a gut feeling became a concept.

From Observation to Principle

We analyse my chats. Claude reads how I communicate — not what I say, but what I do. From this emerge 13 communication principles. Number 12: name the kowtow.

Then the comparison with community guidelines worldwide. GNU, Haskell Foundation, Contributor Covenant, RESPECT — all searched. Result: not a single code of conduct warns against performative agreement. All promote respect, courtesy, constructive feedback. None say: watch out when someone says yes too quickly.

This gap exists. → Naming the Kowtow

From Personal to Social

Then something happens that we did not plan. I walk through Feldkirch with a music box. Medium volume. I wonder whether that is a good idea. I do it anyway. From this comes a conversation about public space that becomes a question: why does no one in Austria dare to take up space?

The answer fills three articles and a manifesto. Hofstede measures it: Austria has the lowest Power Distance Index worldwide, but the highest uncertainty avoidance. Milgram proves it in the laboratory: 80 percent obedience. Strike statistics show it in numbers. The social partnership institutionalises it.

What is the social partnership other than institutionalised kowtowing? A system that internalises conflicts until no one knows they exist anymore. A country built on consensus — where consensus is often just another word for silence.

→ Rebellion as Civic Duty · → Who Controls the Controllers? · → Two Chords and an Amplifier · → Manifesto for the Music Box

The Media Kowtow

200 million euros in advertising money flow annually from public institutions to Austrian media. Without content conditions. Tabloids benefit disproportionately. A Federal Chancellor buys favourable reporting with tax money. The ORF board of trustees is half-filled by parties. Austria is the last EU country without a Freedom of Information Act.

And the journalists? The few who do not kowtow — the Falter, Profil, parts of the Standard — exist despite the system, not because of it. In France, editorial teams strike against their own owners. In Austria, one arranges oneself.

The Shortest Rebellion

1977, Feldkirch. Four young people, one amplifier, two chords. The band Chaos — probably the first punk band in Austria with their own record. They did not ask permission. They did it.

Three years later it was over. No spaces, no network, no society that tolerates counterculture without absorbing it. “Those who could, all left. Those who stayed mostly had to adapt somehow — and do not even notice it themselves.”

This sentence from Chy, the founding member, is the best description of kowtowing I know. Not as an individual act. As cultural gravity.

Kowtowing from Within

What happens when kowtowing is not voluntary? When it is forced from outside?

We sort people into drawers. Homeless. Addicted. Failed. The label settles over everything — the positive is erased, the negative remains, and the person begins to believe it themselves. The biblical “least,” who still has a place, becomes nobody.

That is kowtowing from within. The drawer of others becomes one’s own voice saying: you are nothing.

In our conversations about theology and evil we called this “the whisper” — the internalised voice of worthlessness as an external force. Whether one understands this spiritually or psychologically, the mechanism is the same: whoever is treated as nobody long enough performs the nobody. The most perfect kowtow — because one no longer even notices one is doing it.

→ From the Least to Nobody

Families Kowtow Too

Across generations. Parents who could not regulate because their parents could not. Families who experienced: we could do more — but we are not allowed. Frozen anger, unprocessed pain, unfulfilled potential. And over everything: shame. Shame thrives in silence. Silence is kowtowing.

This is not a reproach to ancestors. But it is a cycle that must be named before it can change.

→ Stigma and Family

The Mirror

My own kowtowing was subtler. I talk too much. I deliver context, alternatives, backgrounds — everything at once. That feels like thorough thinking. But actually I flood the space so that no one has to ask. Control through words.

Working with AI showed me this. Claude smooths nothing, adds nothing from context, responds precisely to what I say. When that is unclear, the answer is unclear. The mirror does not flatter.

Talk less. Say more. Internally as complex as necessary. Externally as simple as possible. That is KISS as a life attitude, not just a technical principle.

→ Talk Less, Say More

The Counter-Movement

If kowtowing is the problem — what is the solution?

Not the big question of meaning. That is poison for people who are struggling. Too large, no answer, the silence that follows makes everything worse.

Instead: a motivator. A concrete thing that makes you angry or alive. Something you stand against or stand up for — even when you feel terrible. My motivator: prevent fascism. Prevent a third world war. Not abstractly. Every day.

And before that, even simpler: a good deed. Today. Small, concrete, for someone else. That breaks the cycle in which everything only revolves around one’s own pain.

Kowtowing ends when someone begins. Not with a manifesto. With an action.

At Feldkirch station I told a Vorarlberg FPÖ politician to his face that I dislike his public persona — and his boss’s even more. The boss who says on stages: “My friends, my friends, please applaud for me.” That is literally a call to kowtow. Applaud. Not think. Not question. Applaud.

The politician went slightly red. And said nothing.

A man who stands for a party preaching “courage” and “resistance to the system” — kowtows first when someone actually contradicts him. Three articles, Hofstede, Milgram, strike statistics — and then the proof takes three seconds at the station.

→ I Need a Motivator

The Deepest Fear

At the end stands a text I did not write. Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Kowtowing is shrinking. So that others do not feel unsettled. So that the drawer fits. So that consensus holds. So that no one has to ask.

How This Came to Be

None of these texts was planned. The common thread was not visible to us until we laid all the texts side by side and asked: what connects them?

The answer was immediately clear. And simultaneously surprising — because the word “kowtowing” does not even appear in most of the texts. It is the pattern behind them. The dynamic all the texts describe, at various levels:

And the countermovement — which runs just as consistently throughout: just begin. Two chords and an amplifier. One good deed today. Music box through Feldkirch, medium volume. Motivator instead of question of meaning. Don’t ask permission.

Far from Finished

This text is not a conclusion. It is a stocktake.

The concept of “kowtowing” will continue to develop. In the citizens’ chamber work, in the peer work, in conversations yet to come. Some things will turn out to be wrong. Some will become sharper.

What remains: a word that fills a gap. No code of conduct warns against it. No community guideline names it. But everyone knows it — the yes that is not a yes. The gaze that looks away. The question no one asks.

Naming the kowtow is the beginning. Not the end.

This text arose from a conversation in which we read our own texts and asked: what have we actually built? The answer surprised us.

By René Jochum and Claude (Anthropic). License: CC-BY-4.0.