Whose standard, indeed, should prevail? There is arguably a bias in globalized gatherings toward the Western-style handshake. But it matters, even in such settings, whether you are in Okinawa or Oklahoma City, whether the bowers outnumber the shakers or vice versa, whether the firm is privately owned in one country or publicly listed and owned by the world. Perhaps it is best to do whatever the locals do, or to assume the least touchy greeting as the standard: if there are both huggers and shakers, just shake; if there are both shakers and bowers, just bow.

The Internet offers endless counsel on how to greet in different countries. But the advice is mostly on what to do here, or there. It all too rarely speaks to the dilemma that so many actually face: what to do when it is unclear what the relevant “here” is.

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One cost of confusion is unexpected intimacy. Some Europeans, entering into a double kiss, go for the left cheek first; but others go right, resulting in accidental lip contact.

The confusion also fosters inequity. At parties with diverse attendees, a newcomer may greet a cluster of people with as many greetings as there are members of the cluster: an air kiss for one, a hug for another, a handshake for a third and a mere smile for a fourth, a stranger.

Perhaps, as in other fields — currency trade, the choice of language for treaties, the measurement of weight and distance — a common standard could be found: an International System of Greetings. What would we choose? The intimacy of the Arab and European kisses? A halfway solution in the American handshake-cum-hug? The touch-free Japanese bow or Indian pressed palms and utterance of “namaste”?

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Last year, during the swine flu scare, a French town called Guilvinec banned the “bise,” the kiss of greeting, for teachers and students, asking them to exchange Valentine-like cards instead; several French schools and businesses followed the town’s example. Meanwhile, the American painter Kimberly Brooks suggested that Americans ditch their own ritual: “The handshake is an obvious vestigial gesture left over from a time when hands needed to be shown free of weapons,” she wrote in The Huffington Post. “It’s time to lose the handshake once and for all and embrace Namasté as the new greeting.”

Rather than destroy the beauteous diversity of greetings, we could turn to algorithms. Imagine the smartphone app that would ask your identity, the identity of the other greeter, where you both are and how many times you have greeted each other. It would then propose a compromise — a namaste followed by a handshake, perhaps, or a bow punctuated by a slap on the back.

Another solution would be simply to untether greetings from their places of origin and let people choose from a global smorgasbord of them. Greeting protectionism would end, and the best greetings would seize greater global market share.

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A Japanese septuagenarian whose back aches but whose heart brims with love might then elect to kiss instead. An Indian man with whom I once rode perilously on a motorcycle would gain the liberty merely to bow his head while he drives around — as opposed to his current practice of lifting his hands repeatedly to greet acquaintances in the ancient (not-designed-for-motorcyclists) Indian way.

Or perhaps we leave things be. Perhaps being global requires not one standard, nor even knowing what to do each time, but acceptance of negotiation and compromise, of an awkward averaging-out, as the ethic of a tightening world.

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