I love watching Japanese people bow. Seems to me they have different bows for different circumstances. They are all beautiful.
We have seen various movies of long ago Europe, knights bowing to kings, etc. It strikes a deep chord.
But Americans suck at bowing. We actually do not know how to do it.
I had a circumstance where a bow was called for, I tried, it felt so very strange. This motion is not in my muscles. I felt a fool. I am sure I looked a garbled fool. Afterwards I reflected and realized that Americans do not know how to bow. This is a simple expression of what makes us so very wonderful. An experiment was started 250 years ago: the individual person is primary, all titles and ranks are secondary. How could any individual bow to another? Based upon rank? Based upon ceremony? Screw that.
After recovering from my silly embarrassment, I felt a wave a gratitude. I was born into a culture which has inculcated a very powerful cosmology, a powerful political statement, and something that I realized is actually deeply connected to the teachings of Christianity - the individual is at a higher level than the state, than the group.
The individual has purpose and possibilities that are not available to the collective. God created the individual. Cities and towns and politics came after. I do not know how to bow to any manifestation of the collective. So be it, and thank God.
From a reader: For me, bowing is the representation of a feeling. It doesn't need to be a real exteriorization of a feeling -- probably that's what someone else would like it to be, but then it is a step on the individual's freedom, what I don't want -- It seems to be someone's humilliation towards other who apparently represent something superior and to which we shall be bound. This is definitely not needed.
From a reader: A bow can be an act of subservience of contextualised within a power hierarchy (peasant bows before the king). Or it can be seen almost as an embrace, if both sides are bowing without reference to hierarchy.
The namaste gesture in India is similar. It can be a salutation of what is divine within you being acknowledged by what is divine within me. But it can also be directed towards the divine as an act of humble submission. Or towards a socially powerful entity as an acknowledgement of one's inferiority. Context is important.