Are Our Children Ready To Face New Challenges?: Thai Opinion

[DeepInTheForest]

No answer? C'mon DeepInTheForest...I'm waiting for you...you can't win this argument. I've done this hundreds of times. I want to hear how your obscurantist argument is going to allow you to make ANY positive statements.

Thanks for your reply, Unkomoncents. I haven’t been ignoring you, and in fact, I’ve wanted to reply to your post. There are some severe time constraints at the moment—I’m taking classes at night after work. And the nature of our discussion means I can’t fire off a quick thoughtless reply; I have to do some mental work. I sat down this morning and wrote up some things, which I haven’t had time to distill. Hopefully, they are not overly rambling, and a reader can get through them without falling asleep.

I have several problems, outlined below, with the manner in which the cultural explanation is being used as the root (or the source of most, or all), of Thailand’s problems in the pages of this forum. I hope I am not sounding too pretentious or “obscurantist”. There are some points to make here that I think are worthwhile.

To again make myself clear, I do hold that cultural effects can be held responsible for many problems of Thailand, as in other countries. We need, however, to move beyond simply using culture as a causative agent that can be targeted as a problem’s cause. This narrative is, in my view, simplistic, and fails to ask more important questions about who creates the culture, why it is made this way, and who benefits (and equally, who is disenfranchised in the making of these cultural constructions. I do not buy into the notion of culture as a “thing-in-itself”, a given entity whose being is outside of human construction, if that last phrase makes any sense.

[DeepInTheForest]

1. I don’t think that questioning the role assigned to culture in the narrative provided in this forum’s pages leads to cultural relativism, and a resulting lack of accountability for various documented societal ills. I am rather surprised that you make this argument. Rather, I think the opposite is true. Try this on for size: when we assign culture an overarching importance, we absolve individuals from responsibility for the role they play in decision-making and administration. In fact, some of the more despicable rogues on the world stage often resort to cultural arguments to defend their actions. Yugoslavia’s Milosevic was one of them. (From the trial at The Hague: “…my conduct was the expression of the will of the people… He [the prosecutor] probably thinks that I am superhuman... and ascribed to me some magical god-like powers.”) In this account, the politician is guiltless because he was simply executing what everyone expected of him, what had been done for eons, what will continue to be done after he is gone. My own home region’s politicians attempt this dodge repeatedly, not that it does them any good. We find similar arguments used to defend actions of the ruling parties in Thailand. Some ex-prime ministers come to mind.
   
2. In making culture our sole scapegoat for the country’s ills, we overlook the role of economic factors, including perhaps the biggest influence on all of our lives—the global trading system, and its concomitant belief system. I refer here of course to the free-market ideology of neoliberalism. Of course, if we want to make a “culture-is-everything” argument we could refer to the economic system as a cultural system as well—it undoubtedly is—but in the pages of this forum it is rarely held to account.Thailand has had to grapple with changes that are occurring in a telescoped time frame in the years following WWII, and especially since the end of the Cold War, when transnational business has dominated the globe, threatening to render national governments and cultures irrelevant, or at best subservient actors whose main function is to prop up the international trading system. Is this an exaggeration? Many would say so, and I myself would have rejected this as overstated not long ago. Increasingly, though, I am finding that the hegemony of neoliberalism reaches down ever deeper into society, with unpleasant byproducts, including turning my own country of origin into a security state.
   

More to come.

Edited April 8, 2012 by DeepInTheForest

[DeepInTheForest]

( I want to make clear that I'm not criticizing all posters on TV, but I want to share what bothers me about a type of post that lumps many kinds of Thai people together and finds fault with Thai culture for virtually all ills of the society.)

3. We run into difficulties when we routinely apply the concept of “Thai culture” uniformly to all of the Thai people. This is not a very accurate characterization of a society which has differences, like any society has. At least this is how I perceive some (not all, by any means) of the arguments presented in this forum. (I realize I’m doing a lot of whaling on posters here, but I don’t mean all TV posters—I hope that’s obvious.) When we identify problematic characteristics of the culture, which Thais are we talking about? The ruling class or the people in the countryside? Irresponsible politicians? Fisherfolk? Factory workers? The workers in the cities? The bureaucracy who is partly responsible for decision-making? Do they all have the same belief system, and operate in the same way? I would argue that, despite their common language and place of origin, they do not. Actors in different parts of the society are motivated by different concerns. All societies are wondrously complex. Thai society is no different, and in fact displays a huge variety of cultures and cultural influences. We have older cultures overlaid with newer ones; Chinese Thai businessmen in a globalized economy operating on top of sakdina culture. Cultural constructs also operate at different scales: at the scale of family and intimates, at a neighborhood scale, at a regional scale, at the scale of the national culture. These scales can be radically different, as should be obvious for Thailand—Northern Thai culture is very different from Bangkok culture, but what about a Bangkok native who moves north? He operates in a mindset that is from Bangkok, in a region that has a very different take on things. And the different regions often have pretty different takes on things (the South, the North, Isaan, the Back). There are a lot of regional differences. Maybe it’s me, but I am not often getting these nuances in the general targeting of Thai culture that I see in these pages. We lose the granularity of the situation on the ground when we apply “one-size-fits-all” cultural arguments to the way societies operate. We lose the ability to differentiate among the actions of various groups of actors, to see how things actually work in the society. And we lose the capacity to analyze just what the root of the problem is, how it comes about, and how it can be addressed.

4. The cultural explanation, as sometimes developed in these pages, does not specify which parts of the culture are problematic. Heaven knows there are things that a forward-thinking person would love to change in the way things are done in Thailand. But what parts give us problems? Is it a perceived shirking of individual responsibility? Social hierarchy? The culture of the bribe? Is it a reluctance to criticize others, due to the concept of “face”? How does “face” intersect with other aspects of Thai culture, such as the ability to give respect to others? (These last two, "face" and "respect", obviously seem very close, one having possibly negative ramifications, the other positive.) Where do we draw the line between the two? What about positive Thai characteristics? One of the greatest Thai attributes is the ability to collectively cooperate, and recover from disasters that would stagger other societies. (I shudder to think what would happen in my native Western city were a flood to be visited upon it. I think, though I have no way of proving it, that things would get very, very ugly very quickly.) We would be remiss if we didn’t also acknowledge that Thai culture has some very positive features. The question of how to separate positive aspects from negative aspects of Thai culture is sometimes ignored by the culture critique in the pages of this blog. In fact, reading some posters, one wonders if the underlying assumption is that Thai culture has no positive contributions, and is fundamentally flawed—more about that later. We need to be clearer about what parts of the culture we want to keep going, and what parts we would love to toss overboard. And tossing the whole thing is not only unappealing from an aesthetic standpoint, it is also completely impractical.

More to come.

Edited April 8, 2012 by DeepInTheForest

[DeepInTheForest]

5. The cultural explanation—again, as sometimes, not always, voiced in these pages—does not explain why these failings are uniquely Thai. If they are, then one might reasonably assert that Thai culture is responsible for them. However, most of the problematic areas in Thailand also occur in other parts of the world, including the countries of origin of most posters here. Political corruption? Huge social inequalities? Educational miasma? Unmotivated youth? Name the country, and google its name together with any of these concepts and see what you uncover. One glaring example: Western Europe and the United States are at the cusp of economic catastrophe because of the scandalous behavior of privileged banking elites and others. Whole segments of society—in fact, entire societies—have been tossed under the bus and face an uncertain future. In my view, this is clearly one of the greatest ripoffs in the history of civilization. (That’s just one person’s opinion, of course.) Why do we not then characterize Western European civilization as a “cultural failure” the way that we characterize other cultures? More about this later, too.

6. The cultural explanation presents culture as a relatively static vessel, that is produced in the country of origin. Cultures interact all the time, and are in a constant state of flux. People adapt elements of culture that are useful to them, and move on. In fact, there is a whole school of thought that posits that people are active participants in their culture, “reading” it on a daily basis, providing input to it, adapting it, mutating it. In this conception, people are not merely a product of culture, but a contributor to it. They are allowed ‘agency’, in the fancy terminology of social scholars. Not only is culture not static, but it is not self-defined—it is, rather, defined through its interactions with other cultures. Culture does not exist in a vacuum, and while a culture responds to external stimulus, other cultures also act to define it from without. This has big implications for us as outsiders participating in Thai and other cultures that we interact with. It means that we are providing input to the definitions of the cultural process—not just our own culture, but input to other cultures as well.

Edited April 9, 2012 by DeepInTheForest

[BarryM]

Some years ago I mistakenly "helped" a friend's mother with a monthly stipend to make life more comfortable for them upcountry. The mother was totally illiterate so I suggested she enrolled in a college to learn to read and write. I'd supported the son through his degree, but he thought it was the stupidest suggestion ever - "why would she need to read and write?" My only reply was to say that she perhaps might learn to write a f%%ing thank you note one day. The cash stopped then. Learning in order to understand the world around them better seems totally alien here. Learning is the collection of pieces of paper to hang on the wall and gain face. End of.

I realised that I was wasting time and money thinking I was helping these people, so stopped the cash and five years ago switched the stipend to my own mum instead, who actually appreciates the gesture, despite being relatively comfortable in the UK. She uses the extra cash for occasional weekends away and night classes to brush up her knitting skills. She made me a very nice pullover.

The recipient of my largesse was a "struggling student" in Bangkok who I met in 98. I put him through uni, the British Council in Bangkok and several six month language programs in the UK. He managed to pick up HIV at 24 years old, so I paid for his treatment at a Private London hospital for a year before getting him enrolled in the UK GILEAD trial..

Armed with his degree, English language fluency, knowledge of the world (having visited the Pyramids at Giza, Himalaya, Acropolis, Taj Mahal, Rio, most of the EU), and relative good health, he's now 31 and was last heard of working at "Screw Boy" in Patpong lol!

[Unkomoncents]

5. The cultural explanation—again, as sometimes, not always, voiced in these pages—does not explain why these failings are uniquely Thai. If they are, then one might reasonably assert that Thai culture is responsible for them. However, most of the problematic areas in Thailand also occur in other parts of the world, including the countries of origin of most posters here. Political corruption? Huge social inequalities? Educational miasma? Unmotivated youth? Name the country, and google its name together with any of these concepts and see what you uncover. One glaring example: Western Europe and the United States are at the cusp of economic catastrophe because of the scandalous behavior of privileged banking elites and others. Whole segments of society—in fact, entire societies—have been tossed under the bus and face an uncertain future. In my view, this is clearly one of the greatest ripoffs in the history of civilization. (That’s just one person’s opinion, of course.) Why do we not then characterize Western European civilization as a “cultural failure” the way that we characterize other cultures? More about this later, too.

6. The cultural explanation presents culture as a relatively static vessel, that is produced in the country of origin. Cultures interact all the time, and are in a constant state of flux. People adapt elements of culture that are useful to them, and move on. In fact, there is a whole school of thought that posits that people are active participants in their culture, “reading” it on a daily basis, providing input to it, adapting it, mutating it. In this conception, people are not merely a product of culture, but a contributor to it. They are allowed ‘agency’, in the fancy terminology of social scholars. Not only is culture not static, but it is not self-defined—it is, rather, defined through its interactions with other cultures. Culture does not exist in a vacuum, and while a culture responds to external stimulus, other cultures also act to define it from without. This has big implications for us as outsiders participating in Thai and other cultures that we interact with. It means that we are providing input to the definitions of the cultural process—not just our own culture, but input to other cultures as well.

I didn't quote your entire response due to it's length. This as much as I've been able to muster, as I'm extremely busy at the moment: We can call it whatever we want. "Culture", "social disposition", the "current milieu" (because obviously, all cultures evolve over time to some extent or another) all work to some extent to describe the kernel of conceptual reality that the word "culture" generally seizes upon. I'm not interested in playing semantics, though. But I do agree with you about one thing: there are many, many problems in Thailand and it is not alone. The entire equatorial belt has similar problems, albeit with some exceptions (Brunei, Singapore, the UAE, etc.). Some have suggested that it is the result of the warm climate which, given non-desert conditions (and, in modern times, in deserts: see Las Vegas), creates an abundant food supply (Guns, Germs, and Steel goes into that quite a bit). I loved spending time in Costa Rica, where everyone abides by what the locals colloquially call "tico time", but my enjoyment came from being on vacation, as Costa Rica was well-suited to that. It reminds me so much of Thailand. It has so many similar problems: general lawlessness and a decadently laissez-faire attitude to just about everything.

Also, the US and Europe have extremely high-standards of living. There is a lot of whining coming out of America and Europe, but many European countries and the US remain extremely wealthy by comparative standards. I would say there's an extremely big difference between, say, Sudan and it's problems and those of most industrialized Western countries. In many African countries, Europe and the West are partially, if not completely, to blame for the blazing inequalities, and you're right about the Western banking system. It has grown alarmingly parasitic and corrupt in it's own esoteric ways. Nevertheless, I think trying to draw direct comparison between the Red Shirt crisis and the Occupy Wall Street episodes would be a mistake for many obvious reasons. For one thing, I know of no Occupy Wall Street protesters who were killed.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Unkomoncents