In Desperate Need Of Role Models In National Politics: Thai Opinion

Well said. Unfortunately, the Nation's English-reading community does not benefit from these brave words.

No Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, or Aung San Suu Kyi is apparent in Thailand. These remarkable people were, and are, products of their environments and of their people, then largely voiceless.

They fired the imaginations and hopes of nations, without whom millions would remain mired in feudal despair living in desperation ... lives without hope ... consider the average Thais' life and imagine their week-to-week existence.

The enlightened politics that precipitated from their leaderships were reflective of the people they represented, then a silent majority (with no vote) whose collective cultural values were superior to those of their political leaderships. I contend that these collective cultural values are overwhelmingly a concequence of a population's spiritual values.

Spiritual values drive cultural values >> cultural values drive politics ... where the population has a vote, the politics accurately reflects the character of the people.

Representative democracy works. It really does. The values of the average Thai are represented in the political leadership they choose to lead them.

Thailand's crisis is one of cultural values.

Values are indoctrinated in people while they are young. At what contact points are most of Thai children's values influenced?

1. Teachers (the Thai Ministry of Education! ... nothing more need be said of this incidious, mind-numbing failure of an educational system);
   
2. Theravada Buddhist monks (look closely here, as compared to that practiced in other Buddhist nations and their cultural values ... e.g. Korea);
   
3. Popular culture (TV, music, video games, etc. ... nothing remotely similar to value-oriented programs as "Little House on the Prairie", or "Sesame Street" is offered by Thai media);
   
4. Print media (Thais do not read, as a matter of habit, relying more upon pre-packaged opinions by the broadcast media and local chit-chat as their primary source of information on current events, and social and political commentary); and,
   
5. Their mothers and fathers (and where did they get their values? ... return to #1 above).
   

Thailand professes itself as a spiritual nation, yet is amongst the world's most corrupt.

If you accept my spiritual>cultural>political nexus thesis above, you will probably accept that this has evolved over generations, and is reinforced by Thailand's many institutions (social, religious, legal, economic, educational, judicial, political) created and instituted by a select group of elites. Bettering a nation's cultural values seems as a monumental task.

If changes are possible, improvements would take generations, assuming there is an organized effort to make change. Yet, many high barriers to change in Thailand exist, the greatest of which is a cultural value that insists that Thais resist change, accept their lot in life, and have no influence over this life.

If a foreign nation somehow implanted many of these values into another nation, effectively passifying an entire population and rendering them a hapless threat, they would consider it nothing less that an act of war. But, sadly ... generations of elitist Thai social, political and spiritual leadership have done this to their own people.

I wonder if an awakened Thai population would view this manipulation by generations of their own privileged leadership any differently than if they were manipulated by a foreign enemy of the state. The possible consequences are frightening.

A world of Thai-sympathizing farang ask, "How can we help?" ... many wish we could, but we cannot ... this fight for Thailand's soul can only be won by Thais.

excellent! a cultural 'shift' is needed but, alas, it is far, far away