Aging Thailand takes toll on indebted households

[HenryB]

Well Blame American "The American "dream" of greed has infected the whole world" Maybe have the UN force America to paid all the old poor in Thailand and the rest of the World

America can just print money

[GAZZPA]

I knew it would come to this. The young have changed the family traditions of Thailand. Their wanting all the trappings of western life,have placed them in the position where they will not take care of the old like generations before them. The old be neglected,uncared for,and sick.But the young people will drive a car,eat at KFC and wear the latest fashion.

This is what the Thai government want them to do,, spend and increase domestic consumption. The American "dream" of greed has infected the whole world.

I think its a shame that Asia has not really developed its own style. Slowly it is just becoming the US day by day,,, big shopping malls, KFC, Macdonalds (junk food in general), sneakers, $300 sunglasses, iPhones, 4 wheel drives, etc,etc. It seems these things are considered a statement for a country to say "I have arrived" and like most Asian cultures rather then develop something themselves, something unique or something better, they just copy.

You just have to look at China and Thailand,, increasing household debt, wannabe attitude and a "hi so" hierarchy based upon what you own. Not a sniff of Buddhism really in how people really live,, sound familiar?

Shame because there are many interesting and beautiful cultures in this part of world, soon to be long forgotten. Instead just copy the USA,,, bizarre.

It's called globalisation, its the New World order, great isn't it! Don't blame the Americans, Europe is just as guilty!

Quite right, apologies, it does read like a bash at the Americans. The EU is just as guilty at flooding the world with designer brands, luxury cars and a zillion other things that Asians have come to see as "status" symbol stuff. Such utter BS.

[HLover]

Well Blame American "The American "dream" of greed has infected the whole world" Maybe have the UN force America to paid all the old poor in Thailand and the rest of the World

America can just print money

Right, because Thai ads never show visions of excess.

[GAZZPA]

Well Blame American "The American "dream" of greed has infected the whole world" Maybe have the UN force America to paid all the old poor in Thailand and the rest of the World

America can just print money

Just said, not just the Americans, Europeans as well.

Sorry you can't see my point, it is just my opinion after all.

[HLover]

Well Blame American "The American "dream" of greed has infected the whole world" Maybe have the UN force America to paid all the old poor in Thailand and the rest of the World

America can just print money

Just said, not just the Americans, Europeans as well.

Sorry you can't see my point, it is just my opinion after all.

Just read it.

My, you have speeding fingers mate.

[GAZZPA]

Well Blame American "The American "dream" of greed has infected the whole world" Maybe have the UN force America to paid all the old poor in Thailand and the rest of the World

America can just print money

Right, because Thai ads never show visions of excess.

They do, of course they do. It's the same crappy, "I am what I own" greedy philosophy that had flooded the World. It ends in nothing but boom and bust and talk about "expected growth" to feed the never ending desire to own more expensive stuff.

In my humble opinion America has had its day, as England, Rome and countless other "empires" have eventually fallen so will the US. The population of countries in Asia is far higher then the West so it makes sense for more wealth to reside in Asia. It's Asias turn now, specifically China I guess and whether I or anyone else like it won't change the inevitable.

I just wish Asia had found a different way and not just followed the same old route and driving households into debt chasing materialist desires, that's all.

[DrTuner]

Shame because there are many interesting and beautiful cultures in this part of world, soon to be long forgotten.

Don't worry, the junta will force feed their beloved Thainess down the peasant gullets for the unforeseeable future.

[rkidlad]

I knew it would come to this. The young have changed the family traditions of Thailand. Their wanting all the trappings of western life,have placed them in the position where they will not take care of the old like generations before them. The old be neglected,uncared for,and sick.But the young people will drive a car,eat at KFC and wear the latest fashion.

You can't really blame the younger generation for wanting this. It's a vicious cycle anyway. How can anyone save for the future if they have to pay for their parents?

Taking care of your parents is very commendable. I'd do the same if I had to. Fortunately, my parents saved for their futures and have a system that will take care of them also.

The rich and powerful have been pillaging the contry for too long. Thailand isn't a poor country. It's rich in resources. Change comes within. Thais have to fight for it and stop the 'Mai pen rai' attitude. If they don't mind taking care of the elderly then continue, that's fine also. It's up to them.

I feel your post shows how little you know about Thailand and its culture.And I can blame the young forgetting their roots and culture and sacfrifice their parents made.

The young for generations have taken care of the old. Traditionally the youngest daughter was given the main job. she would stay with the parents and take care of them,even after marriage. The elders you see today lived this culture and did take care of their parents. They expect the same from their children.The old have no safety net. All their income all their life after having children went to the children,nothing left to save. Poor parents did with out to give education and food and shelter to their children so when the parents got old the children could provide and take care of their parents with relative ease Instead the children now feel they are privileged and can leave that part of their culture behind them Shame on them.

My wife when I met her some days didnot eat so her children could eat. Now the children have everything because I am in the picture. Her son is at Rangsit university and when he graduates he will be set for life. He will have his own clinic,business,and other business,s we will help him with. I remind him about his mother,s sacrifices and tell him never,ever stop helping your mother.I tell him you had a full stomach well your mother went hungry.Do you never,ever forget what she did for you. And give back what was given to you.

Taking care of your parents is culture orientated not a one off commendable thing.

I know Thai culture very well. Who are we to tell them to respect their own culture? Who are Thais to tell other Thais to respect their own culture? If these values can be made up by people, they can also be changed by people.

Times are changing. Things develop and not always for the best. I certainly don't blame the younger generation for wanting the mod cons. This is human nature. You have to let people make their own choices through responsible education.

Ultimately, we are all free to do what we like. You may not like this and may blame external factors like the US, but this is life. Everyone should have the right to do what makes them happy.

The old 'respect your cultural' values is getting a bit old fashioned. Women being married off, etc. Made the parents happy but certainly not the daughter. Times are changing. People have had a taste of freedom and they like it. Just like you and me.

[Ceruhe]

but what do you suggest? Do you suggest people get sick at 60 and say "Well its about time I died now to make it easier for everyone so I won't get any treatment", get real fella.

[...]

If you want to be the first to volunteer please feel free, you will be alone in your crazy thinking mind you.

Obviously not going to happen, but countries with social security and stuff need to move on somehow. Retiring by the age of 65 or whatever is last century. Since we are living longer and I see a ton of not totally screwed up 65+ people, they can still work to some degree, or at least "it would make sense". Which brings us to the hurdle that getting a job at that age won't be easy for obvious reasons.

My solution? Well, in my utopia the military is behind extinct as nobody needs to fight each other, most expenses can therefore be shifted around where we have short comings today and a fraction remains for natural disaster prevention and stuff, you know...asteroids and stuff every other blue moon. Which isn't to say that the military doesn't contribute to technology advancement at all, but I'd rather have 10% of that go to NASA and they will still provide us with the most amazing things to keep evolving.

To the real solution....? Well, who knows. Like I said, I'm pessimistic and don't even care 2 damns about it either to be honest, if I had the power to change anything aka god powers (don't even bother telling me to sign petitions, get peopleon board and all that nonesense), then it wouldn't be a pretty change for the "first" people it's going to affect. Dunno what it would be, but I'm rather cut and dry scrupulous if that were a thing with a demonstrable good sustained outcome.

[...]

The chances of me suiciding are "pretty high in my book" tbh. While I haven't attempted it yet nor given it a really serious thought, it does keep popping into my mind frequently just to give me a reminder. Worry not.

So, something positive for you. I have faith in human nature overall. We have a remarkable ability to overcome, innovate and thrive. Yes, we screw up a lot and we still lie to each other, steal from each other and even kill each other but overall the World is statistically becoming a safer place and most people are decent, kind and friendly. [...] As for religion, well over 70% of the World believe in one form or another, so who are you to tell them not to? [...] Unlike a lot of people I don't believe that religion holds the World back, in fact some religious teachings are actually how we, as humans SHOULD be behaving and treating one another.

Very aware of that fact and that is great, yet you have detrimental things like religion and currently feminism that takes a piss out of it and feels like it's wanting to go backwards. While it may not reflect the majorities opinion, the minority and their overly loud voice do take a toll on making the majority look bad, and they aren't doing anything against it, or rather, don't think "it's a thing that's happening" and feels like a kid fighting with a grown up who has the hand on your forehead while it's swinging at air. So when you have femisnim, who is for "equality between the sexes" that puts more priority to fighting "manspreading" than male suicide victims, you kinda start question things. That being just one totally mundane thing that is getting law enforcement behind it in the name of "equality". Or having the Duluth Model be your primary "way of doing things". TV shows hosting more LGBT characters and treating them like 'normal' cast, aka can get killed too, now causes outrage. Morons are backpeddling at an amazing speed. #safespaces

[...]

Thing is I don't. Another thing is, in my case at least, they don't tell me either. That's good and fine, so far no problems on my end.

Now, if you have the pope go to africa and tell them condoms are a bad thing, while AIDS and a goddamn miserably live due to starvation is rampant, then I do take issue with this religion stuff. Just like "all terrorist attacks" that we keep hearing from comes form _one_certain_religion_. Be ignorant and #notallmuslims all you want, fact remains, if there is an attack somewhere we all can turn our head in a certain direction and are very likely to be correct in said presumption. Yes, that still doesn't account for the majority, but see how it's detrimental to them too? Just distancing yourself from them with words alone isn't going to make it go away. Violence is the issue at hand and fire supposedly can't be fought with fire, reason isn't working. However, if that nonesense had never existed in the first place....who knows?

I haven't read the Bible, Quran, how to raise a cow or whatever other name those "holy" books have, plenty of excerpts can and have been pointed out how they are contradiction each other (within the same book that is), far outdated by todays standard, have terrible messages to begin with and then here and there you have something happy and it makes sense too, great.

Being open minded is one thing, thanking some invisible, unprovable existence that you have food on your plate today, when your parents were working their ass off to buy the stuff you eat, simply isn't acceptable to me. Not to mention, I'm not very impressed with an omnipotent creator that oh so carefully watches over our planet among BILLIONS in this vast universe, who is supposedly oh so kind and has a plan for everyone. There are plenty of sound stand up comedy routines that point out just how flawed and illogical this god thing really is, merely scratching at the surface of it.

If you fall sick and you get the option between taking medicine or praying, I sure as hell know which one I'm going to place my bets on. Open minded yes, delusional not.

[...]

Any specific examples you'd like to point out? Please refrain from using "love thy neighbor" "don't kill/steal" and stuff. Your post has been reasonable enough for me not to assume you are mentally challenged, thus I won't let you have a weak cards to play such as those. If you however, with all honesty, want to tell me that people would have no morals etc without those abusive holy books, do entertain me with it regardless as I'd like to have a laugh or two, although I'm likely to not take you serious anymore at that point.

People have the right to age, you included and we should respect and celebrate when someone lives to a ripe old age. They also have the right to be respected, they have lived a long time and are responsible for the freedom you enjoy today, so have some respect fella. [...] In summary, elderly people need more care, attention and medical treatment then younger people. It is right that their family should support them in this, the same as it is right for a family to support a child, or a middle aged person. Just because someone is closer to the grave does not mean that they no longer matter...

That sounds cute and all that but....living long doesn't grant you a free pass to get respected, at least not from me. Respect is earned regardless of age and if someone is a douche, then they are a douche, neither holding age or accomplishments against them, but that doesn't grant you a right to be respected.

The freedoms I know today are something I never had to fight for, thus I have no value I can assign to it, thus my respect to that is limited. Because I also don't know war myself and I also don't buy into Uncle Sams great "fight for freedom" propaganda, I can't tell what actually did or did not make a difference to my current life and again, I can't "just respect" someone who has been in a war, in stark contrary, they have my empathy rather than my respect. But this is more of a collective "respect" you are referring to. No one soldier alone made it happen but everyone pulling their weight, but at the same time you need me to respect someone who (may) has killed other people for "my freedom" in a country I may not even be in or one that hasn't even had a war with another nation and "wasn't under attack" in the first place.

How about the fight with ISIS? Most of it is happening in their area. Caused by whom exactly? Because I haven't studied into that field, I will refrain from pointing fingers or make any actual statements, do however allow me to make assumptions that could be up for consideration. Personally, I currently do not see ISIS as a threat to my livelyhood, but I do recognized we do have an issue at hand. Am I to respect any given soldier, let me just pick the US simply for having a militaristic hard-on, just for fighting them? Why? How does their fight guarantee my safety and freedom exactly? What I'm seeing now is that intervention riles them up, attacks are still happening regardless, security checks at airports etc are being every so often raised every time and it's becoming a drag dealing with those side effects of "being there" I guess....?

As I said, I can't value something that I always had, I'm not stating that I "disrespect them" in any way, just that I can't properly assign all variables with according weight that would make my feelings genuine and not simply a lip-service because that's how things are being done. I can't blindly say A is great and B is evil, when B1 was getting bullied by A2 and B was helping B1, then A hit B on the head and is now the star, although A2 was the root problem. Does that kinda make sense?

[...]

Most certainly, but as you can see, this idealistic mindset isn't exactly working. We are all individuals, we grow up differently, we take on different interests and perceive things different. Justice to you may not be justice to me. Democrazy might be for you, but is not for me. In reality, I'd just randomly throw a number of "85%" of people know what the problem is, but just about nothing is being done about it as too few people care until it hits them. Confrontation is a lot of peoples weakness, mix that in with fear for their lives and suddenly you got 70%+ people that will just sit idle like me complaining about things and not doing anything against it. That odd percentage that does something against it may or may not make something happen, may also just get shot on the side, I mean get into an "accident" and their activism falls flat again. I have no excuses myself, I like to see things burn alright.

I hope you change your views and lose your "negative" view on the World sometime soon,, my advice, have a break from reading too much of this stuff, stop thinking too much and just enjoy your life for a while.

Unlikely to happen seeing how things are progressing, but I do find myself some happiness in other stuff from time to time, such as randomly participating in arguments and debates like this. Although you stated "it's a forum and all about fun really" that's pretty much is all it is to me. I got my (ill) informed opinions like everybody else on subjects like these as well and might just poke the nest on purpose just on the grounds of argumenting because it can be fun.

As stated before, pessimist but realist.

Edit: Wasn't aware this forum had sad rules like numbers of quotes you can do, editing this has been demotivational as hell to me seeing how a simple thing like adding a forced paragraph creates another quote.....so sorry if reading got tedious, I bundled some quotes together and seperated them with the [...] for easier but painful reading since double posting isn't my style.

[Tomtomtom69]

Obviously not going to happen, but countries with social security and stuff need to move on somehow. Retiring by the age of 65 or whatever is last century. Since we are living longer and I see a ton of not totally screwed up 65+ people, they can still work to some degree, or at least "it would make sense". Which brings us to the hurdle that getting a job at that age won't be easy for obvious reasons.

My solution? Well, in my utopia the military is behind extinct as nobody needs to fight each other, most expenses can therefore be shifted around where we have short comings today and a fraction remains for natural disaster prevention and stuff, you know...asteroids and stuff every other blue moon. Which isn't to say that the military doesn't contribute to technology advancement at all, but I'd rather have 10% of that go to NASA and they will still provide us with the most amazing things to keep evolving.

To the real solution....? Well, who knows. Like I said, I'm pessimistic and don't even care 2 damns about it either to be honest, if I had the power to change anything aka god powers (don't even bother telling me to sign petitions, get peopleon board and all that nonesense), then it wouldn't be a pretty change for the "first" people it's going to affect. Dunno what it would be, but I'm rather cut and dry scrupulous if that were a thing with a demonstrable good sustained outcome.

[...]

The chances of me suiciding are "pretty high in my book" tbh. While I haven't attempted it yet nor given it a really serious thought, it does keep popping into my mind frequently just to give me a reminder. Worry not.

Very aware of that fact and that is great, yet you have detrimental things like religion and currently feminism that takes a piss out of it and feels like it's wanting to go backwards. While it may not reflect the majorities opinion, the minority and their overly loud voice do take a toll on making the majority look bad, and they aren't doing anything against it, or rather, don't think "it's a thing that's happening" and feels like a kid fighting with a grown up who has the hand on your forehead while it's swinging at air. So when you have femisnim, who is for "equality between the sexes" that puts more priority to fighting "manspreading" than male suicide victims, you kinda start question things. That being just one totally mundane thing that is getting law enforcement behind it in the name of "equality". Or having the Duluth Model be your primary "way of doing things". TV shows hosting more LGBT characters and treating them like 'normal' cast, aka can get killed too, now causes outrage. Morons are backpeddling at an amazing speed. #safespaces

[...]

Thing is I don't. Another thing is, in my case at least, they don't tell me either. That's good and fine, so far no problems on my end.

Now, if you have the pope go to africa and tell them condoms are a bad thing, while AIDS and a goddamn miserably live due to starvation is rampant, then I do take issue with this religion stuff. Just like "all terrorist attacks" that we keep hearing from comes form _one_certain_religion_. Be ignorant and #notallmuslims all you want, fact remains, if there is an attack somewhere we all can turn our head in a certain direction and are very likely to be correct in said presumption. Yes, that still doesn't account for the majority, but see how it's detrimental to them too? Just distancing yourself from them with words alone isn't going to make it go away. Violence is the issue at hand and fire supposedly can't be fought with fire, reason isn't working. However, if that nonesense had never existed in the first place....who knows?

I haven't read the Bible, Quran, how to raise a cow or whatever other name those "holy" books have, plenty of excerpts can and have been pointed out how they are contradiction each other (within the same book that is), far outdated by todays standard, have terrible messages to begin with and then here and there you have something happy and it makes sense too, great.

Being open minded is one thing, thanking some invisible, unprovable existence that you have food on your plate today, when your parents were working their ass off to buy the stuff you eat, simply isn't acceptable to me. Not to mention, I'm not very impressed with an omnipotent creator that oh so carefully watches over our planet among BILLIONS in this vast universe, who is supposedly oh so kind and has a plan for everyone. There are plenty of sound stand up comedy routines that point out just how flawed and illogical this god thing really is, merely scratching at the surface of it.

If you fall sick and you get the option between taking medicine or praying, I sure as hell know which one I'm going to place my bets on. Open minded yes, delusional not.

[...]

Any specific examples you'd like to point out? Please refrain from using "love thy neighbor" "don't kill/steal" and stuff. Your post has been reasonable enough for me not to assume you are mentally challenged, thus I won't let you have a weak cards to play such as those. If you however, with all honesty, want to tell me that people would have no morals etc without those abusive holy books, do entertain me with it regardless as I'd like to have a laugh or two, although I'm likely to not take you serious anymore at that point.

That sounds cute and all that but....living long doesn't grant you a free pass to get respected, at least not from me. Respect is earned regardless of age and if someone is a douche, then they are a douche, neither holding age or accomplishments against them, but that doesn't grant you a right to be respected.

The freedoms I know today are something I never had to fight for, thus I have no value I can assign to it, thus my respect to that is limited. Because I also don't know war myself and I also don't buy into Uncle Sams great "fight for freedom" propaganda, I can't tell what actually did or did not make a difference to my current life and again, I can't "just respect" someone who has been in a war, in stark contrary, they have my empathy rather than my respect. But this is more of a collective "respect" you are referring to. No one soldier alone made it happen but everyone pulling their weight, but at the same time you need me to respect someone who (may) has killed other people for "my freedom" in a country I may not even be in or one that hasn't even had a war with another nation and "wasn't under attack" in the first place.

How about the fight with ISIS? Most of it is happening in their area. Caused by whom exactly? Because I haven't studied into that field, I will refrain from pointing fingers or make any actual statements, do however allow me to make assumptions that could be up for consideration. Personally, I currently do not see ISIS as a threat to my livelyhood, but I do recognized we do have an issue at hand. Am I to respect any given soldier, let me just pick the US simply for having a militaristic hard-on, just for fighting them? Why? How does their fight guarantee my safety and freedom exactly? What I'm seeing now is that intervention riles them up, attacks are still happening regardless, security checks at airports etc are being every so often raised every time and it's becoming a drag dealing with those side effects of "being there" I guess....?

As I said, I can't value something that I always had, I'm not stating that I "disrespect them" in any way, just that I can't properly assign all variables with according weight that would make my feelings genuine and not simply a lip-service because that's how things are being done. I can't blindly say A is great and B is evil, when B1 was getting bullied by A2 and B was helping B1, then A hit B on the head and is now the star, although A2 was the root problem. Does that kinda make sense?

[...]

Most certainly, but as you can see, this idealistic mindset isn't exactly working. We are all individuals, we grow up differently, we take on different interests and perceive things different. Justice to you may not be justice to me. Democrazy might be for you, but is not for me. In reality, I'd just randomly throw a number of "85%" of people know what the problem is, but just about nothing is being done about it as too few people care until it hits them. Confrontation is a lot of peoples weakness, mix that in with fear for their lives and suddenly you got 70%+ people

Unlikely to happen seeing how things are progressing, but I do find myself some happiness in other stuff from time to time, such as randomly participating in arguments and debates like this. Although you stated "it's a forum and all about fun really" that's pretty much is all it is to me. I got my (ill) informed opinions like everybody else on subjects like these as well and might just poke the nest on purpose just on the grounds of argumenting because it can be fun.

As stated before, pessimist but realist.

Edit: Wasn't aware this forum had sad rules like numbers of quotes you can do, editing this has been demotivational as hell to me seeing how a simple thing like adding a forced paragraph creates another quote.....so sorry if reading got tedious, I bundled some quotes together and seperated them with the [...] for easier but painful reading since double posting isn't my style.

I had my reply all written up earlier but then when I tried to send reply, the system didn't let me because of all the separated quotes you took from the other post and put into your reply. When I pressed the backspace button to delete those stupid quotes I was returned to the main Thailand news page deleting everything I wrote. This means that my almost perfect response to your posts had to be rewritten from scratch.

I must admit I didn't have the energy to read your post word for word, so I did what I usually do this time of day (or sometimes whenever I feel like it) and I skim read. I think I understood the main points though but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway here goes. When I saw your first reply, I too was infuriated. I could have sworn you were one of these new age, vegan hippy weed smoking dufuses, you know the do-gooder tree hugging types that thinks he knows the world better than everyone else. You appeared to be one of these crazy progressives, which is what happens when liberals go bad.

Then I saw this rebuttal to that other guy's post, which made me think you must be something in between, perhaps a neo-liberal?

Well, I'm no political expert, but I think having 2 semesters of political science under my belt and becoming increasingly interested in the BS that has been going on in much of the western world over the last few years makes me at least qualified enough to know that liberals aren't just social justice diversity universalist feminist anti-racist utopian warriors, while conservatives equally aren't uncultured KKK Nazi misogynists either. Most people are usually a bit of both, depending on the issue.

But anyway, you remind of someone I know from Vietnam. He's about 5 years your senior, I presume you are 29 since you so kindly mentioned you are nearing 30 and he's 34. The guy holds similar views to you perhaps because he couldn't find a proper woman (his expectations are too high) and while he said he wouldn't mind having a kid, if it never happens it won't matter as kids are wasteful and use up precious resources. Similarly, living beyond 60 is considered "wasteful" and of course he wants to become cremated because burying bodies is a "waste of space" despite being the tradition in his native Vietnam, where many locals even erect tombs in their yards containing the bodies of their departed family members and ancestors. This guy holds many non-traditional views ranging from everything from burial rituals to what people should eat to trying to change local people's habits. Let's just say he isn't a very popular guy in his own society. His views and his general demeanor makes him a bit of a "renegade".

Anyway, enough of him and back to you. You mentioned you dislike religion. Fair enough. We have some common ground here, but with a bit of a difference. Rather than going around claiming that all religion is evil, my view is that as long as you believe in what you want and don't infringe upon my rights, you can do what you want. As long as there's separation of state and religion, that's good enough for me. However, as a man of science I am increasingly skeptical about the existence of a God. But I still believe Christianity teaches good morals and values, while Buddhism arguably teaches even better ones and is in fact quite compatible with science. This coming from someone who has certainly visited Buddhist temples far more often in his life than Christian churches. I may come from a Christian family but I wasn't raised as such as my family isn't very religious. But that's not surprising given our European background.

I do however have a problem with dangerous, totalitarian ideologies like Islam. Especially because Islam is a religion with political overtones that preaches hatred towards non-believers, Jews, Christians, women and apostates. It's incompatible with western and indeed any non-Islamic values. However, there is an obvious difference between disliking the ideology and Muslims in general. You are right about the terrorism connection and Islam but obviously as long as a Muslim respects my space and practices their religion in their home or in their mosques without infringing upon my rights, I'm OK with it. Of course, in a non-Muslim society we should not tolerate such nonsense as loud calls to prayer from mosques or Halal certification of food, unless said certification has been paid for by Muslim associations. Otherwise, it becomes a problem because now you've infringed upon my rights to have peace and quiet and charged me extra (even if only a minimal amount) for something you need, but I don't.

However, that brings me to my final point which is about your views on immigration and universalism, which is probably the most dangerous doctrine out there. You said there's no problem if we all mix and we shouldn't care if cultures disappear. Yes we should. You know why? Because some cultures are clearly superior to others and that explains why some cultures have advanced and contributed to humanity more than others. To claim otherwise would clearly be an insult to human intelligence. That's why some cultures are safe, liberal (real liberal not that utopian liberal BS) and progressive (again real progressive not the fake utopian type) and others backward. But if we want to succeed in future, what do we need to do? Well, I agree that there needs to be some kind of population control. For example, countries like Chad with 6.56 births per woman and Burundi with a similarly high fertility rate need to urgently have their fertility rates cut down to 2 per woman. However, countries in Europe, Australia, the US, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand urgently need to raise their fertility rates up to replacement levels, so 2 in order to sustain our cultures and even just support our welfare systems. While it may not matter to you, but most countries (except the western ones) seem to care about this and there will be untold bloodshed if anyone tells them to renounce their ethnic ties, bloodlines and national identity for a utopian universalist one.

Anyway, I hope my children can grow up in a better world than we have now but that is far from certain. The world seems to becoming a more dangerous and more uncertain place and what they experience when they're grown up could be quite scary indeed.

[Ceruhe]

I had my reply all written up earlier but then when I tried to send reply, the system didn't let me because of all the separated quotes you took from the other post and put into your reply. When I pressed the backspace button to delete those stupid quotes I was returned to the main Thailand news page deleting everything I wrote. This means that my almost perfect response to your posts had to be rewritten from scratch.

I had that issue too and was forced to do some acrobatics with the formatting, henche why it turned out so badly and what I intially wanted to preface it with, couldn't due to the aggrevating promblems it caused. However, very commendable of you to sit down and write it all again, thank you for that. Because I'm not sure if you don't know about it, forgot about it or wasn't available to you at that point...this forum saves a template of what you write about once a minute or so and you can restore it with a click. It be available to fetch when you are in the field to compose a reply, mabe in the "more repy options" not entirely sure, but it being saved keeps popping into my field of view. With that said, 4 quotes per post, so I'll have that to work with, or rather, 3 left

I must admit I didn't have the energy to read your post word for word, so I did what I usually do this time of day (or sometimes whenever I feel like it) and I skim read. I think I understood the main points though but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway here goes. When I saw your first reply, I too was infuriated. I could have sworn you were one of these new age, vegan hippy weed smoking dufuses, you know the do-gooder tree hugging types that thinks he knows the world better than everyone else. You appeared to be one of these crazy progressives, which is what happens when liberals go bad.

Then I saw this rebuttal to that other guy's post, which made me think you must be something in between, perhaps a neo-liberal?

From what you write, your skimming looks accurately enough so I don't need to really correct you on anything, on the contrary props to you for putting my first post into the correct relation with the follow up and not dismissed the post on the grounds of not having digested it in proper context and just turned to spewing attacks.

As for my political stance. Dunno. According to the Political Compass, I'm half way liberal with a slight left leaning, but still very close to the center. With that said, I took the test some 6 months or longer ago and faintly remember that a lot of questions didn't even give me the answers I would've chose or were too unspecific to me to reflect my understanding, seeing how I'm very fond of "If that is the case, does this also mean thisor lead to that?" scenarios and wouldn't properly satisfy me. Well, for whatever it's worth, I am probably part everything, as I do realise not everything is bad about socialism, but not everything is great about democrazy either....so, I think it's hard for me to actually tell where I'm standing without just casually throwing me into a "general area" based on "general opinion on .

Rather than going around claiming that all religion is evil, my view is that as long as you believe in what you want and don't infringe upon my rights, you can do what you want.

That's were your skimming is a bit off. As long as they don't bother me with their stuff, I'm just about fine with that too and some of the issues I have beyond that might just be nitpicking over it on my own or when I'm being a keyboard warrior, but I'm not doing any actions against them doing it, as unresonable as I may find some of the stuff. I have also been raised non religious and tbh never had much to do with it, nobody actually put time and energy wanting to convert me or any of that jehovas door to doorr nonesense. The only time it kind of sort of came/comes up is in casual conversations, a few years back I visted my friend who was getting married and we had a couple years worth to catch up on. Eventually he randomly asked me "what's your stance on gays?" and I just said "meh, don't really care. As long as they to their stuff and don't bother me with it, I don't really care. If someone makes a move on me personally and I tell them I'm not interested and that's that, I'm alright with that....why you ask?" and his reply was pretty much "I think it's unnatural and my religion says it too" which is where I ended said conversation/topic with him as I had no interest talking to tallest wall in existance since any argument would fall flat against the religious teachings. Love him heaps but I'm not wasting my time with that. I've known him since 7th grade or so, never really had a fight with him over anything, never had any kind of hard decisions to make where I'd need to choose between accepting him and his religion or telling him goodbye. Matter of fact, I couldn't even tell he was religious. Certainly wasn't ever praying around me (we spent tons of times togehter, quasi married lol), preaching anything or doing something "in the name of islam" at all. So after all these years I was rather surprised that he confronted me with that topic and much more that kind of reply. Sure, I needed to tell him some jokes 3 times (being once to tell him, second to explain it, third so he actually laughed understanding it...depisite having laughed all 3 times ), but overall he wasn't exactly a dimwit with a narrow mind, but he still pulled off that reponse and it just didn't sit right with me.

I'm still very much certain that if the element of religion disappears (or never had existed on this scale in the first place) humanity as a whole would be better off. Maybe not from today to tomorrow, maybe not even the next year or decade, but no matter how often I weight pros and cons on "lady justice scales", it's always tipping overto one side....by a lot.

However, that brings me to my final point which is about your views on immigration and universalism, which is probably the most dangerous doctrine out there. You said there's no problem if we all mix and we shouldn't care if cultures disappear. Yes we should. You know why? Because some cultures are clearly superior to others

I'm not denying that and may need to clarify myself on that some more it seems.

Yes, islam and their culture for the most part is inferior and incompatible to ours, however, I will assume that the normal human traits are still with them, such as wanting to be in your comfort zone and such.

Given that, if you randomly take a chunk of 1000 people across several states from several countries throughout the world, offer them a guaranteed secure lifetime visa for the country of their choosing and I will almost certainly predict that out of the entire sample size, a maximum of 15% of the people would take that offer and actually move. The majority is likely to remain put where they are in their current lives, as they are enjoying an enviroment they are used to, can navigate and communicate properly and of course already know how everything works and are likely middle class folks standing on their own feet and got stuff worked out.

Now, the issue you are likely referring to just goes hand in hand with the refugee crisis in europe, where a too large chunk of a foreign culture (and to point it out ever so often again, religion) is causing "problems for everybody". Suddenly we have tons of news from germany about rape, assault and theft. Terrorist attacks made easy through covertly entering as a refugee and so forth. Don't know what is all just being media hyping it up and actually true or fear mongering, but put that to the side for now.

I'm not oblivious to that fact. I'm aware that the majority of people are good natured "by default" and it's the extremists we are actually worried about. However, is it wrong for me to assume that religion is still the root problem of that issue? Is it the majority of peaceful muslims we are scared of or the "few" extremists from said overzealous groups that causes a negativ impact on the majority and thus cause preemptive strain with the peaceful majority? Is it not true that their way of life, as you stated above to be inferior, is mainly a product of the teachings of their religion?

So I don't think it "is a problem" when people mix and cultures may disappear. A culture isn't exactly something small that would disappear from one day to another but eventually fade out. I'm also not stating that some african tribe in the middle of nowhere and a random lake has superior culture to an advanced "contributing to the good of all" western civilization, however, I wouldn't mind if some of their tribesmen can get access to another culture and actually adopt it, ditching their own. That may lead to "said tribes cultural extinction" which would comfort to natures "survival of the fittest" would it not? Likewise I wouldn't mind if someone joins their tribe and it's causing a change in their way of life, be it seeding GMOs instead of hunting a buffalo. Just to make it clear again, I'm not accounting for extremist/supremacist individuals as that is going to be a tooth for a tooth thing.

If there is one things humans can do, it's to adapt and advance. Which is why I also don't think there is a need for population control. Taking your "Chad with 6.56 births per woman and Burundi with a similarly high fertility rate" example, those would have the possibility to "go somewhere else" as in white countries with a low birth rate.While I don't know anything about the exmaples you provided, I'm taking them at face value humans with the desire to live and learn as they adapt to their surroundings, plenty of people who can mix and match multiple cultures by assimilating some while ditching others. But here again, religion is at the root of all evil again. I doubt the middle east would appear such a problem to us if it wasn't for their islamic teachings, regardless if the majority is peaceful or not, since it's the loud minority that ruins it for everybody. And because we all love history. The middle east used to be the center of global market and science, what happened to that? What caused their highly advanced standing at the time to fall back into this regressive garbage fest it seems to be now? Is that where your "culture has become superior to theirs"? Is that when islamic teachings had a new Sheik impose laws or something? I truly don't know and can't point fingers, but it would appear to support my idea that said culture can now "start to disappear and upgrade to the superior one".

I'm perfectly aware that what's in my head is just a grand fiction of make believe and wishful thinking. As you stated, telling people to renounce their culture will end in bloodshed (although I'd even support it if thats another make believe that would end it once and for all), however, if it happens on it's own through cultural spreading (as some are moaning with KFC/McDs etc taking a foothold here) then I see no reason for said bloodshed to happen, as people assimilate on their own (which will bring us back to supremacists wanting to prevent that I guess, but out of the picture for now). But despite this being a fictional utopia in my head, this is something I can believe more in than any god and said religion. Why? Sticking to the Bible/God dude/thing/something, it supposedly wrote a book that needed a second edition, which seems odd for an omnipotent being knowing everything and having the power to do everything, but just didn't know that the book would eventually be out of date? He who has a grand plan for every human to follow, yet scares the crap out of them with some other kind of omnipotent being that will inflict eternal suffering and burning in hellfire to you....if you follow his plan I guess?

I can only point out, there needs to be no religion at all to teach virtous and morals to people at all. I've been raised non religious too, I never planned to hurt or kill people around me until someone told me about the 10 commandments. I'm not saying there is absolutely no merit to religion at all, but if weighting everything accordingly, we ought to all realise that it's a thing that needs to follow suit with greek/roman/egyptian mythology. Those are at least really cool as they have imperfect beings with flaws and all that. Probably caused a stirr like our religions do now, don't know, pretty much don't care. I do however know that those things of the past aren't a thing of the present, for I have not seen anyone in the name of Zeus striking down people. Besides cracking a joke with a reference that is.

None of these utopian things in my head is anything that can happen anytime soon, however, the things in my utopian dream, unrealistic and 0.0000~~~~~~~01% it may seem, is still _more_ realistic or at least has a _possibility_ of becoming reality in some million years and 5 multiverses later. A god or rather THE CREATOR as religion claims it to be and wants us to believe it is with all the hokus pokus that is in the bible etc, does not. Ever. It's not that I have proof god doesn't exist, it's just that the god we are told/taught to believe in, simply _cannot_ exist.

We are well beyond off topic here, which means I will refrain from further posting in this topic, I'll follow up on any reponses or though PMs though.

So far~

Edit:

Also, what exactly is the definition of separation of state and religion? Because I'd need some more in-depth explanation about this "marriage" stuff then, as that seems anything but separated. Then again, with gay marriage having been approved by the supreme court in the US, assuming "the state didn't follow the relgious teachings" thus it's separated? Anyhow, unclear about that thing in particular but the entire separation thing as a whole.

Also, Buddisms teaching aren't about a god, is it? I claim to have several times that Buddha was supposedly a normal human, just really virteous, not an actual god like entity.

[Briggsy]

Thailand has had a low fertility rate and rising life expectancy for many years now. The workforce is shrinking as a percentage of the population.

Yet it persists with certain policies that to my knowledge have never even been discussed let alone revised.

1. All public sector workers retire at 60.

2. Informal sector workers, who make up a huge percentage of Thailand's working population, consider it normal to klap yoo bahn, effectively retire and subsist, in their 50's.

3. It is very difficult for Thais to gain formal employment over the age of 35. This has become the conventional cut-off period for accepting employees in many sectors.

Underlying all of this is a rigid seniority system. Something needs to give in order to bring about change.