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Opinion

A society in decay
Voranai Vanijaka
17 Jan 2013

The greatest threat to Thailand is not from any foreign power. It is not the man in Dubai, nor is it the invisible hand. It is not the polarisation caused by the political divide, nor is it even the corruption.

The greatest threat to Thailand is our own weak character - the root cause of the failings of the political, learning, religious and family institutions.


Rival teenage gangs clash at a charity concert on Jan 14, 2013.
(Screen capture from YouTube)

This past Monday night two rival groups – vocational school students versus Klong Toey teens – clashed at a concert, a charity show no less. The band on the stage played the Royal Anthem in order to calm the kids down. It didn’t work. It hasn’t worked for six years.

It took 700 police to subdue about 50 rioters, four people were hurt, two of them sustained tear gas injuries. This is just one example of the frequent, ongoing and escalating violence among Thai youth.

Show me a sack of rice sitting idly at a government warehouse and I’ll show you an adult who laments about today’s young generation – violent and clueless, materialistic and careless, superficial and conniving, etcetera, etcetera and etcetera.

How do we solve the problem? What is the solution? Who can the young generation look up to? Who can lead by example? Could it be the religious institution?

But just on that same night, an intoxicated monk stole a public bus and went on a joy ride. He even took methamphetamine pills, supplied to him by a young monk, no less. Shall we dismiss this as an anomaly?

Perhaps, but surely we cannot dismiss the bruised and battered image of the religious institution where reports of sex scandals and drunken parties are all too familiar. Not least of which, monks who give blessing at political rallies, ride in fancy European luxury cars and sport the latest techno gadgets, etcetera, etcetera and etcetera.

Cessation of desires? Cessation of the material world? Clearly not. A few bad apples in a bag of otherwise ripe fruit? Perhaps, but enough to cause much damage to the religious soul of a nation.

No, the religious institution isn’t where the misguided young can look to. It may be a place where parents send their "child with a homosexual tendency" in order to extinguish such tendency. But instead, the child is filmed displaying such "homosexual tendency" in a saffron robe and posted on Youtube. It’s a crazy world we live in.

What else is there? Who else can save the young? Why not leaders of the nation? Those men and women we democratically elected to lead us.

But just last week, Thailand’s number two national leader, the deputy prime minister in charge of national security, was caught drunk while in Malaysia on a trip to discuss the southern unrest. Hewho was also caught drunk during a meeting of parliament last year. He who while in that drunken state told a Democrat MP that he loves her during said parliamentary session.

If I didn’t know any better, I'd think the appointment of the deputy prime minister, my favourite politician, is the man in Dubai taking cold-hearted revenge on Thailand - brilliant and sinister this vengeance is. Is this one example merely an exception to the norm? I think not.


File photo

Wasn’t it also last year when groups of Democrat and Pheu Thai MPs bitch-slapped each other during another parliamentary session? With the Democrats rushing at the House speaker and trying to put a gangster beat down on him? Why, those kids at the concert were just emulating the actions of those we elected to represent society.

In fact, come to think of it, they do represent society quite fittingly, don’t they -- the anger, the violence, the corruption, etcetera, etcetera and etcetera? Surely, society cannot stand for this. Certainly, we the people must take the reins and the lead in order to save our children from a future so frightful and hopeless.

But then again, isn’t it that same society, we the people, who for the past six years have burned and rioted, seized and stormed, etcetera, etcetera and etcetera, simply because we love or hate one man?

Help me here, I’m running out of ideas. When I was young, I remember at school we were taught to look up to soldiers and policemen as they… well okay, that’s not going to work either.

Yesterday was Teachers’ Day and… okay, not that either.

The horror that awaits us in the future is less of the political divide, but much more of the moral, spiritual and intellectual decay of a society. It is our institutions – political, educational, religious and family – that are eroding in character and values.

This is not a mourning of better days past, who is to say if the past was any better. The more correct perspective is that today is but an accumulation of mistake after mistake, neglect after neglect and apathy after apathy over the years and decades – the weakness in our character, self-deluded and clueless, selfish and careless and self-indulgent and callous.

Things seem worse today than before simply because the total sum of today is greater than that of yesterday. The greatest threat to Thailand is our own weak character. There are 65 million people who could save us.

But do they even realise that we need saving?

bangkokpost.com

__________________
"Keeping quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters are murdered and jailed is not evidence of constructive engagement." - Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch.

"I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check" - M.C. Escher

baldrick

they can look up to their role models on the ubiquitous television soap operas

BaitongBoy

Farm it out to a reputable farang...

Norton

No they don't. Nor do the countries in the rest of the world who have "an accumulation of mistake after mistake, neglect after neglect and apathy after apathy over the years and decades".

Zooheekock

Voranai deposits another one of his turds on the pages of the Bangkok Post. I guess it's an appropriate enough place for it.

pseudolus

Would save everyone a lot of time is someone cut and pasted the posts from the other 1000 threads on here demonstrating this as well as the reasons why.

Mr Earl

The fall of an Empire....

Well not really. But the UK is already toast, and we're gleefully watching the ol' USA cook it's own goose, so to speak.

Thailand is just following the leaders.

gmailer

letting all the young men attack each other and the young women become slutty has few downsides imo

Neo

It's what happens when a country adopts American culture, it goes down the toilet.

Butterfly

^ correction, it's what happens when a country becomes rich and westernized, it socially goes down the toilet

perfectly normal evolution,

FlyFree

If you try to hang on to the past, clinging desperately to a culture of days gone by, is it surprising the youth are adrift? They cannot identify with the culture because it is outdated, and therefore there is nothing to guide them.


Whenever the 'culture vultures' creep out of the woodwork I get the creeps. They remind me of the living dead grasping at the living to pull them into their hellhole. Culture is a toolbox for survival of the society and the individual in that society at a specific time and in a specific environment, no more. It has to change as the environment changes.

DrAndy

I don't think that Thai society is in crisis, more in the process of a too fast evolution to a modern version

let's hope it steadies up and the Thai way of life does not suffer too much

Rural Surin

Indeed. One could easily view this decay most everywhere.
An affliction of modern times perhaps?
Historical cycles naturally play on societies and cultures.

As it is for Thailand, and other traditional cultures, the rot clearly has not manifested internally - but was introduced and instigated from afar.

__________________
" Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology, it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things......natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

Rural Surin

You're suggesting might be a universal standard as to what a proper social should be? In who's image?

FlyFree

RS. Bullshit, if I may say so.

Societies 'decay' because the next generation have to make up their own rules as they go along because the culture of the previous generation has had no time to evolve and keep up with a rate of change never seen before.

When change happens slowly over many generations, things can stay stable. Today change is out of control. No mystery. It was the topic of the day in the '60s/70s.

See Future Shock. Alvin Toffler

sabang

It's own leaders.

ChrisM

I would just like to offer a little Christian kindness and call on God our saviour to save their souls

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your Kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom,
the power and the glory are yours.
Now and for ever. Amen.

FlyFree

WTF are you on about. You're too hung up on your Westophobia.

Thailand has to evolve a culture that is suitable for Thai youth in Thailand today. No chance. By the time that's happened, things have long changed again.

What's the answer? No idea. Too busy trying to save my own ass to worry about societies' problems.

Rural Surin

Pathetic. Referring to Alvin Toffler.
I'm familiar with his material.
No credibility whatsoever....narrow visions without insight.
Culturally-centric buffon.

Rural Surin

Terminology of contradiction and rhetoric, yes?

DrB0b

Normally I like Voranai's diatribes but in this case <yawn>.

Society has always been in decay and most likely always will be. It seems to be part of the general deal of having society in the first place. Everything was always better in some unspecified place in some unspecified past. Arcadia here we went.

All societies have problems. Some are worse than others. It's no diffferent than the lovely 6 year old boy who hugged daddy and told him he loved him suddenly becoming a 16 year old who thinks daddy is an evil fascist.

Sure, Thailand has problems. Every country and every person has. If you think Thailand has deathly serious problems then go spend a few weeks in Somalia. Is it too much to ask for some perspective?

Voranai, I like your writing but in this case STFU. This is a classic example of a columnist paid to churn out a regular article but somehow, this week, can't think of anything new or original to say. Well done on the contractural obligation front but, otherwise, zzzZZZZ!

__________________

FlyFree

I refer to AT simply to illustrate that it is not a mysterious 'decay'. It's not an unexpected phenomenon. Can you see that?

AT was mainly concerned with information overload, not culture.

Whether he was a buffoon or not is not the issue, and doesn't concern me.


Good God.

ChrisM

satu.

flashbang

I don't care much for all this society bullshit. Most of Asia is fabulously corrupt.

The problem here is them spotty, gangly teen gangs fighting each other.

I think the only solution is to bombard them with shitloads of porn so they stay indoors and bash out.

Grower

Almost all societies are changing/decaying; cast your eyes east; America, Canada, Britain, and the EU.
Change or die. But this is decay...