Thread: What's the Thai word for 'Initiative'?

Originally Posted by DrB0b

Originally Posted by EmperorTud

Originally Posted by DrAndy

no, it is laziness. If you live in a country where you cannot speak the local language, then you are missing out on a lot

So what riveting conversation are you missing out on if you can't speak Thai?

What else is there to miss out on?

Music? Nah.
TV? Nah.
Literature? Nope.
Cinema? Negative.

It's all a pile of shite.

Learning Thai for many expats is a choice, and many choose not to. Many simply don't have the time.
Their prerogative, and not laziness at all.

This is just arrogant rubbish, utter ignorance. Thailand has a vibrant musical culture, a healthy movie industry (if a little obsessed with ghosts, true), and some excellent literature dating back to at least the Ayuthaya period. TD seems to be going through one of those periods where there's a lot of criticism of Thais but to my reading the fault seems mainly to lie with those making the complaints. They refuse to learn anything about the country, its culture, its history, its politics, its religion, its language, or anything else about the country other than what they pick up in idle chit-chat with other, similarly embittered, vacuoles, they believe that the whores and scumbags they hang out with or they've married (along with their voracious families) are typical of the general population, they are unable to see that anything that they are not familiar with since childhood can be anything other than bad. For no good reason they see themselves as superior to the locals, perhaps, wile totally lacking any similarity whatsover to the greats of western thought, they see themselves as torch-bearers of the culture of Plato, Aquainas, and Cicero. To me these people are mental, moral, and spiritual pygmies whose curiosity, generosity of spirit, and sense of adventure died long ago. I pity them but I also despise them since I see them suffering from a self inflicted darkness of the soul which prohibits them from appreciating or, even, its opposite, loathing the world as it really is. They are blind, they are ignorant, they are self-imprisoned, and the pity of it lies in the fact that, with all the opportunities they've been given to understand the manifold wonders and horrors of the world, they have voluntarily bound themselves in chains of ignorance and smug, self-important solipsistic vacuity. Many of us here, me included, are not particularly rich, particularly smart, particularly wonderful people but we still retain the ability to appreciate differences, to enjoy new experiences, to know the difference between how things are and how we would wish them to be, and, most importantly, to enjoy the opportunity to seek out the new and different and learn from it. If you can't do this, and it seems that many who post here can't, then, in all respects but one, you are dead.

The truth hurt him there for sure.