Some New Mandala readers (including Tosakan and Srithanonchai) have already made comments on a recent The Nation opinion piece. For those who may have missed it, I have excerpted some key sections from the original article:
Bangkok was supposed to host what would have been the first World Moral Forum earlier this month, but unfortunately the New Year’s Eve bombings prompted the organisers to postpone the event to early next year.
The theme of the cancelled March 2 forum, which would have been co-hosted by the Education Ministry, Unesco and the International Buddhist Society, was “Parallel Development for a Balanced Life”…
…The World Moral Forum would have aimed to explore the path towards achieving the balance among four key areas of development: physical, mental, spiritual and moral.
His Majesty the King’s initiatives on the sufficiency economy model would also have figured prominently in the forum, as the philosophy espouses a holistic model of development that has attracted a lot of interest worldwide.
Last year, HM the King was awarded the United Nation’s first Human Development Award for his development work over the past several decades.
Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, president of the Zambuling Institute for Human Transformation, which supports the forum, says several advanced Western economies are materially rich but spiritually poor.
On the other hand, countries like Bhutan are regarded as having a lot of spiritual wealth, even though they may not be materially rich.
- Excerpted from Nophakhun Limsamarnphun, “A holistic approach to the development of human societies“, The Nation, 11 March 2007. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the interesting comments, including those from Tosakan and Srithanonchai.
4 responses so far ↓
1 nganadeeleg // Mar 14, 2007 at 9:43 am
I don’t see any problem in having a forum for discussion on these issues.
However even if the forum produced a perfect model, it cannot be simply imposed on people because that would never work.
People are all at different levels on the learning path of life, some people will never learn in this lifetime, and no one can change their ways until they recognise there is even a problem with the way they currently do things.
2 Republican // Mar 14, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Well, a good example of the grip that the “ultraroyalists” have on Thailand’s media under the current dictatorship. Why do they receive such international support from people like Alfredo at al? Feudal nostalgia? Similar paternalistic attitude to the poor? Common interest?
But I can’t really see the point of making a fuss about what’s written in The Nation. It long ago lost any attempt at maintaining journalistic standards. This opinion piece is a typical example: it could have been written by a palace lady-in-waiting. Let’s face it: the only reason people read The Nation is because it’s written in English. It has zero effect on political discourse in Thailand. The press articles that ARE worth debating and criticizing, because of their actual impact on the Thai public, are those that come out in Phujatkan, Matichon, Thai Rat, Krungthep Thurakij, etc.
3 Srithanonchai // Mar 14, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Readers who would like to base their normative ideas on a realistic theory of modern society (or who want to get rid of unrealistic normative ideas) might for an accessible text turn to Niklas Luhmann. 1989. Ecological Communication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. This book was written when ecological concerns and respective normative prescriptions were very strong in Europe. Luhmann thus wanted to infuse some realism into that debate. Thus the original German-language sub-title of his book, “Can modern society adapt to ecological dangers?” In short, any attempt to deal with modern function systems–the components of modern society–that operate on binary codes by moral prescriptions, that is third values, will not succeed.
4 Jon Fernquest // Mar 14, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Tosakan’s comment: “…throwing trash in the streets, having brothels on every street, riding motorbikes on sidewalks, becoming a politician to steal from the public, etc are generally things that are not conducive to advanced civilization.”
> throwing trash in the streets
In Yangon, Burma common practice was to throw trash off apartment balconies right onto the street in crowded urban areas (along with dog poisoning with baited meat). Large mounds of trash on the side of the roads in most neighborhoods.
Thailand is a model of cleanliness in this respect, although the common practice of casually throwing garbage off boat, out bus or train window, is a little appalling, enough for the ugly head of the inner moralizer monster inside of me (like the movie Alien) to rear its ugly head.
>having brothels on every street,
Is having them hidden, as people tell me they are in Burma, any better? My mother-in-law who is the very essence of jai-yen, shakes in anger as she tells of how the young Burmese women in the brothel, very visible, almost literally in back of her house, are sent back to Burma to die when it becomes obvious they’ve contracted AIDS.
She also tells me how babies who are aborted are pulled out with their hands in a praying position, as if begging for mercy. My point, it’s not that rural people are not often outraged, they are just powerless in the face of entrenched local interests.
Human trafficking, bonded indebtedness (i.e. slavery), young underage prostitutes, all very visible to everyone, along with their customers, who are locals, not the foreigners you’d think they’d be from reading Thailand’s English language newspapers.
Bangkok eventually shut down the brothels of Chiang Rai that used to line the road to the Old Airport, in this respect Bangkok, the center, morally trumped the periphery. Decentralisation would have only perpetuated it.
> riding motorbikes on sidewalks,
Already a new law against this in Bangkok.
“Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, president of the Zambuling Institute for Human Transformation, which supports the forum, says several advanced Western economies are materially rich but spiritually poor.”
Sounds non-falsifiable. From his biography, doesn’t look like he’s engaged with real people and real issues.
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