*miserychick is actually happy

The Thailand I love, and one I prefer to remember, is full of really amazing food, tropical fruits, beautiful beaches, graceful people, five star services, and shopping paradises. Yet while living and working there from late ’06 to all of ’07, I was always complaining about the absurd stupidity and general laziness that seemed to plague the whole country. By the end of it, I was so stressed out and tired of dealing with Thai people and decided that maybe working in the motherland isn’t such a good fit.

A friend of mine posted a commentary article on fb earlier this week that pretty much summarizes it all. It’s written two months ago, but it does a great job of explaining why a country with a lot of educated people allow these rather embarrassingly useless protests to happen. And because it captured what I wanted to express two years ago, I’m posting the whole thing here:

BANGKOK POST
22 February 2009

COMMENTARY
NO MORE ‘MAI PEN RAI’
By: VORANAI VANIJAKA

The authorities had warring Uthen Thawai and Pathumwan students shaking
hands in front of the cameras, promising peace and harmony. Less than a
couple of weeks later the rival students turned Mahboonkrong into a
battlefield. Embarrassing?  Children are drinking low quality milk because
the suppliers are using imported powdered milk and over diluting it,
while Thai farmers, encouraged by the authorities to adopt dairy farming
as Thailand is always short of milk end up having to dump their (real)
milk in protest because there’s no market for it. Ridiculous?

The authorities say some plants are deemed hazardous, hence farmers
have to use chemical products instead, while studies by the Health
Ministry say that between 1998 and 2003, more than 2,000 farmers each
year fell sick because of agricultural chemicals, with 30 deaths in 1999
alone. Absurd?

The Cabinet approved a film rating system, with categories including
“General Audience”, “13″, “15″ and “18″. More interesting is a category
that will ban films the authorities deem to offend the monarchy,
threaten national security, hamper national unity, insult faiths,
disrespect honourable figures, challenge morals or contain explicit sex
scenes. Which means the new rating system will further legitimise state
power to ban and censor anything arbitrarily. Nauseating?

General Chaiyasith Shinawatra is reportedly performing black magic
rituals against the Democrat-led government, while Post Book, a division
of Post Publishing Plc, has just published Lub Luang Prang, a book about
the rampant use of black magic in Thai politics (pick it up, it’s a
riveting read). Scary?

Incompetence. Corruption. More corruption. Repression. Black magic. The
incidents cited above are from this month alone (and it’s not over
yet).

It seems that regardless of who is in power, whether the “Thaksinistas”
or the “elitists”, sadly the one constant in the Kingdom is … mediocrity.

Look around, sure we have fancy hotels and shopping malls, but as a
society we have only achieved mediocrity. In terms of political and
social enlightenment, in terms of cultural and educational advancement,
in terms of Thailand as a single, sovereign entity, we are quite
mediocre, especially given the high capacity of our human and natural
resources.

We are mediocre because the authorities have worked hard in keeping us
ignorant, shallow and docile, and we let them. We are mediocre because
we let the greedy oppressors get away with their corruption, repression
and ineptitude.

We don’t speak out enough. We don’t protest enough. We don’t march
enough. Ironically, when we do those things, we end up putting on a
yellow or a red shirt at the behest of one greedy oppressor or another -
manipulated into risking life and limb to serve their personal agendas.

That’s why things are as they are in Thailand – stale and stagnant, a
perpetual black hole of mediocrity, while other countries race past us
by. We have excellent human and natural resources, but we simply waste
them away through greed, envy and narrow-mindedness. I would like to 
naively ask my fellow countrymen:

How long are we going to let these people get away with corrupting and
repressing Thailand? How long do we let them keep us dumb and docile?

How long can we hide in the dressing room of a fancy shopping mall, or
at the bottom of a cocktail glass at a society event? How long can we
bury our heads in TV soap operas and gossip rags, or mask ourselves
behind 6cm of skin whitening cream? How long until we surgically remove
the tattoo on our foreheads that says “mai pen rai”? How long before we
get off our behinds and do something about this beloved country of
ours?

The answer is we can put up with all the incompetence, corruption and
repression for a very, very long time. We don’t mind being kept ignorant
and docile for a very, very long time. Why? Because of three little
words that spell out the attitude of our society. Mai pen rai. The
attitude that says: It doesn’t matter. No big deal. It hasn’t anything
to do with me. This is Thailand. It’s just the way it is.

As long as the vanity of the rich is fed by their glamorous lifestyles,
the ignorance of the poor maintained by keeping their eyes glued to
television screens and the middle class kept busy paying bills and
financing homes, cars and debts and panicking over an economic crisis
that occurs every few years – it’s mai pen rai to the social and
political ills of this country.

Sure, at times we might cry and whine about it. Some of us may even
write newspaper commentaries about it. But afterwards everything goes
back to the status quo. Mai pen rai.

Two schools brawling and killing each other for over 30 years? Mai pen
rai – these are just poor, working-class students who couldn’t get into
top colleges.

Children drinking poor quality milk while industry and bureacracy get
rich on their milk monopoly? Mai pen rai – only poor kids have to drink
school milk.

Organic herbs get banned because big business lobbyists have more money
than government officials have morals? Mai pen rai – the Academy
Fantasia all-stars reunion is on TV. Priorities, don’t you know?
Censorship? Repression? Mai pen rai – we’ll just by the DVDs on Silom.

Black magic? Well, this is Thailand, so that stuff is real. Be afraid.
Be very afraid.

That seems to be our attitude. We don’t express outrage. We don’t
demand justice. We don’t monitor action. We just sit back and let the
authorities pay lip service to having an investigation, then a few
months later everyone forgets about it. Mai pen rai.

We Thais have it easy. There’s fish in the sea and rice in the fields.
When we run out of fish in our sea, we just fish in other people’s seas
and either get kidnapped by Somali pirates or thrown into prison by
Burmese authorities. But that’s okay, mai pen rai. They are just poor
people.

Mind you, this attitude of mai pen rai, this cancer of apathy isn’t
just confined to just Thailand. It’s a worldwide plague. However, at
least to my knowledge, no other country has ever used “mai pen rai” (or
the apathy of a culture) as a proud tourist attraction. There are even
books written about the beauty of the “mai pen rai attitude”.

Dear people, this mai pen rai attitude, for the sake of our King, our
country and for the future of our children, we need to stop it. We
really do.

Posted on Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 14:22 UTC