Tuesday, 3 April 2012

The Monk and the Prostitute

A salacious headline right! I assure you my post today is hardly that tawdry, but the title does feature in the body of this blog so read on!

I had a bit of a revelation while I was in Melbourne, no no, not the old, "wow Melbourne is better than Sydney." Hardly a revelation, more a fact.

I was having a discussion over dinner with a dear old friend, who paradoxically is looking to move and find sanctuary from an oppressive, invasive government by moving to Singapore. He admitted as much, but his real purpose was to be closer to a place dear to his heart, and indeed mine, Thailand.

He like so many others fell in love with Phuket and the Thai people. He said that he relished their freedom. A comment he made about the people in India as well. I must admit I thought momentarily, 'they certainly are free in a way, very different than me'. They have an overarching freedom from the paradigm that I live in the world as I know it. Which brings me to a bit of a compare and contrast exercise.

As soon as I started revelling in the perceived freedom of those Thai people, bereft of road rules and the same odd societal pressures that I view as being part of a 'western system' (I realise that many people consider the same thing, but I am talking in terms of the only thing I know to be real, my own perception), but I quickly caught myself before I dived into a detached fantasy where the people in other cultures live a life so much richer than I. In fact I feel that they are no more free than we are, that is to say neither society, the one I know or they society that I associate with Thailand is more free than the other.

I feel that the Thai people have a certain freedom, that is very qualified. Their society is geared towards a lifestyle that is, from my own very small experience, limited and constrained by the fact that they are still developing and they have not quite worked out where they are. They are a deeply religious people, and yet they cater to the gluttonous, sinful , depraved, hedonistic western desires. Which is great for tourists but it creates a country that suffers a bizzare dissonance, a strange juxtaposition of the Buddhist Monk and the Prostitute.

I use these cliché examples to show the polar opposite spectrum that are on show in the Thai culture. Buddhism is pervasive in the Thai culture, much of population devotes a part of themselves to the philosophies of Siddhartha and the various schools of thought devoted to his teaching. (of the 65 million people 94% are Buddhist) And yet such a large part of the economic machine that drives Thailands development is the western element, catering to tourism. A successful business model it must be said. Often times people travel to the glorious South East Asian country to partake in the rather prolific sex trade, or the crazy parties like the Full Moon party on Koh Phangan.

What does all this have to do with my original contention that the Thai people are no more free than we are, despite some obvious differences in what is allowable in the streets of Phuket and Bangkok.

They are trapped in a world that is globalising rapidly, trying to buttress the need to have economic expansion in a capitalist world economy, with a religion that percieves that all things perish and grasping for things such as possessions is the great obstacle that an the individul must overcome to reach enlightenment, bliss and ultimately nirvana.

Now compare this with the society that I have grown up in. We have the opportunity to shape our lives, we chose our career path, we can choose our friends and our schools, we can choose our car. We have so much choice.... well now we need to qualify that a little don't we. To successfully achieve that which you choose, you need to have a healthy balance of choice and the right conditions... conditions that constrain your choice. Say you want to be a Racing car driver. Sure you can choose to be a racing driver but first a few things need to go the right way for this to happen.

1. You have to like motor sport, something in your life, probably early, needs picq your interest in fast cars.
2. You then have to make the conscious decision to start racing.
3. then have the funds to partake in racing s that you can adquetly skill yourself.
4. Have a genetic disposition to;
    a. work hard and hone your skills
    b. have the right physical attributes, (balance, reaction speed, endurance, phyique) to succeed.
5. Network, find the right people to advance your career.
6. Have the mental endurance to deal with competing.

Now all this make my initial comment, 'we can choose what we want' seem a little basic. But it is often what our society imparts on the individual.

Statements like "reach for the stars you can achieve anything", "put your mind to it and you will succeed" and "you can be whatever you want to be" are often used to motivate people. But as you can see above in my simplistic example of what kind of circumstances are required to actually achieve, that which you have chosen, is not simply a matter of...just choosing.

I don't think there is a free society. Choices are limited wherever you are, that is the price of living as a social unit. It has enabled our species to survive, grow and flourish. Some systems are different than others but all must constrain the desires of those within the system for the betterment of the unit. Not fun but I guess it is the price you pay to live in a society that isn't chaos.

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