What is happening to the land of 'mai pen rai'?

The Nation 23/01/2010

I HAVE BEEN back in Bangkok now for almost two weeks and am finding discussions about Thai social institutions and politics quite unsettling. Something new and sinister is afoot and it is not just the pontificating and bluster from the red and yellow shirts.

What has happened to the land of smiles and mai pen rai?

400 armoured sedans have been sold in Thailand in the past year - a previously unheard of number

Wives are being trained in the use of pistols

Prices of protective amulets are on the rise
Expectations are being set in many quarters of a great struggle about to break out that will decide Thailand's future as a polity and a nation. Some say that the deity that protects Thailand is asleep, therefore everything is up for grabs. There is talk of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra preparing for his last great battle to influence recovery of his frozen assets, political parties are manoeuvring for knockout blows on constitutional reform.

I was told that some 400 armoured sedans have been sold in Thailand in the past year - a previously unheard of number. Wives are being trained in the use of pistols. Someone was said to have fired a grenade at the office of Army chief Anupong Paochinda. Prices of protective amulets are on the rise.

What has happened to the land of smiles and mai pen rai?

My Viking ancestors, some of whom sacked Paris with Ragnar in the late 700s, used to believe in the Ragnarok - or the final battle at the end of the world where there were to be no winners, only losers, and only two survive to repopulate the world.

I myself have come to the position that violence is to be used on rare occasions only; that moderation is the far wiser course in life.

Extremism perpetuates injustice and prevents the emergence of natural balances and the constructive interaction of forces and counter-forces.

The importance of the centre, of the middle way, of moderation was central to Aristotle's understanding of ethics.

We can all take good counsel from the words of William B Yeats in his poem "Second Coming":

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

For Yeats, when the centre cannot hold and things fall apart, the great beast is coming, an evil thing that no one wants or needs.

Much sound counsel, therefore, can be found in Thai values and traditions that expressly seek the middle-way and avoid open confrontations. Buddhism, of course, is a middle-way between sensualist and ascetic deprivation.

But I have a sense that in Yeat's terms, the Thai centre is not holding, pressed between essentially farang values and judgements on one side, and very hierarchical old Thai social practices on the other. Therefore we see in Thailand recently a tendency where the best appear to "lack all conviction" and the worst are filled with "passionate intensity".

So, what is to be done?

The time has come to reframe the great questions before Thailand and upset the forces pressing for polarisation and confrontation.

Farang perspectives on individualism and hierarchy, resting as they do on emotional, psychological, intellectual and philosophical nihilism of post-modernism, offer little in the way of constructive visions for a common good for Thais.

Unreflective social traditionalism offers little in the way of a constructive vision for the 21st century.

Cooperating, balancing, blending, amalgamating, keeping the core and letting go of the periphery - classic traits of successful Thai modernisation, not to mention successful resistance to the Khmer, the Burmese, Colonialists and the Communists - should now be in vogue.

It is a time for a grand consultation and compromise, and not for demands and rigid self-seeking.

Stephen B Young is a 1963 graduate of the International School of Bangkok and a 1967 graduate of Harvard College. In 1966 he discovered the bronze age site of Ban Chiang.