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  hardie karges 12:19 pm on July 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 466 ), colonialism, Thailand ( 76 )   

  Did the passive society create Buddhism 

  or did Buddhism create the passive society? Certainly the two go hand in hand in Thailand. Whether it’s been to their long-term benefit is another question. It’s interesting to compare Thailand and Vietnam, with similar geographical and historical backgrounds. They’ve both occupied virtually the same region for at least the last two thousand years, Vietnam long an explicit colony of China. Though Thailand’s history is far murkier, they, too, received heavy influence from China, before ultimately rejecting it. Both were militant and heavily expansionist half a millennium ago until the arrival of the Europeans. Thailand could see the writing on the wall and co-operated, even giving up land to the French and British in exchange for sovereignty. They are now one of Asia’s newest ‘tigers’ and are steadily moving out of the ranks of the unemployed Third World poor. Vietnam caused problems, over and over and over. They are now one of the poorest countries in the world. How do you spell ‘dignity’ anyway?

  Joram Arentved is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Joram Arentved 3:09 pm on September 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Now, that my labor situation has become a too big complication to me, you’re welcome to receive any of my further & most relevant information, i.e. about, what’s my obligation, so that I can of course tell & e.g. help us both & maybe some good lawyer find out, what’s a good future & maybe even why: to be continued.
    Greetings from Yours, faithfully, Jo-
    ram Arentved, arentved@in.com.

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    Joram Arentved 11:57 am on November 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    It also spells out in another way, & of course I can reveal it to you, honesty! Greetings, arentved@in.com

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  hardie karges 7:29 am on July 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Buddhism ( 466 ), marriage ( 3 ), temples, Thailand ( 76 )   

  Some Thai boys too young for sex or labor 

  renounce their worldly attachments to join the priesthood, a shortcut to fulfillment. To renounce something they never had has no meaning. They’re just lazy, looking for an easy life. Their heads are already shaved for school, so it’s not much of a transition. For most it’s just a summer session, then back to the real world. Some kids have no choice. They end up at the temple because there’s literally nowhere else, just like cats and dogs abandoned by their owners. You can even crash there if you’re too poor for a hotel. Don’t abuse that privilege like the Thai parliament members who travel around the country staying in hospital VIP rooms because they’re entitled to free medical care. Temples in Thailand are literally the last resort, for life and death, religion and cremation, social activity, even marriage. Tang and I got married like that in Thailand. We just showed up in the temple first thing in the morning, taking food prepared for the monks, then proceeded to kneel in front of a monk as he lectured us on our responsibilities, ultimately blessing our union. Later we feasted with family and only then did we actually get ‘hitched’, literally. Family members took turns lashing our hands together with white cord while food and drink flowed in the periphery. Fortunately Boy Scouts here don’t learn real knots.
   
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  hardie karges 11:28 am on July 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: PROSTITUTION ( 4 ), Thailand ( 76 )   

  The real problem is the dark side: 

  child prostitution, sex slavery, AIDS, etc. Even in modern almost-ready-for-prime-time Thailand, such unsavory situations still raise their ugly heads and lower their ugly butts on to the fresh silky-smooth forms of young girls that can only be described as flesh-candy to the mostly lower-class local male population. Everybody gets in on the deal in a situation in which women routinely get the short end of the stick in a society where the first male child is the unquestioned crown prince. Old habits die hard in a Chinese-descended culture. Parents don’t want to pay to educate a girl who’s going to marry and never use it. Many women love the idea of playing housewife to the big strong male, at least until he dumps her for some teen-ager, and she’s left to fend for herself. It’s a vicious cycle. Of course, there’s also another Dark Side: long dark hair and big dark eyes. That one’s easier to swallow. Ignorance lures eternal, twitching its cute little butt with a rhythm akin to salsa, a universality akin to ketchup. All you need is the missing link.

   
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  hardie karges 8:38 am on July 16, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: PROSTITUTION ( 4 ), Thailand ( 76 )   

  Thailand’s imperfect mix 

  shows its smiling face to the modern world as a fait accompli with little knowledge of the particular punctuations in its cultural evolution, and semi-deliberate masking of some of its more onerous social problems. Many, if not most, third world countries have grievous social problems. It might even be considered a rite of passage into a higher orbit of civilization if the bumps in the road weren’t so painful sometimes. Unlike the problems of racism, drug economies, violence, corruption, and stealth that other third world countries suffer, the main social problem in Thailand is the ‘victimless’ crime of prostitution, and its convenient scapegoat, poverty. Like other victimless crimes such as gambling and drug use, prostitution is especially difficult to eradicate since it can be a selling point for tourism that brings in the much-needed hard stuff, cash, that is. The much-needed physical love that so many Western men lack in their own ‘femi-nazied’ countries gets filled by professionals in the service of industry, so no one gets hurt. At least that’s the idea. The reality of course can be somewhat different. For one thing, most up-for-grab Thai women aren’t especially professional. Many wear their hearts right on their sleeves, and those hearts can get hurt or hardened. For another thing, the tourists go home, usually. The Thais are left in a society where Buddhist merit making frequently takes second priority to materialistic meretriciousness. Of course, many tourists decide to stay and live or retire, and many Thai women go abroad with their newfound boyfriends and husbands. I wouldn’t say they’re Thailand’s largest export yet, but their numbers are significant. But that’s not the real problem, of course.

   
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  hardie karges 11:01 am on July 15, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ENGLISH ( 7 ), language ( 172 ), THAI ( 5 )   

  THAI LANGUAGE 

  Thailand enters the modern world with multiple role models, as the cultural DNA of language readily shows, like not-so-parfait with American English on top as the current business-role model. Below that is Indian Sanskrit in its own and Khmerized forms as the religious and pre-modern model, corresponding to the French/Latin influence in English. Deeper still is the Chinese and Thai tribal past, the racial and linguistic underpinnings of the entire race, overlaid on a Mon pre-history, analogous to the Anglo-Saxon and later Danish incursions on a Celtic/Pictish sub-strata. Somehow it all gets mixed and mashed into a fairly uniform system of pronunciation that is recognizably Thai regardless of the origin. For a modern newcomer to the stew, sometimes the hardest part of learning the language is learning how to correctly mispronounce English. I wonder if Indians feel the same way about the manipulation of Sanskrit into forms unrecognizable. I’m sure that French feel the same way about English, but that probably says more about them than language considering what they themselves did to Latin. I know it’s hard to learn the language of a people that you don’t especially like. That’s for sure.

   
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  hardie karges 8:26 am on July 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), sitcoms   

  The thing that separates America from the rest of the world, 

  more than Hollywood, more than rock-and-roll, are sitcoms. No one else even comes close to the slices of life that roll off the prime time sandwich line every night at retail for the homies, wholesale for the rest of the world, at least for those who ‘get it’. Most don’t. Most countries that produce their own shows go for news, variety, games, soap operas, even historical dramas, but few can come up with a true sit-com, endless variations on a non-variable context, essentially doing the same show over and over again, always different. Formerly the butt of jokes from the intelligentsia, sitcoms now draw some of Hollywood’s cleverest writers and has truly established itself as an art form to be reckoned with. As an abstract format largely divorced from current events and local issues, they do especially well in rerun and export, forever immortalizing the phrase, “the one where”.

  America » Travel America: Tourist Guide is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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  hardie karges 9:22 am on July 13, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), Christmas ( 11 )   

  The American dream is of Chinese trinkets, 

  mass consumption, two cars in every garage and a bird in every oven, Sunday dinner and Christmas presents. As a child I could never sleep on Christmas Eve, not because I was waiting for Santa Claus (nobody believed that shit), but because I couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting to see what would be in my possession by next morning. Possession is 9/10 of the law, remember. Those are the halcyon days of pure memory, pristine and distinct, etched and beveled by space and time to a fine sheen and polish that belies the exigencies of the given situation. By my teens Christmas might be more like hopping in the car to go run off to the lake to watch the early morning stream rise off the water as the steam rises off my brain from some senseless argument. Family is elusive, as is friendship, just because of all the choices involved, I guess. Freedom is dangerous; role-playing is safe; love is always just out of grasp. I think maybe relationships kill the love that otherwise grows wild in vacant lots. The minute you incorporate, the business goes south.

   
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  hardie karges 11:28 am on July 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), history ( 42 ), migration ( 3 )   

  America is the happy hunting ground of myth and legend, 

  milk and honey on the mind’s tongue, horses and camels for the taking, more than that for the leaving. For millennia, the smart money went north and east, following mountains, following seacoasts, following herds, trekking Siberia. The farther they went, the bigger the payoff. When they went as far as they could go, they went even farther. That’s where the big payoff was, on the other side, mammoth and mastodon, bear and deer, buffalo and cows as far as the eye can see. There’s only one problem: you might not get back. That water level’s a bit finicky. On the other hand, you might not want to go back. Happy hunting grounds are nice, if you’re the hunter, not the hunted. The stupid animals act like they’ve never seen a spear before, just standing there, waiting to take it in the gut. Just wait until the summer and wait until the tide’s out and you can walk right across. Then one summer the men had to wade across to get to the animals, since they wouldn’t come across on their own anymore. Then it just kept getting deeper and deeper. On both sides the animals just headed south for the winter and didn’t go back, so the people did the same. They just followed the animals. Domestication of animals was probably accidental. Once big game was cut off from its endless source, the extant stock was probably selectively corralled for future use. One surprising result of this was likely the realization that the animals became tame in captivity. You could even put reins on some of them. The rest is history.

   
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  hardie karges 8:19 am on July 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 )   

  America is the queen bee, bloated and pregnant, 

  laying eggs in the shape of dollars. When the honeycomb is full, then it’s time to expand the line and found new colonies. Bred on royal jelly and raised on traffic jams, she only leaves the hives in swarms, for maximum protection. America thinks she rules the world, but in fact the world rules her. When she’s outlived her usefulness, the worker bees of the world will abandon her like a sinking ship, and find another frisky cow with big tits and big attitude and big hair. The workers win by default, but only as a historical group. Individually they live and die with the frequency of sunrise, constantly occurring at all times somewhere in the world. America is a concept, a role model, playing the role of empire for the sake of history. It’s nasty work, but somebody’s got to do it. If America did not exist, it would be necessary to create it, a bloated self-assured queen bee kept fed and fucked for common benefit, laying the eggs that the rest of the world needs to pay their bills. When the rest of the world doesn’t need her any more, then they’ll start investing elsewhere. They’ll stuff a new lowly commoner with royal jelly until she lets it go to her head and starts acting like a queen, throwing her weight around and printing money that the rest of us can speculate on.

   
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  hardie karges 7:13 am on July 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 )   

  The smile of a sheep-killing dog defines the Bush administration, 

  the look of a pampered pet thinking he’s getting away with something. Hey, it’s hard ruling the world, very hard. It has to be hard for proper penetration. America’s got her hands in too many pies, her fingers in too many tight spots. You can’t control everything everywhere all the time. It’s simply not possible. The harder she tries, simply the more resentment she engenders. It’s always better to lead by example. Truth, beauty, and goodness will always be attractive. Lies, coercion, and evil will never be. The end result will be the same regardless, justice seeking a path to the light, regardless of how much turbulence has to be endured in the process. Injustice is simply not a workable system in the long run. Truth stands there like a monument to the future, a leather-bound book, a cruel teacher with cane in hand ready to force compliance. Still it works, just like good old-fashioned punishment, forcing the unrighteous into submission.