When we talk about developed countries and what constitutes
a liberal society, we often forget an implicit social structure that occurs in developed
countries but is not fully developed in other countries. I’m referring to the
rule of order, or the law order. This is a concept at the very foundations of
classical liberalism. It basically ensures that functions within a society are
bound to perform in a generally predictable fashion to some degree. Of course,
this could never be one hundred percent guarantee. In Washington D.C., the capital
of the most influential country on earth, the trains do not arrive on the
second. But what happens usually is that you can reasonably assume that what
you are promised resembles what you get. This ensures contracts, business,
regulations, traffic, banking, and general social interaction. Often, in the
west we take these very things for granted, and when things don’t work
according to these rules, we become highly unsettled (to put it lightly).
Thailand,
like most developing nations, does not operate by some rule of law. It’s not as
if there is just open anarchy in these developing countries however. Most
countries, a few failed states excluded operate under some general system, even
if that system is not codified or exact. For example many, northern African countries
work upon a system of corruption. This is not an inherent flaw at all, but a
flaw that is the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. As the colonizers left
these nations, they insisted that if the nations were to be truly sovereign
then they must set up institutions and bureaucracy resembling the western
nations. Except the western nations developed those systems and institutions
gradually. Without the skill or the time, nations were forced to develop make
shift institution that didn’t have the capacity to service their populations
needs. So if you are waiting in line to get you permit and everyone wants to
give you the permit, but is unable to because the system is broken, then maybe
you can give them an extra favor of some sort to bypass the system. Over the
years the lesson is ingrained. If you want something done, you have to pay
extra or wait with the chance that it may never arrive. It’s a logical system,
but it’s not a very effective system when it comes to providing the common
welfare, ensuring an environment for economic competition and innovation, or
inviting westerners to stay.
In
Thailand, though corruption does seem to exist in large amounts here, the
system that they operate on is largely relational. This is how much of the East
works. A lot of this can be traced back to Hinduism or Confucianism. Familial piety
is stressed in Confucianism, which means that the family is held in utmost
regard and your duties to your family are clearly structured. The regime in a Confucian
society often takes on paternalistic roles, and consequently the citizens owe
to the government analogously to the son owing to the father. Traditional Hindu
societies are more or less, fatalistic, multi-tiered, hierarchical systems.
That is, your birth determines your social strata and how one social level
interacts with another or with those like themselves is usually known. In most
society the ability to escape you social strata was not an option, however as economic
prosperity leveled the playing field between bourgeois and nobles in Europe,
the same phenomenon is happening in Asia. Buddhism, which is by far the majority
religious group in Thailand, is a more or less an offshoot of Hinduism. The
culture reflects a strong connection of relational dealings over complete flat
dealing.
When I arrived
in Thailand, I thought that I would be in Phichit, teaching fourth grade. This
is what I was told and what the school in Phichit was told. This is not what
happened. I was asked to sign some papers at lunch one day, and told that they
were just extra papers to set up the current situation. In reality they were
papers that sent me to teach in Chiyaphum. Now I don’t mind being in Chiyaphum.
It’s a little less urban than I would ask for, but the people are nice, and the
feeling I get at school is that I am honestly needed here. But the way this
business went down is definitely not something that would be ok in the west.
Picture you uprooted your life to move to Chicago, Illinois. It was a big
transition, but you made it. Then when you arrived at the headquarters of your
new job in the north, they told you the day before you left for Chicago, that you
were being placed in Virginia instead. This is not ok by any western standard.
But here, this is life. Contracts are strong suggestions. Deadlines are wishful
thinking and time tables have about a four hour margin of era i.e.; it takes
seven hours to get to Chiyaphum. It’s actually eleven.
I worry
a lot about my reaction to things here. I don’t want to make the mistake of
being too western centric, or dismissive of what seems to me to be non-typical
behavior. So I’ve thought a lot about saying whether or not the way things
happen in Chiyaphum could be called negative. This is a big question for me
that boil down to two Wittgenstein quotes: “If you could teach a lion to speak,
you would not understand him” and “my goal in philosophy: to let the fly out of
the fly bottle”. These quotes I think, explain the major problem in political
philosophy in the contemporary, digital, and global age. How could we free
something that we could not understand? Is it not presumptuous to even think
that it needs freeing? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m definitely a
westerner, and my classes begin and end on the hour until further notice.
*I missed a deadline for posting Sunday. Lesson planning and
then Re-lesson planning once you realize how high your expectations are, can be
a real pain in the neck.
