I'm sure most farangs know or know of the author Christopher Moore.  He's been writing novels featuring Asia for many years and I've enjoyed many of his books.  He recently posted on his blog some thoughts about Thailand's recent problems after hearing speakers at the Foreign Correspondents Club Thailand.  

Here's a rather lengthy excerpt from his blog post that I thought was interesting.

The Asian mindset is premised on speech as gentle and aimed at expressing sympathy and understanding. One panelist complained that the Western press had not expressed sympathy with the Thais. This idea suggests that speech is a kind of collective therapy exercise. No one loses face. No one in authority is directly challenged. Criticism is wrapped in enough ambiguity that it loses its force and thrust and falls away without hitting a specific target. The repression of free speech, however, doesn’t stop Thais from using poor cousins of freedom of expressions—gossip and rumors and backbiting. But this is done on the sidelines, living rooms, backrooms or behind the keyboards. Such expression is not a substitute for public debate; it is, from the Western point of view, the way people who are bottled up let out steam and seek information are restricted and limited in ways that make them ineffective agents of change. Of course, this kind of information is highly unreliable and mostly wrong in fact. But it doesn’t matter. Harmony is not disturbed.

The Western mindset is authority must be challenged, made to account for its actions and conduct, and that unpopular opinions, silly opinions, even mean spirited and stupid opinions aren’t repressed. They are allowed into the marketplace of words. No one forces anyone to listen. Listening is optional, and many ill-formed, vague opinions are not taken seriously. There is likely a marketplace for many strange views and ideas.  Allowing fringe ideas to enter to the marketplace isn’t a stamp of approval of their merit. The merit of an idea is up to the public. The public is allowed to judge what is being said, heard or seen and make a decision whether to accept it. When they find no audience, like all noise, they drift into the background. It takes a mature society to allow for a wide frequency of opinion, knowing a lot of the noise isn’t productive, but recognizing, that in advance, it is impossible to bottle up opinion on the basis that some of that noise will upset important, and powerful people.

In my view, the Thais have paid a heavy price for their compromised freedom of expression system. It has allowed a breeding ground for incompetence, cronyism, and corruption to arise largely unchecked inside the political realm. Without freedom of expression these virus like agents operate with impunity inside the system, growing until they spill over and there is yet another coup. Those who launched a successful coup against Thaksin Shinawatra’s government in 2006 justified the action on the basis of his alleged cronyism and corruption. They didn’t allege he was incompetent. If anything he was too competent on how to game the system sealed off from public effective debate

You can check out the whole blog post here.

Hi Rob,

Miss you guys.

Nice journal entry!

Interesting reading, and probably correct.

I always like Christopher Moore. He's a smart farang.

Dr Mike.

Rob is now Bill. Who knows why he changed his name.lol

intresting reading