I’m on hold now, we never know when things will turn south, it might happen tomorrow, tonight, or even 1 hour from now, but like this week rally, it can go down as fast.
Without first-hand experience, I guess the Reds’ blood sacrifice ritual challenges two metanarratives revolving around the mass rally. First, given its being one of the most extreme forms of “non-violence,” the blood sacrifice on the one hand confirms the Reds’ commitment to “non-violence,” controversial however, and on the other hand asks the “non-violence” preachers if this kind of “bloodshed” can be regarded as “non-violent.”
Second, given its being one of the self-sacrifice forms, it challenges the accusation that the protesters were hired to participate in the rally. (But for those highly skeptical, it may be that they were also hired to donate their blood!!) The Reds’ blood sacrifice may involve supernatural beliefs. But central to its political function is to challenge all the humiliations and accusations for the Reds.
I find it irritating to have to spend so much time arguing with anti-Thaksin people, when I personally marched against Thaksin in 2005-6. Even wore the dumb yellow headband. I thought it was crucial that Thaksin be called out for being a power-abusing, autocratic, press-censoring, extrajudicial-assassination-authorizing prick who was hoarding my tax baht. But it’s even worse to see him being used as a deceptive moral cover by people and systems who do the exact same things but more politely, the “Thai way.”
“And do you think Thaksin didn’t do the same, just because you don’t have a photo of it?” >> Do you really think that anybody can chose how to act in the presence of the king? Done your homework lately?
WLH – very good argument there, sometime I got irritated about Thaksin = Hitler analogy also, because it doesnt bring anything to the table, it was simply a smear campaign formulated by the PAD and it doesnt explain how bad or corrupted Thaksin is.
I still get a kick out of the fact that Sondhi L is the publisher of Asia Times, and that he lets Sean C openly discuss succession. Didn’t Sondhi call for Thaksin’s head for referring to succession in a TV interview?
First rain of the season, well-timed. Even if you support the reds’ ritualistic political theater, it’s a relief to see it washed away for sanitation reasons.
If the rally ends peacefully, as appears it will, that’s a victory for the reds, isn’t it? They showed up in numbers, behaved, solicited surprising support from many Bangkok citizens, did their blood thing, didn’t damage the economy, and left to go back to their jobs. And they even defied Thaksin a couple times. Maybe it wasn’t brilliant, but surely the competence shown will give them some needed credibility. Now if they could just dump Thaksin altogether…
it may symbolize a feudal and hierarchical society, but not necessarily a draconian one. Now, please clean up your room and do your homework.
I would assume that you know that Thailand is probably the only country in the world that still has lese majeste law and enforced it pretty aggressively, dont tell me that’s not “draconian”, you do know about that right? yeah….
р╕┤btw, the whole prostrating and ritual thing is nonsense, actually the whole institution is nonsense
Frank Lee #40
To Tarrin at 36:
Sure, but don’t forget Thaksin’s ‘bag man’ i.e. Suriya (Mr. CTX scandal) Jungrungroongreangkit – fromer Thai Rak Thai Secretary General. He seems to have enough money to buy EVERYONE off – including the media.
What we are experiencing is a game. It is like a football game between Manchester United and a pub team, played out in front of millions.
A lot of ego’s are involved with this game, and Manchester United are surprised and worried that there is so much national and even international interest. Before the game started they considered it just another game in a very long season, and not a particularly important one.
For Manchester United, they firmly believed that anything less than the total annhialation of the other team will be considered a disgrace, whilst for the pub team, anything short of annhialation will probably be considered a victory.
Manchester United are not used to losing, they have spent millions on their team, millions on their ground, millions on publicity. They have a long and illustrious past. They really do not like it that so much interest is being shown to the “Country Bumpkin” pub side.
The problem is, the pub team has one very decent player, Frank. He used to play for their rival team, Manchester City. He is making life very difficult for United, to the extent, that they sometimes are even on the defensive.
The game plan for United, is to “stretcher off” Frank, they hate him anyway, and they firmly believe that with him gone, the pub side will crumble. Until that is achieved, they will continue to use the ever changing rules of the game to their advantage, and hope that the referee continues to give them favourable decisions, as they always have in the past.
The question for United at the moment is:
How will Frank leave the pitch ? Will it be by ambulance or under his own power.
The actual outcome of the game is a forgone conclusion, but what Manchester United are just starting to realise is, that maybe, people will start to look at them in a different light. They may question their so called Superstar talent, question their massive salaries and worse, question their status.
They are starting to realise, that maybe its a more important game than they first realised..
Well, for those who are so offended at this backward ritual of prostrating oneself before the king, where is your outrage and derision at your beloved Red Shirts for using blood and (phoney) Brahmin priests to cast curses and spells on the government?
Of course, I’m sure you will find a way to excuse their backwards actions and beliefs as once again being the fault of the evil genius King Bhumibol. If it weren’t for him, Thailand would be a modern 21st century society where everyone is logical and rational and such primal superstitious beliefs and actions don’t exist. Right?
Talk about double standards and hyprocrisy.
Oh, and Elroy, son, it may symbolize a feudal and hierarchical society, but not necessarily a draconian one. Now, please clean up your room and do your homework.
Many thanks to Thongchai Winichakul and Jim Taylor for clearing up what was otherwise a confusing scene from this living drama.
What has apparently baffled many uninformed observers is the fact that the sacrificers took their own blood and then spilled it themselves, for no apparent result.
This apparently led some people to mistake it for a scene from another drama, the Life of Brian, in which a group of would be rescuers of their saviour, Brian, descend on the Romans who seized him. Then, instead of sacrificing their blood at the hands of these Romans, in order to save Brian, they commit group harakiri.
What Winichakul and Taylor make clear, however, is that these two scenes are not parallel because the Red Shirts are no more stupid or irrational than the rest of us and their sacrifice cannot be trivialized.
The blood ritual that the reds staged on Tuesday prompted me to think of some historical precedents for this type of protest — just in an attempt to consider alternatives to the lazy “desperation” argument that Shawn Crispin has made (by the way, there is plenty of Nation-style “opium pipe reporting” in there, such as the notion that “it’s unclear to analysts how many of the 100,000-plus protesters on Sunday came of their own accord and how many were paid to participate”).
In any case, the reds’ ritual reminded me of the famous mock hanging that Thammasat University students staged back in 1976 to ask for justice for the victims of 1973. So I went back to look at the pictures of the event that famously preceded the violent crackdown:
On one level, the similarity between the two events is obvious, to the extent that they are more or less equally macabre. Aside from the mock hanging, the pictures appear to show something akin to a “die-in” protest (of course, Thongchai is much better qualified to comment on exactly what the ceremony entailed).
I was also struck by the sign affixed on the tree over the head of the student who is playing the part of the hanging victim, which reads:
If I have this right: “Do you still remember? A debt of blood that has yet to be paid off.”
Considering that this “debt of blood” hasn’t yet been paid off — if anything, the struggle for democracy has produced many more martyrs and victims since then — I was wondering whether this ritual is an attempt to symbolically link the red shirts to the democratic movements of the past, more than it is a mere stunt or act of desperation. I am wondering, that is, whether the intended audience might be the Bangkok middle class, as opposed to simply the (justifiably transfixed) foreign media and the mostly already converted provincial voters/urban underclasses. Yesterday’s post by Sritanonchai has some pictures that make that connection even more explicit.
I am also wondering whether those who sneered at Tuesday’s events as “bloody desperation” and “passively violent insanity” would have described the kids who got slaughtered after performing a similarly macabre ceremony in 1976 with the same condescension — or, perhaps, whether their contempt for the red shirts has more to do with the fact that these people are mere slum dwellers and “rural hordes.”
Political rallies in Thailand are getting sillier and more unsanitary each new season. More silliness perhaps will be enough to quieten the ‘reds rage’ underneath . . . Perhaps and I am hopeful.
But we all know silliness could easily spark violence.
News that the diminished ranks of Reds will be resorting to ‘biological (fecal)’ rites now to get attention scares me. Soldiers will definitely react unpredictably if the Reds start employing septic tactics.
But the clouds above Bangkok had very visibly darkened. Lord Buddha (not voodoo) to make his belated Thai political comment(s), perhaps?
blood symbolises sacrifice…shedding blood is considered a desparate sacrificial act whereby ancestors had to shed blood to save the nation: Thai-land means “freedom”, but at present it is under an elite fascism that refuses to hear the voice of the people in their struggles…As for Crisipin’s comments: I think he trivialises this act and ridicules through over simplification the real issues and consequently the suffering of so many folk in Thailand at this time.
JustaReader makes a good point. Crispin deals mainly with “leaders” and conspiracies in his articles. What he misses in this one is that even if leaders and old-style politicians are at work, something else is as well. And that doesn’t come from leaders. It is the stuff of the people who come out for a reason. Those reasons vary (as they did for PAD) but there is a commonality about what is opposed (as there was for PAD).
What PAD had that the red shirts don’t have is money to maintain this protest. All the nonsense about whether Thaksin is broke or is suddenly wealthy again that infects some at the Nation is beside the point, for it is clear that the reds do not have the supplies and money that PAD had. Nor do the red shirts have, as PAD did, that the military on their side. So their actions need to be measured against the threat ranged against them. That moderation might change if frustrations rise. In addition, the nature of the reds and yellows as movements is different in the sense that PAD had a reasonably united leadership (with some ups and downs) whereas the red shirts are far more divided.
This is partly because the red shirts are much more grassroots-based and organized, which is a moral strength. But it is also a political weakness that will also sap their energy (along with the tremendous heat of the days as they demonstrate).
So Crispin might be right in predicting that the conservative forces will win. But the ideas and grievances that have been raised are unlikely to disappear.
A voodoo? In what way isn’t singing a national anthem or the royal anthem (to honor a — fascist — imagined community or a semi-god on earth) not a vood00? The royal anthem is probably the most voodoo since it commands people to act the same silly way that they are not supposed to question, and it can get people in prison for not singing it when everybody else does. These are voodoo effects.
Many Buddhist rituals are as “superstitious” and “irrational” as the blood sacrifice. In fact the Reds’ blood sacrifice is less voodoo because it doesn’t make us “blindly” believe in it. But so many rituals in our every day life make us forget that they are unscientific rituals as well.
But if the royal anthem and Buddhist rituals have eanings or purposes that we can respect, so does the invented blood sacrifice.
When we read/ research about peasant or popular culture or cults, the main task is to understand its meanings, cultural messages, symbolism, their “rational” consciousness despite its superstitious / irrational look. We don’t dismiss these practices simply because of their unscientificity or their superstition.
A “ritual” is not supposed to be understood literally, and its effects are never assumed to be literal either. Most of those participants in a popular ritual, either Buddhist, Brahmanic, Christian, Western, or non religious one, either in older time or in the present time, do not take their rituals literally either.
Of course, the Reds’ blood sacrifice is a new invention. But it DOES produce some strong effects (sure, not to the degree that would result in the House dissolution). Those who invented it operated within certain sets of beliefs that are available to them with the hope that the ritual makes messages or meaningful impacts on the public.
We participate in “unscientific” rituals every day. Are we supposed to get ridiculed and dismissed as irrational or superstitious people? The fact that we celebrate festivals, or participate in the graduation ceremony, wedding, funeral, Buddhist ordination, or sing a Christmas song, don’t make us a believer in every literal expression of those rituals. Those practices don’t make us irrational than other humans.
The Red people are not stupid or irrational than us. Their invented ritual may or may not work. But they are as smart and as stupid like us. In fact, they are creative. i.e. conscious, self-awared, in inventing the ritual for certain purposes while many remain under the spells of the “voodoo” royal rituals.
Sarcastic and politically-motivated comments aside, does anyone have any more information about what religious/supernatural rite exactly was performed? Are there any transcripts or videos of the activity?
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I’m on hold now, we never know when things will turn south, it might happen tomorrow, tonight, or even 1 hour from now, but like this week rally, it can go down as fast.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
Without first-hand experience, I guess the Reds’ blood sacrifice ritual challenges two metanarratives revolving around the mass rally. First, given its being one of the most extreme forms of “non-violence,” the blood sacrifice on the one hand confirms the Reds’ commitment to “non-violence,” controversial however, and on the other hand asks the “non-violence” preachers if this kind of “bloodshed” can be regarded as “non-violent.”
Second, given its being one of the self-sacrifice forms, it challenges the accusation that the protesters were hired to participate in the rally. (But for those highly skeptical, it may be that they were also hired to donate their blood!!) The Reds’ blood sacrifice may involve supernatural beliefs. But central to its political function is to challenge all the humiliations and accusations for the Reds.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
http://focusweb.org/the-reds-war-against-the-aristocrats-reflections-on-the-events-issues-and-perspec.html?Itemid=1
Open thread on red protests
Thanks Tarrin (and A Thai).
I find it irritating to have to spend so much time arguing with anti-Thaksin people, when I personally marched against Thaksin in 2005-6. Even wore the dumb yellow headband. I thought it was crucial that Thaksin be called out for being a power-abusing, autocratic, press-censoring, extrajudicial-assassination-authorizing prick who was hoarding my tax baht. But it’s even worse to see him being used as a deceptive moral cover by people and systems who do the exact same things but more politely, the “Thai way.”
Thai style democracy?
# 44:
“And do you think Thaksin didn’t do the same, just because you don’t have a photo of it?” >> Do you really think that anybody can chose how to act in the presence of the king? Done your homework lately?
Open thread on red protests
WLH – very good argument there, sometime I got irritated about Thaksin = Hitler analogy also, because it doesnt bring anything to the table, it was simply a smear campaign formulated by the PAD and it doesnt explain how bad or corrupted Thaksin is.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
I still get a kick out of the fact that Sondhi L is the publisher of Asia Times, and that he lets Sean C openly discuss succession. Didn’t Sondhi call for Thaksin’s head for referring to succession in a TV interview?
First rain of the season, well-timed. Even if you support the reds’ ritualistic political theater, it’s a relief to see it washed away for sanitation reasons.
If the rally ends peacefully, as appears it will, that’s a victory for the reds, isn’t it? They showed up in numbers, behaved, solicited surprising support from many Bangkok citizens, did their blood thing, didn’t damage the economy, and left to go back to their jobs. And they even defied Thaksin a couple times. Maybe it wasn’t brilliant, but surely the competence shown will give them some needed credibility. Now if they could just dump Thaksin altogether…
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
Thongchai Winichakul – very good writing indeed which pretty much clear out all the “insult” out there,
Thai style democracy?
George Jetson –
it may symbolize a feudal and hierarchical society, but not necessarily a draconian one. Now, please clean up your room and do your homework.
I would assume that you know that Thailand is probably the only country in the world that still has lese majeste law and enforced it pretty aggressively, dont tell me that’s not “draconian”, you do know about that right? yeah….
р╕┤btw, the whole prostrating and ritual thing is nonsense, actually the whole institution is nonsense
Frank Lee #40
To Tarrin at 36:
Sure, but don’t forget Thaksin’s ‘bag man’ i.e. Suriya (Mr. CTX scandal) Jungrungroongreangkit – fromer Thai Rak Thai Secretary General. He seems to have enough money to buy EVERYONE off – including the media.
oh btw, I got this news from http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/169531/decision-on-pad-case-deferred-again
р╣НYeah it was report by Bangkok Post, the same Post that posted “Red Horde” on their front page so are you saying Bangkok Post got paid by Thaksin?? hahaha
Btw about CTX, Bangkokbiz came out in 2008 and admitted that their “misunderstood” the interpretation of the document on CTX, so here
http://www.bangkokbiznews.com/2008/09/22/news_27278542.php?news_id=27278542
hope you can read Thai, but,
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/politics/2008/11/06/entry-1
here some loosely translated Nation’s English version.
Yeah so now its not a scandal anymore isnt it?
Red soi, Red city: A brief commentary from the streets
What we are experiencing is a game. It is like a football game between Manchester United and a pub team, played out in front of millions.
A lot of ego’s are involved with this game, and Manchester United are surprised and worried that there is so much national and even international interest. Before the game started they considered it just another game in a very long season, and not a particularly important one.
For Manchester United, they firmly believed that anything less than the total annhialation of the other team will be considered a disgrace, whilst for the pub team, anything short of annhialation will probably be considered a victory.
Manchester United are not used to losing, they have spent millions on their team, millions on their ground, millions on publicity. They have a long and illustrious past. They really do not like it that so much interest is being shown to the “Country Bumpkin” pub side.
The problem is, the pub team has one very decent player, Frank. He used to play for their rival team, Manchester City. He is making life very difficult for United, to the extent, that they sometimes are even on the defensive.
The game plan for United, is to “stretcher off” Frank, they hate him anyway, and they firmly believe that with him gone, the pub side will crumble. Until that is achieved, they will continue to use the ever changing rules of the game to their advantage, and hope that the referee continues to give them favourable decisions, as they always have in the past.
The question for United at the moment is:
How will Frank leave the pitch ? Will it be by ambulance or under his own power.
The actual outcome of the game is a forgone conclusion, but what Manchester United are just starting to realise is, that maybe, people will start to look at them in a different light. They may question their so called Superstar talent, question their massive salaries and worse, question their status.
They are starting to realise, that maybe its a more important game than they first realised..
Thai style democracy?
Well, for those who are so offended at this backward ritual of prostrating oneself before the king, where is your outrage and derision at your beloved Red Shirts for using blood and (phoney) Brahmin priests to cast curses and spells on the government?
Of course, I’m sure you will find a way to excuse their backwards actions and beliefs as once again being the fault of the evil genius King Bhumibol. If it weren’t for him, Thailand would be a modern 21st century society where everyone is logical and rational and such primal superstitious beliefs and actions don’t exist. Right?
Talk about double standards and hyprocrisy.
Oh, and Elroy, son, it may symbolize a feudal and hierarchical society, but not necessarily a draconian one. Now, please clean up your room and do your homework.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
Many thanks to Thongchai Winichakul and Jim Taylor for clearing up what was otherwise a confusing scene from this living drama.
What has apparently baffled many uninformed observers is the fact that the sacrificers took their own blood and then spilled it themselves, for no apparent result.
This apparently led some people to mistake it for a scene from another drama, the Life of Brian, in which a group of would be rescuers of their saviour, Brian, descend on the Romans who seized him. Then, instead of sacrificing their blood at the hands of these Romans, in order to save Brian, they commit group harakiri.
What Winichakul and Taylor make clear, however, is that these two scenes are not parallel because the Red Shirts are no more stupid or irrational than the rest of us and their sacrifice cannot be trivialized.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
The blood ritual that the reds staged on Tuesday prompted me to think of some historical precedents for this type of protest — just in an attempt to consider alternatives to the lazy “desperation” argument that Shawn Crispin has made (by the way, there is plenty of Nation-style “opium pipe reporting” in there, such as the notion that “it’s unclear to analysts how many of the 100,000-plus protesters on Sunday came of their own accord and how many were paid to participate”).
In any case, the reds’ ritual reminded me of the famous mock hanging that Thammasat University students staged back in 1976 to ask for justice for the victims of 1973. So I went back to look at the pictures of the event that famously preceded the violent crackdown:
http://www.2519.net/newweb/gallery_new/show_room.php?h=8&id_dir=4
On one level, the similarity between the two events is obvious, to the extent that they are more or less equally macabre. Aside from the mock hanging, the pictures appear to show something akin to a “die-in” protest (of course, Thongchai is much better qualified to comment on exactly what the ceremony entailed).
I was also struck by the sign affixed on the tree over the head of the student who is playing the part of the hanging victim, which reads:
р╕вр╕▒р╕Зр╕Ир╕│р╣Др╕Фр╣Йр╣Др╕лр╕б? р╕лр╕Щр╕╡р╣Йр╣Ар╕ер╕╖р╕нр╕Фр╕Чр╕╡р╣Ир╕вр╕▒р╕Зр╣Др╕бр╣Ир╣Др╕Фр╣Йр╕Кр╕Фр╣Гр╕Кр╣Й
If I have this right: “Do you still remember? A debt of blood that has yet to be paid off.”
Considering that this “debt of blood” hasn’t yet been paid off — if anything, the struggle for democracy has produced many more martyrs and victims since then — I was wondering whether this ritual is an attempt to symbolically link the red shirts to the democratic movements of the past, more than it is a mere stunt or act of desperation. I am wondering, that is, whether the intended audience might be the Bangkok middle class, as opposed to simply the (justifiably transfixed) foreign media and the mostly already converted provincial voters/urban underclasses. Yesterday’s post by Sritanonchai has some pictures that make that connection even more explicit.
I am also wondering whether those who sneered at Tuesday’s events as “bloody desperation” and “passively violent insanity” would have described the kids who got slaughtered after performing a similarly macabre ceremony in 1976 with the same condescension — or, perhaps, whether their contempt for the red shirts has more to do with the fact that these people are mere slum dwellers and “rural hordes.”
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
Political rallies in Thailand are getting sillier and more unsanitary each new season. More silliness perhaps will be enough to quieten the ‘reds rage’ underneath . . . Perhaps and I am hopeful.
But we all know silliness could easily spark violence.
News that the diminished ranks of Reds will be resorting to ‘biological (fecal)’ rites now to get attention scares me. Soldiers will definitely react unpredictably if the Reds start employing septic tactics.
But the clouds above Bangkok had very visibly darkened. Lord Buddha (not voodoo) to make his belated Thai political comment(s), perhaps?
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
blood symbolises sacrifice…shedding blood is considered a desparate sacrificial act whereby ancestors had to shed blood to save the nation: Thai-land means “freedom”, but at present it is under an elite fascism that refuses to hear the voice of the people in their struggles…As for Crisipin’s comments: I think he trivialises this act and ridicules through over simplification the real issues and consequently the suffering of so many folk in Thailand at this time.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
Like most Thais, these read shirt leaders are also slaves of voodooism, and therefore there is really no hope for the country.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
BTW, Thitinan has a different take at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/16/thailand-red-shirt-protests
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
JustaReader makes a good point. Crispin deals mainly with “leaders” and conspiracies in his articles. What he misses in this one is that even if leaders and old-style politicians are at work, something else is as well. And that doesn’t come from leaders. It is the stuff of the people who come out for a reason. Those reasons vary (as they did for PAD) but there is a commonality about what is opposed (as there was for PAD).
What PAD had that the red shirts don’t have is money to maintain this protest. All the nonsense about whether Thaksin is broke or is suddenly wealthy again that infects some at the Nation is beside the point, for it is clear that the reds do not have the supplies and money that PAD had. Nor do the red shirts have, as PAD did, that the military on their side. So their actions need to be measured against the threat ranged against them. That moderation might change if frustrations rise. In addition, the nature of the reds and yellows as movements is different in the sense that PAD had a reasonably united leadership (with some ups and downs) whereas the red shirts are far more divided.
This is partly because the red shirts are much more grassroots-based and organized, which is a moral strength. But it is also a political weakness that will also sap their energy (along with the tremendous heat of the days as they demonstrate).
So Crispin might be right in predicting that the conservative forces will win. But the ideas and grievances that have been raised are unlikely to disappear.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
A voodoo? In what way isn’t singing a national anthem or the royal anthem (to honor a — fascist — imagined community or a semi-god on earth) not a vood00? The royal anthem is probably the most voodoo since it commands people to act the same silly way that they are not supposed to question, and it can get people in prison for not singing it when everybody else does. These are voodoo effects.
Many Buddhist rituals are as “superstitious” and “irrational” as the blood sacrifice. In fact the Reds’ blood sacrifice is less voodoo because it doesn’t make us “blindly” believe in it. But so many rituals in our every day life make us forget that they are unscientific rituals as well.
But if the royal anthem and Buddhist rituals have eanings or purposes that we can respect, so does the invented blood sacrifice.
When we read/ research about peasant or popular culture or cults, the main task is to understand its meanings, cultural messages, symbolism, their “rational” consciousness despite its superstitious / irrational look. We don’t dismiss these practices simply because of their unscientificity or their superstition.
A “ritual” is not supposed to be understood literally, and its effects are never assumed to be literal either. Most of those participants in a popular ritual, either Buddhist, Brahmanic, Christian, Western, or non religious one, either in older time or in the present time, do not take their rituals literally either.
Of course, the Reds’ blood sacrifice is a new invention. But it DOES produce some strong effects (sure, not to the degree that would result in the House dissolution). Those who invented it operated within certain sets of beliefs that are available to them with the hope that the ritual makes messages or meaningful impacts on the public.
We participate in “unscientific” rituals every day. Are we supposed to get ridiculed and dismissed as irrational or superstitious people? The fact that we celebrate festivals, or participate in the graduation ceremony, wedding, funeral, Buddhist ordination, or sing a Christmas song, don’t make us a believer in every literal expression of those rituals. Those practices don’t make us irrational than other humans.
The Red people are not stupid or irrational than us. Their invented ritual may or may not work. But they are as smart and as stupid like us. In fact, they are creative. i.e. conscious, self-awared, in inventing the ritual for certain purposes while many remain under the spells of the “voodoo” royal rituals.
Crispin on Thailand’s bloody feud
Sarcastic and politically-motivated comments aside, does anyone have any more information about what religious/supernatural rite exactly was performed? Are there any transcripts or videos of the activity?