PADites use the military’s constitution, approved by referendum, to demand various things be done according to the law. But when the constitution allows changes by parliament, they object. Odd, don’t you think, how positions change for political advantage?
If the people were to demand that things be done according to the constitution (i.e. let’s have rule of law), and then objects to proposed constitutional amendments which they believe would undermine the rule of law, well, i see nothing odd about that.
If the TRT/PPP mafia have broken the laws and attempts to amend the constitution so that they and Big Boss can evade the law, this I find, similarly, not odd and totally consistent behaviour for the kind of people that they are.
But when the constitution allows changes by parliament, they object.
Funny, this reminds me of what Big Boss, his Nominee and Henchmen are thinking all the time, ie. “The constitution allows for changes so why are these annoying people objecting all the time. Don’t they know we are the elected government?!? Who are they to protest against us? We’ve already conceded to a system that allows them to voice their concerns by crossing an X once every four years at the ballot box, so what more could they possibly want from us??”
Well, if the people were not allowed to voice their concerns about constitutional amendments that were being tabled in parliament I believe that would be a total authoritarian state, which is of course, the fantasy that the TRT/PPP mafia obviously have, trying to live it out and getting very angered by the people out in the streets obstructing them all the time.
It is interesting that, while sufficiency economy is advocated by many as either lip service or something serious, we still see a lot of spending in the state sector alone by all the branches of government, of which the executive branch seems to be the most modest in comparison with the legislature (construction of new parliament facilities) and the judiciary (one fabulous courthouse after another). What should be one vital aim for all Thais is to get rid of our taste for Western luxuries and to live within our means for average Thais. Shouldn’t we build a thatch-roof parliament house for a change to make it more like a rural cafe where ordinary Thais congregate? Then we can rightly say that our M.P.’s represent the Thai people.
I must say, the idea of the proverb has continued to kick around in my head. And I find it productively tantalizing. IF my argument is right in arguing for an anthropological notion that the treasures are treasures because of their transactional value between an unstated actor and the agent listed at the beginning of each line, then the last line is confounding and transgressive both doctrinally and ritually. Who, after all, is in a relationship of exchange with the Buddha so as to produce the value of the grave and nirvana, and what is the character of that exchange? And yet, despite being confounding and transgressive, your Khmer informants recognize the logic as accurate and meaningful in some sense. Otherwise they wouldn’t see the parable as saying something informative and meaningful. So how exactly is it accurate enough so as to be seen as reasonable? What kind of exchange is possibly imagined as going on?
Thanks for explaining the context of the proverb’s use. Fascinating stuff. It would seem that the parable is a potent discursive barb in the ironic, critical yet ‘underground’ world of informed, competitive ‘professionals’ within the arena of popular Buddhism. And that it is used unevenly, rather like a weapon of the status and ideological weak, so to speak. A way for criticisms of monks – as normative ideal, as practical reality, or both – to be uttered while simultaneously being able to distance onceself from the criticism, since after all it is a traditional bit of parable wisdom cooked up by someone else! Yet cautiously used nonetheless. I love it.
@Erick
I take it back – your reasoning persuades me. Yes indeed, the treasures of men are women, wine, cars, and villas, and those things are not only valued by them, they are often offered to them. The same parallel exists, as you convincingly argue, with the second line. The disjunct of the third line does appear to be the ‘kicker’ in a way, because one simply cannot offer either of these things to the Buddha. This disjunct then seems to highlight a different notion of value.
Your notes on Schopen et al. are quite on the mark – most of chapter one of my dissertation is precisely on such issues, though I am compelled to concentrate on Southeast Asian examples. I do feel that the claim to special power over the dead – not merely what I think of as the ‘pastoral care’ of the dead, but also and especially the power to suppress the malign dead – has been the dominant way in which Buddhism has spread through its history, at least thus far.
As for the social uses of the proverb: it is rare, and I never did study it systematically. It was brought up to me on a number of different occasions, and since I did more research with Buddhist laypeople (especially donchee / maechi, and funerary workers) than with monks, the setting was always ripe for a certain amount of ‘transgressive humor.’ When others brought it up to me it was always, uniformly, when there was no ‘Buddhist official’ (monk, aacaarya, &c.) present, and always with a giggle that marked both nervousness and humor. That is to say, while it indicated some rather deep meaning, it was also very much a joke.
When I brought it up on the other hand, to check my understanding, or to see how widespread recognition of the proverb was, the giggle was also present, but the responses varied depending on audience. When there were no Buddhist officials around, there was more relaxed laughter, and occasionally “O! He knows that one!” and ice was progressively broken. When around a Buddhist official, the official would either ignore it and the conversation would move to other topics, or he would give traditional exegesis as discussed earlier.
Poor generals, all misunderstood and unloved. Perhaps we should all be praying for them. But then again, karma maintains that as you sow so shall you reap, that’s if they believe in it as true Buddhists.
You said it yourself, Grasshopper. Calling oneself a liberal, or anything else for that matter, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. And American self-interest has always veered between parochialism/protectionism/isolationism and interventionism/free trade imperialism. Just like their history of liberal reforms and conservative backlash in cycles.
Mainstream you said and yet in the same breath it’s over with the breakfast show. Armchair generals and revolutionaries you see plenty of particularly in the Internet era, but Chomsky is important if you agree that analysis and ideas are important, checks and balances are important. What you or I think of him and the rest is a matter of opinion.
Our dear leaders anywhere in the world don’t pick up a rifle themselves, or their offspring by and large for that matter, but send the sons and daughters of ordinary people to fight their wars like Messrs Bush and Blair. And the consequences of the wars are socialised whereas the rewards may be reaped only by the few. If the people win through in a just war against oppression or foreign occupation then we are all likely to benefit.
I sympathise with Hla Oo but you have to lay the lion’s share of the blame for the civil war since independence at the door of the Socialist government of U Nu and their counterparts in the military who later grabbed power for themselves in the name of the Union. I couldn’t be more emphatic that violence/terrorism on the part of the state is no way to solve legitimate political grievances. As someone said before, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and we’ll all be blind and toothless in the end.
Thanks, Hla Oo, for your personal reflections on this and other Burma topics. They are very welcome and so please keep them coming.
The transition you outline here – from relatively ordinary student/soldier to battle-hardened power-monger – is one that I think many New Mandala readers would be keen to learn more about.
These lines between “thuggery” and “decency”, between “youth” and “experience”, between boyish “dreams” and adult “reality” are, I feel, a particularly interesting area for further exploration. Understanding more about the ways that particular generals have been educated and indoctrinated is one thing. It is quite another to peel back some of the layers and look at the way that since the 1970s (when most of these men joined the army) the institutional framework and evolution of the tatmadaw has shaped a whole generation of “survivors”.
If you could say something more about the (future SPDC) men you knew, I’m sure many of our readers would find it most illuminating.
[…] by voting for their favourites. It’s all a bit of good fun, and is another reason to check out The Lost Boy — run by Phuket-based journalist, Matt […]
I went to an army high school together with two of younger Burmese Generals in SPDC during late sixties and early seventies. Thuggish and unsophisticated were not the qualities I would assign to both of them. They were as decent as you and I were and as normal and as intelligent as you and I were as normal boys growing up, only to become powerful and hated men later.
One thing Burmese Army and the brutal civil war did to them was turning them into disciplined, brutalized, and traumatized hard men. Do you know that 80% of their colleagues were killed during the height of civil war in late seventies and whole eighties? Any Burmese officer has only two options- either get killed or become wealthy and powerful later as the survivors advanced- as in ancient imperial times. (In Burmese, Thay Yin Myay Gyi, Shi Yin Shwe Htee) Getting killed was a 80% sure way for most of them as they fought the hard battles especially against Chinese supported BCP.
As efficient killing machines as they are, their only logical response to the dissent is use of force and so they did in abandon. The line between thuggery and decency is getting blurred as the glasses they wear to look at the civilian population is getting grayer and grayer as they grow old in absolute power.
Also compared with other armed forces in SE Asia, especially Thailand and Indonesia, Burmese generals have had basically no experience dealing with free market economy and freely evolving business(the main pillars of civil society) as, first, most of their early years were under a socialist system, and later when they reformed the economy into market economy the western democracies have imposed various sanctions and killed off their economic inspirations.
Now they are like threatened fighting-dogs in a very tight corner, just struggling to survive in a very hostile world. Than Shwe basically showed it by his strange reaction to Ban-Ki-Mon’s visit just after Nargis. Like a bewildered child, he just didn’t know how to respond!
Sidh: Now, we have to be really greatful for the coup-group to have bowed out after a while, right?
Kuson: At least, Suthichai Yoon seem to have a better solution, since he wrote a comment headlined, “PAD: The right diagnosis — but the wrong prescription” (or something to this effect). Maybe, you can ask him?
Lao Nhay is a fantastic acquisition for the National Library of Australia. As far as I know, this is the only library to hold the newspaper besides the Biliothèque national de France in Paris. Together with Xat Lao, featured on NM in March last year, it positions the library with the best in the world to research twentieth-century Lao history. Let’s hope the NLA continues to acquire such important materials as they become available.
Armed struggle? Some armchair warrior from America is calling for armed rebellion against that huge Army whose existence has been simply because of that nasty civil war raging since 1948. He might have watched latest Rambo movie too many times!
We poor Burmese have been fighting wars for how long, we don’t even remember now. First, three Anglo-Burmese Wars, then many rebellions against British, then against Japanese Imperial Army during Second World War, and now long-going civil war against communists and ethnic rebellions.
My great-grand father, my grand father, then my father, and I, men of all four successive generations, fought all in theses brutal wars and the only reason my son is not fighting a war now is he was born in Australia. Violence will cause more violence and that vicious cycle will never end if we still want more blood of Burmese.
Your post and photos reminds me of the Manaw Bwe scene from that book “A Boy Soldier” I have read last year. The book was based on the period of early seventies when KIA and Burmese Army were fighting each other in a savage war.
In the book, local KIA Battalion and the local Burmese Army Battalion arranged a temporary ceasefire so that the village could have a long suspended Manaw celebrations for that war-torn region right by the China border.
I am glad that people now have a lasting peace in Kachin State and enjoy the Manaw Festival. I hope the current ceasefire will last forever!
Michael Moore and Naomi Klein are hacks that have diluted the blood supply of bleeding hearts. Noam Chomsky is a public intellectual that lives in a time when the Western public is diluted with anti-market markets. He can’t do anything but blow his whistle on a large scale in an overly marketed fashion which, again, dilutes everything, preventing real change because he is someone who people talk about over lattes – briefly expressing guilt about their economy costing lives abroad. Other than his large frame of reference, nothing really seperates him from the countless other academics who also stand for reason.
They are not dissenting voices because they are mainstream, Moe Aung – they are a part of the problem. As soon as you have discussed your work on a breakfast TV show, you are finished. As I found recently, when I used the word deforestation I had been sucked into it, even though I usually reject terms like ‘terrorism’ or ‘globalisation’. I’m clearly still in it’s clutches because I am ranting about it.
The West’s self interest is exactly that, and exactly why we should not involve ourselves with Myanmar because it is against our self interest — that is if we are truly liberal, which we are not and why we have our consistent u-turns you mention.
Burma should have it’s own consistent self-interest that we Westerners cum-liberals can follow too don’t you think? I don’t see how anyone sitting at a desk and chair in MIT being interviewed by an American history student can start having a greater vested interest in Burma/Myanmar than the comfort of their immediate surroundings.
I don’t and that’s why I’m sitting at a desk and chair with a laptop, and not out in the Karen jungles being a soldier of ‘virtue.’ Maybe real Karen soldiers are not actually there at all, making this post calling for an uprising necessary!
Lattes with Noam. I’d buy that book and read it on an island in the Mergui archipellago while listening to the world service as the more just, equitable society takes root in the fires of revolution!
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Time to go home
re# 42
PADites use the military’s constitution, approved by referendum, to demand various things be done according to the law. But when the constitution allows changes by parliament, they object. Odd, don’t you think, how positions change for political advantage?
If the people were to demand that things be done according to the constitution (i.e. let’s have rule of law), and then objects to proposed constitutional amendments which they believe would undermine the rule of law, well, i see nothing odd about that.
If the TRT/PPP mafia have broken the laws and attempts to amend the constitution so that they and Big Boss can evade the law, this I find, similarly, not odd and totally consistent behaviour for the kind of people that they are.
But when the constitution allows changes by parliament, they object.
Funny, this reminds me of what Big Boss, his Nominee and Henchmen are thinking all the time, ie. “The constitution allows for changes so why are these annoying people objecting all the time. Don’t they know we are the elected government?!? Who are they to protest against us? We’ve already conceded to a system that allows them to voice their concerns by crossing an X once every four years at the ballot box, so what more could they possibly want from us??”
Well, if the people were not allowed to voice their concerns about constitutional amendments that were being tabled in parliament I believe that would be a total authoritarian state, which is of course, the fantasy that the TRT/PPP mafia obviously have, trying to live it out and getting very angered by the people out in the streets obstructing them all the time.
Have you had enough of sufficiency?
It is interesting that, while sufficiency economy is advocated by many as either lip service or something serious, we still see a lot of spending in the state sector alone by all the branches of government, of which the executive branch seems to be the most modest in comparison with the legislature (construction of new parliament facilities) and the judiciary (one fabulous courthouse after another). What should be one vital aim for all Thais is to get rid of our taste for Western luxuries and to live within our means for average Thais. Shouldn’t we build a thatch-roof parliament house for a change to make it more like a rural cafe where ordinary Thais congregate? Then we can rightly say that our M.P.’s represent the Thai people.
“The treasures of man are women, wine, cars and villas…”
I must say, the idea of the proverb has continued to kick around in my head. And I find it productively tantalizing. IF my argument is right in arguing for an anthropological notion that the treasures are treasures because of their transactional value between an unstated actor and the agent listed at the beginning of each line, then the last line is confounding and transgressive both doctrinally and ritually. Who, after all, is in a relationship of exchange with the Buddha so as to produce the value of the grave and nirvana, and what is the character of that exchange? And yet, despite being confounding and transgressive, your Khmer informants recognize the logic as accurate and meaningful in some sense. Otherwise they wouldn’t see the parable as saying something informative and meaningful. So how exactly is it accurate enough so as to be seen as reasonable? What kind of exchange is possibly imagined as going on?
“The treasures of man are women, wine, cars and villas…”
Thanks for explaining the context of the proverb’s use. Fascinating stuff. It would seem that the parable is a potent discursive barb in the ironic, critical yet ‘underground’ world of informed, competitive ‘professionals’ within the arena of popular Buddhism. And that it is used unevenly, rather like a weapon of the status and ideological weak, so to speak. A way for criticisms of monks – as normative ideal, as practical reality, or both – to be uttered while simultaneously being able to distance onceself from the criticism, since after all it is a traditional bit of parable wisdom cooked up by someone else! Yet cautiously used nonetheless. I love it.
Crown Prince scouting European airports
Your last sentence says it all, Reg. Although we might amend to “like the rest of us”.
“The treasures of man are women, wine, cars and villas…”
@Erick
I take it back – your reasoning persuades me. Yes indeed, the treasures of men are women, wine, cars, and villas, and those things are not only valued by them, they are often offered to them. The same parallel exists, as you convincingly argue, with the second line. The disjunct of the third line does appear to be the ‘kicker’ in a way, because one simply cannot offer either of these things to the Buddha. This disjunct then seems to highlight a different notion of value.
Your notes on Schopen et al. are quite on the mark – most of chapter one of my dissertation is precisely on such issues, though I am compelled to concentrate on Southeast Asian examples. I do feel that the claim to special power over the dead – not merely what I think of as the ‘pastoral care’ of the dead, but also and especially the power to suppress the malign dead – has been the dominant way in which Buddhism has spread through its history, at least thus far.
As for the social uses of the proverb: it is rare, and I never did study it systematically. It was brought up to me on a number of different occasions, and since I did more research with Buddhist laypeople (especially donchee / maechi, and funerary workers) than with monks, the setting was always ripe for a certain amount of ‘transgressive humor.’ When others brought it up to me it was always, uniformly, when there was no ‘Buddhist official’ (monk, aacaarya, &c.) present, and always with a giggle that marked both nervousness and humor. That is to say, while it indicated some rather deep meaning, it was also very much a joke.
When I brought it up on the other hand, to check my understanding, or to see how widespread recognition of the proverb was, the giggle was also present, but the responses varied depending on audience. When there were no Buddhist officials around, there was more relaxed laughter, and occasionally “O! He knows that one!” and ice was progressively broken. When around a Buddhist official, the official would either ignore it and the conversation would move to other topics, or he would give traditional exegesis as discussed earlier.
Cheers,
Exceptionalism and the Burmese generals
Thanks Hla Oo. This is a good post and provides much food for thought.
A Paragon of Uncertainty
[…] regime what would be first to go for the urban elite? Meals at posh places in Siam Paragon? Trips to Europe? Any superfluous […]
Exceptionalism and the Burmese generals
Poor generals, all misunderstood and unloved. Perhaps we should all be praying for them. But then again, karma maintains that as you sow so shall you reap, that’s if they believe in it as true Buddhists.
Armed struggle: The way forward?
You said it yourself, Grasshopper. Calling oneself a liberal, or anything else for that matter, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. And American self-interest has always veered between parochialism/protectionism/isolationism and interventionism/free trade imperialism. Just like their history of liberal reforms and conservative backlash in cycles.
Mainstream you said and yet in the same breath it’s over with the breakfast show. Armchair generals and revolutionaries you see plenty of particularly in the Internet era, but Chomsky is important if you agree that analysis and ideas are important, checks and balances are important. What you or I think of him and the rest is a matter of opinion.
Our dear leaders anywhere in the world don’t pick up a rifle themselves, or their offspring by and large for that matter, but send the sons and daughters of ordinary people to fight their wars like Messrs Bush and Blair. And the consequences of the wars are socialised whereas the rewards may be reaped only by the few. If the people win through in a just war against oppression or foreign occupation then we are all likely to benefit.
I sympathise with Hla Oo but you have to lay the lion’s share of the blame for the civil war since independence at the door of the Socialist government of U Nu and their counterparts in the military who later grabbed power for themselves in the name of the Union. I couldn’t be more emphatic that violence/terrorism on the part of the state is no way to solve legitimate political grievances. As someone said before, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and we’ll all be blind and toothless in the end.
Exceptionalism and the Burmese generals
Thanks, Hla Oo, for your personal reflections on this and other Burma topics. They are very welcome and so please keep them coming.
The transition you outline here – from relatively ordinary student/soldier to battle-hardened power-monger – is one that I think many New Mandala readers would be keen to learn more about.
These lines between “thuggery” and “decency”, between “youth” and “experience”, between boyish “dreams” and adult “reality” are, I feel, a particularly interesting area for further exploration. Understanding more about the ways that particular generals have been educated and indoctrinated is one thing. It is quite another to peel back some of the layers and look at the way that since the 1970s (when most of these men joined the army) the institutional framework and evolution of the tatmadaw has shaped a whole generation of “survivors”.
If you could say something more about the (future SPDC) men you knew, I’m sure many of our readers would find it most illuminating.
Best wishes to all,
Nich
Lost Boy under fire
[…] by voting for their favourites. It’s all a bit of good fun, and is another reason to check out The Lost Boy — run by Phuket-based journalist, Matt […]
Exceptionalism and the Burmese generals
I went to an army high school together with two of younger Burmese Generals in SPDC during late sixties and early seventies. Thuggish and unsophisticated were not the qualities I would assign to both of them. They were as decent as you and I were and as normal and as intelligent as you and I were as normal boys growing up, only to become powerful and hated men later.
One thing Burmese Army and the brutal civil war did to them was turning them into disciplined, brutalized, and traumatized hard men. Do you know that 80% of their colleagues were killed during the height of civil war in late seventies and whole eighties? Any Burmese officer has only two options- either get killed or become wealthy and powerful later as the survivors advanced- as in ancient imperial times. (In Burmese, Thay Yin Myay Gyi, Shi Yin Shwe Htee) Getting killed was a 80% sure way for most of them as they fought the hard battles especially against Chinese supported BCP.
As efficient killing machines as they are, their only logical response to the dissent is use of force and so they did in abandon. The line between thuggery and decency is getting blurred as the glasses they wear to look at the civilian population is getting grayer and grayer as they grow old in absolute power.
Also compared with other armed forces in SE Asia, especially Thailand and Indonesia, Burmese generals have had basically no experience dealing with free market economy and freely evolving business(the main pillars of civil society) as, first, most of their early years were under a socialist system, and later when they reformed the economy into market economy the western democracies have imposed various sanctions and killed off their economic inspirations.
Now they are like threatened fighting-dogs in a very tight corner, just struggling to survive in a very hostile world. Than Shwe basically showed it by his strange reaction to Ban-Ki-Mon’s visit just after Nargis. Like a bewildered child, he just didn’t know how to respond!
Time to go home
Sidh: Now, we have to be really greatful for the coup-group to have bowed out after a while, right?
Kuson: At least, Suthichai Yoon seem to have a better solution, since he wrote a comment headlined, “PAD: The right diagnosis — but the wrong prescription” (or something to this effect). Maybe, you can ask him?
Lao Nhay
Lao Nhay is a fantastic acquisition for the National Library of Australia. As far as I know, this is the only library to hold the newspaper besides the Biliothèque national de France in Paris. Together with Xat Lao, featured on NM in March last year, it positions the library with the best in the world to research twentieth-century Lao history. Let’s hope the NLA continues to acquire such important materials as they become available.
National pride restored!
What a perfect blend of natural beauty, culture and modernism!
Armed struggle: The way forward?
Armed struggle? Some armchair warrior from America is calling for armed rebellion against that huge Army whose existence has been simply because of that nasty civil war raging since 1948. He might have watched latest Rambo movie too many times!
We poor Burmese have been fighting wars for how long, we don’t even remember now. First, three Anglo-Burmese Wars, then many rebellions against British, then against Japanese Imperial Army during Second World War, and now long-going civil war against communists and ethnic rebellions.
My great-grand father, my grand father, then my father, and I, men of all four successive generations, fought all in theses brutal wars and the only reason my son is not fighting a war now is he was born in Australia. Violence will cause more violence and that vicious cycle will never end if we still want more blood of Burmese.
National pride restored!
And here is Burma’s answer to Thailand’s national pride:
Mr Crusher and Ms Quench 2008, Aung Khaing Win and Wut Yi Hypo respectively.
It appears that Mr Crusher’s national dress is his birthday suit.
Armed groups at the Myitkyina Manau
Your post and photos reminds me of the Manaw Bwe scene from that book “A Boy Soldier” I have read last year. The book was based on the period of early seventies when KIA and Burmese Army were fighting each other in a savage war.
In the book, local KIA Battalion and the local Burmese Army Battalion arranged a temporary ceasefire so that the village could have a long suspended Manaw celebrations for that war-torn region right by the China border.
I am glad that people now have a lasting peace in Kachin State and enjoy the Manaw Festival. I hope the current ceasefire will last forever!
Armed struggle: The way forward?
Michael Moore and Naomi Klein are hacks that have diluted the blood supply of bleeding hearts. Noam Chomsky is a public intellectual that lives in a time when the Western public is diluted with anti-market markets. He can’t do anything but blow his whistle on a large scale in an overly marketed fashion which, again, dilutes everything, preventing real change because he is someone who people talk about over lattes – briefly expressing guilt about their economy costing lives abroad. Other than his large frame of reference, nothing really seperates him from the countless other academics who also stand for reason.
They are not dissenting voices because they are mainstream, Moe Aung – they are a part of the problem. As soon as you have discussed your work on a breakfast TV show, you are finished. As I found recently, when I used the word deforestation I had been sucked into it, even though I usually reject terms like ‘terrorism’ or ‘globalisation’. I’m clearly still in it’s clutches because I am ranting about it.
The West’s self interest is exactly that, and exactly why we should not involve ourselves with Myanmar because it is against our self interest — that is if we are truly liberal, which we are not and why we have our consistent u-turns you mention.
Burma should have it’s own consistent self-interest that we Westerners cum-liberals can follow too don’t you think? I don’t see how anyone sitting at a desk and chair in MIT being interviewed by an American history student can start having a greater vested interest in Burma/Myanmar than the comfort of their immediate surroundings.
I don’t and that’s why I’m sitting at a desk and chair with a laptop, and not out in the Karen jungles being a soldier of ‘virtue.’ Maybe real Karen soldiers are not actually there at all, making this post calling for an uprising necessary!
Lattes with Noam. I’d buy that book and read it on an island in the Mergui archipellago while listening to the world service as the more just, equitable society takes root in the fires of revolution!