In a convoluted way the author is not wrong. Social science (in contrast to STEM subjects) is a soft discipline anyways, so you are allowed to twist and turn your topic.
In any case, here are my two cents worth of twisting an turning on Christmas Day:
1. Any sort of “-ism” from Fundamentalism to Multi-culturalism, from Nationalism to Globalism, from Buddhism to Communism, from Feminism to Tribalism, … is per defitionem “oxymoronic” concepts.
2. Many Asians seem to suffer from a deep-seated insecurity (trauma (sic)) about “who they are, what they have collectively gone through, …” since a lot of Asian “cultures” and nations are based on identification with a clan, a tribe, an ethnic group, a religion, … as if people need to follow “pheromonic” signals (like ants and bees) to be “harmoniously happy”.
I prefer to live like a noble savage, a free rugged individual whose goal in this life is not “faux-community”.
Merry Christmas!
It was a bit of a struggle to get there (the celebrity culture digression being unhelpful in my view) but after the promising opening we finally reach a quite profound paragraph.
This perspective is relevant not only in characterising or demarcating one ethnicity from another, it [is] also helpful in resolving inter-ethnic relations. The ethical injunction here [is] to admonish different communities[in order] to see the abyss of limitations and vulnerability in both their own communities and that of others. Ethnic harmony can only grow, paradoxically, when different groups recognise the historical disharmony and discord each other have experienced and are guilty of.
No need to be something you’re not but try to meet the other guy half way.
Multiculturalists are so fundamentalist because they do not embrace true fundamentalist fundamentalists.
As they are both fundamentalists anyway according to those dead wise guys, them two should get in bed together to breed peace babies?
Can’t think of anything more wackily deranged thought. But still this does fit in with higher education for sure. Only surprise is they did not confer DSc straight away for such original concept.
CPM was fighting for Malayan independence. In any case, CPM was mostly focused on Malaya, not Singapore. Many sources state that after British smashed CPM between 1948 to 1955 with the eventual lifting of the Communist Insurgency in 1960, CPM’s operations in Singapore was virtually crippled. Many sources also said that Barisan and other Leftists were not communist controlled but happened to share similar interests as the communists.
The need for heroes and villains is an indication that patronage is hard-wired in humans (as it is in other social animals). It’s a characteristic that’s exploited by patrons and their underlings. In Thailand, the romantic illusion of hero versus villain is even enforced. Bhumibol = hero; Thaksin = villain. Those who have got them the wrong way round are persecuted by the Bhumibol lackeys. It’s like a conflict between the supporters of two rival alpha males in a troop of monkeys. The truth is that great patrons are a mixture of good and bad, some better and some worse than others. Dispassionate analysis is interesting, romantic illusion is tiresome, and persecution is evil.
When a former Mufti of Perlis posts a Youtube segment with a speech by Adolph Hitler and laments that Hitler left some Jews alive, and when Perkasa and Isma on a daily basis exhort Malays to avoid non-Muslims as if they were Ebola, and when a UMNO Government, beholden to fascist, racist and Islamocentric interests, continues to persecute innocent people, on false sedition charges, anything less than a DIRECT AND UNEQUIVOCAL comparison between Malaysia today and Nazi Germany, between 1933-1945, is an inaccurate portrayal of what is happening in Malaysia today. Muslim scholars around the world have repeatedly called Malaysia, an “embarrassment”. I have written to the German Ambassador in KL, eight times, regarding eight specific instances of Malay politicians and extremists using Nazi iconography to slander Jews and Chinese-Malaysians. “Auslander” and “Pendatang’ mean exactly the same thing. Some Malays are so sick of their own odious compatriots and craven government, they have joined non-Malays in Sydney, Melbourne, London and elsewhere. Two of those would be relatives of mine. This attrition of skilled and educated Malaysians will continue. Arcane academic phrases and sociobabble is not going to solve Malaysia’s problems. That Malaysia was even allowed to serve a two-term on the U.N. Security Council is a sick joke. Those that would turn Malaysia into a fascist Islamic state must be told, in no uncertain terms, that it will not happen, and if Malaysians are not prepared to defend their constitution and rights out in the streets and defend the honour of their nation at their own physical risk, then they will get the 10 % of the nation they deserve, rather than 100 % of the one they do not.
There is no real argument in your post or in the excerpt of the interview to refute anything said by Rose or Andrew, just your (and Michael Yon’s) usual tactics of ad-hominem attacks and straw man arguments.
Chualongkorn was CLEARLY a democrat because he freed the slaves. He remains IMMENSELY GENUINELY revered in Isaarn, because of this.
Isaarn culture REVERES Him above all others – and even in Krung Thep (Bangkok) you can see this, where every Isaarn taxi driver has Chulalongkorn’s picture in top, pride of place, in their car. Isaarn cultural REVERANCE for Chulalongkorn, seems beyond your simple minded purely economist analysis, Khaen Phet. Isaarn reveres Chulalongkorn, as their Lincoln.
The Spirit of Democracy and Religious Pluralism in Thailand – Somparn Promta
Application of Buddhism and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for Moral Development through Information Technology via Citizen Smart Card – Mano Mettanando Laohavanich
Theology of Religions in the Context of Buddhist-Muslim Relations-Kieko Obuse
Managing Religious and Cultural Pluralism in Indonesia -Azyumardi Azra
Pluralism before and After the State: Religious Diversity and Difference in Malaysia from the Pre-Modern Era to the Present -Farish A Noor
2. Promta, S. (2010), The View of Buddhism on Other Religions. The Muslim World, 100: 302–320.
3. “The Thai Muslims and the Participation in the Democratic Process: The Case of 2007 Elections” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs Vol. 29, No. 3, (2009) : 325-336
4. Imtiyaz Yusuf (ed.) Religion, Politics and Globalization – Implications for Thailand and Asia (Bangkok: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., 2009).
5. Imtiyaz Yusuf (ed.) Religion and Democracy in Thailand (Bangkok: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., 2008).
You are deeply confused Mr. Mazard. We remain in profound and fundamental disagreement, as your final complaint makes clear.
You believe that academics avoid researching and writing about Buddhism and politics. I don’t believe that they avoid this topic. My example/case study above is evidence that they don’t avoid it.
You believe that there are few if any academic journals or venues that would publish their research and writing. I believe there are many, if one knows where to look. My example/case study above is evidence that there many academic journals that publish works on Buddhism and politics.
You don’t know where to suggest they publish their works other than New Mandala. I do. They could start with the 7 journals cited in my example/case study. And then they could move on to: The Journal of Asian Studies, The Journals of Southeast Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, South East Asia Research, The Journal of Burma Studies, Sojourn, and – yes – Contemporary Buddhism.
“The number of English-language studies about ‘Buddhism and the state’ within Theravada Buddhist studies is truly staggering. There have been a number of studies in French and German as well. This has been a scholarly obsession for forty years, caused partly by the popularity of neo-Marxist trends in the field, and by the student revolutions in Thailand in the 1970s.”
– Justin McDaniel
From the “Thai Buddhism” entry in the Oxford Bibliographies Online Buddhism edition; last updated 12/19/2012.
Mr Gafor’s fervent accusations of Dr Thum Ping Tjin and others have backfired on himself. It turns out that it is Mr Gafor himself who hasn’t read declassified information holistically and who has omitted critical pieces of information.
A more holistic reading of declassified materials than the one by Mr Gafor will reveal that Operation Coldstore was a political, not a security decision proposed by Lee Kuan Yew, insisted by the Tunku and agreed by the British even before Mr Gafor’s so-called ‘incriminating’ information about communist penetration into Barisan. Communist penetration into Barisan, even if it had been true, was at best a pretext and not the reason for Operation Coldstore.
Such was the lack of a clear conscionable purpose that even the Tunku believed that Operation Coldstore was being used by Lee Kuan Yew to get rid of opposition in parliament.
‘Operation Coldstore’, as it was called, had been planned for some time. But for months before it commenced, the Internal security Council, on which the Malayan government was represented along with Britain and Singapore, argued over the extent of the arrests and their timing. Memoirs and top-secret diplomatic correspondence reveal the mutual suspicions that hung over these meetings. The Tungku believed Singapore’s Prime Minister wanted to use the operation to remove his entire parliamentary opposition; Lee was wary of the Tunku not taking equal responsibility for the arrests; meanwhile the British wanted the left-wing movement in Singapore smashed but, so as to give their actions at least a semblance of ‘fair play’, they awaited some clear pretext for doing so.
[Singapore A Biography, Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasinghamchow, page 405-406]
Well, I’m following your advice in a sense, Tocharian, but I’m no longer working on the politics of Therav─Бda countries in Asia (nor Pali, etc.).
So, if you tune in to my youtube channel (or check my blog), you’ll currently find discussions of the politics of хдзш║НщА▓, ч╛дчЬ╛ш╖пч╖Ъ, х║╖цЬЙчВ║, цнжшАЕх░Пш╖п хпжчпд, etc.
Why don’t you just write a couple of papers about these things and send it off to some of those journals. People publish a lot nowadays. (“pauca sed matura” is so yesterday!)
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Multi-culturalism: the flipside of fundamentalism?
In a convoluted way the author is not wrong. Social science (in contrast to STEM subjects) is a soft discipline anyways, so you are allowed to twist and turn your topic.
In any case, here are my two cents worth of twisting an turning on Christmas Day:
1. Any sort of “-ism” from Fundamentalism to Multi-culturalism, from Nationalism to Globalism, from Buddhism to Communism, from Feminism to Tribalism, … is per defitionem “oxymoronic” concepts.
2. Many Asians seem to suffer from a deep-seated insecurity (trauma (sic)) about “who they are, what they have collectively gone through, …” since a lot of Asian “cultures” and nations are based on identification with a clan, a tribe, an ethnic group, a religion, … as if people need to follow “pheromonic” signals (like ants and bees) to be “harmoniously happy”.
I prefer to live like a noble savage, a free rugged individual whose goal in this life is not “faux-community”.
Merry Christmas!
Reponse to Poh Soo Kai’s allegations
Was your great uncle killed in Malaysia or Singapore? Was he killed in 1963 or afterwards?
Multi-culturalism: the flipside of fundamentalism?
It was a bit of a struggle to get there (the celebrity culture digression being unhelpful in my view) but after the promising opening we finally reach a quite profound paragraph.
This perspective is relevant not only in characterising or demarcating one ethnicity from another, it [is] also helpful in resolving inter-ethnic relations. The ethical injunction here [is] to admonish different communities[in order] to see the abyss of limitations and vulnerability in both their own communities and that of others. Ethnic harmony can only grow, paradoxically, when different groups recognise the historical disharmony and discord each other have experienced and are guilty of.
No need to be something you’re not but try to meet the other guy half way.
Multi-culturalism: the flipside of fundamentalism?
Hard to know to laugh or cry!
Multiculturalists are so fundamentalist because they do not embrace true fundamentalist fundamentalists.
As they are both fundamentalists anyway according to those dead wise guys, them two should get in bed together to breed peace babies?
Can’t think of anything more wackily deranged thought. But still this does fit in with higher education for sure. Only surprise is they did not confer DSc straight away for such original concept.
Multi-culturalism: the flipside of fundamentalism?
Good !
yap, multiculturalism works best when we’re talking about what to have for dinner tonight and worst when we’re discussing those pesky sex organs. 😛
Ahhhh, the day when we are all fundamentally liberal democrats…or is it democratic liberals?
Am I the only one eagerly awaiting the last man?———howdy Nietzsche.
(good article)
Reponse to Poh Soo Kai’s allegations
My great uncle was killed by the CPM. He wouldn’t have agreed with you or your mom.
Reponse to Poh Soo Kai’s allegations
CPM was fighting for Malayan independence. In any case, CPM was mostly focused on Malaya, not Singapore. Many sources state that after British smashed CPM between 1948 to 1955 with the eventual lifting of the Communist Insurgency in 1960, CPM’s operations in Singapore was virtually crippled. Many sources also said that Barisan and other Leftists were not communist controlled but happened to share similar interests as the communists.
Reponse to Poh Soo Kai’s allegations
My mom is a Singapore retiree, she doesn’t agree with you.
Thai Coup: A normal way of life
The need for heroes and villains is an indication that patronage is hard-wired in humans (as it is in other social animals). It’s a characteristic that’s exploited by patrons and their underlings. In Thailand, the romantic illusion of hero versus villain is even enforced. Bhumibol = hero; Thaksin = villain. Those who have got them the wrong way round are persecuted by the Bhumibol lackeys. It’s like a conflict between the supporters of two rival alpha males in a troop of monkeys. The truth is that great patrons are a mixture of good and bad, some better and some worse than others. Dispassionate analysis is interesting, romantic illusion is tiresome, and persecution is evil.
Multi-culturalism: the flipside of fundamentalism?
When a former Mufti of Perlis posts a Youtube segment with a speech by Adolph Hitler and laments that Hitler left some Jews alive, and when Perkasa and Isma on a daily basis exhort Malays to avoid non-Muslims as if they were Ebola, and when a UMNO Government, beholden to fascist, racist and Islamocentric interests, continues to persecute innocent people, on false sedition charges, anything less than a DIRECT AND UNEQUIVOCAL comparison between Malaysia today and Nazi Germany, between 1933-1945, is an inaccurate portrayal of what is happening in Malaysia today. Muslim scholars around the world have repeatedly called Malaysia, an “embarrassment”. I have written to the German Ambassador in KL, eight times, regarding eight specific instances of Malay politicians and extremists using Nazi iconography to slander Jews and Chinese-Malaysians. “Auslander” and “Pendatang’ mean exactly the same thing. Some Malays are so sick of their own odious compatriots and craven government, they have joined non-Malays in Sydney, Melbourne, London and elsewhere. Two of those would be relatives of mine. This attrition of skilled and educated Malaysians will continue. Arcane academic phrases and sociobabble is not going to solve Malaysia’s problems. That Malaysia was even allowed to serve a two-term on the U.N. Security Council is a sick joke. Those that would turn Malaysia into a fascist Islamic state must be told, in no uncertain terms, that it will not happen, and if Malaysians are not prepared to defend their constitution and rights out in the streets and defend the honour of their nation at their own physical risk, then they will get the 10 % of the nation they deserve, rather than 100 % of the one they do not.
Thai Coup: A normal way of life
There is no real argument in your post or in the excerpt of the interview to refute anything said by Rose or Andrew, just your (and Michael Yon’s) usual tactics of ad-hominem attacks and straw man arguments.
Thai Coup: A normal way of life
Chualongkorn was CLEARLY a democrat because he freed the slaves. He remains IMMENSELY GENUINELY revered in Isaarn, because of this.
Isaarn culture REVERES Him above all others – and even in Krung Thep (Bangkok) you can see this, where every Isaarn taxi driver has Chulalongkorn’s picture in top, pride of place, in their car. Isaarn cultural REVERANCE for Chulalongkorn, seems beyond your simple minded purely economist analysis, Khaen Phet. Isaarn reveres Chulalongkorn, as their Lincoln.
Blind spot in Buddhist Studies
FYI – See following publications:
1. ASEAN RELIGIOUS PLURALISM – The Challenges of Building Socio-Cultural Community Edited by Imtiyaz Yusuf, Bangkok (2014)
Contents
Introduction – Imtiyaz Yusuf
Keynote Address – ASEAN Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Building a Socio-Cultural Community – Surin Pitsuwan
The Buddhist Attitude to Religious Pluralism – Pinit Ratanakul
Religious Pluralism and The Qur’an – Mahmoud Ayoub
Transcending Pluralism, Celebrating Friendship – Joas Adiprasetya
The Spirit of Democracy and Religious Pluralism in Thailand – Somparn Promta
Application of Buddhism and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for Moral Development through Information Technology via Citizen Smart Card – Mano Mettanando Laohavanich
Theology of Religions in the Context of Buddhist-Muslim Relations-Kieko Obuse
Managing Religious and Cultural Pluralism in Indonesia -Azyumardi Azra
Pluralism before and After the State: Religious Diversity and Difference in Malaysia from the Pre-Modern Era to the Present -Farish A Noor
2. Promta, S. (2010), The View of Buddhism on Other Religions. The Muslim World, 100: 302–320.
3. “The Thai Muslims and the Participation in the Democratic Process: The Case of 2007 Elections” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs Vol. 29, No. 3, (2009) : 325-336
4. Imtiyaz Yusuf (ed.) Religion, Politics and Globalization – Implications for Thailand and Asia (Bangkok: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., 2009).
5. Imtiyaz Yusuf (ed.) Religion and Democracy in Thailand (Bangkok: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., 2008).
Blind spot in Buddhist Studies
You are deeply confused Mr. Mazard. We remain in profound and fundamental disagreement, as your final complaint makes clear.
You believe that academics avoid researching and writing about Buddhism and politics. I don’t believe that they avoid this topic. My example/case study above is evidence that they don’t avoid it.
You believe that there are few if any academic journals or venues that would publish their research and writing. I believe there are many, if one knows where to look. My example/case study above is evidence that there many academic journals that publish works on Buddhism and politics.
You don’t know where to suggest they publish their works other than New Mandala. I do. They could start with the 7 journals cited in my example/case study. And then they could move on to: The Journal of Asian Studies, The Journals of Southeast Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, South East Asia Research, The Journal of Burma Studies, Sojourn, and – yes – Contemporary Buddhism.
Review of Kingdom in Crisis
Thai royalty have always behaved like this – why are you so surprised by the CP’s conduct?
Blind spot in Buddhist Studies
“The number of English-language studies about ‘Buddhism and the state’ within Theravada Buddhist studies is truly staggering. There have been a number of studies in French and German as well. This has been a scholarly obsession for forty years, caused partly by the popularity of neo-Marxist trends in the field, and by the student revolutions in Thailand in the 1970s.”
– Justin McDaniel
From the “Thai Buddhism” entry in the Oxford Bibliographies Online Buddhism edition; last updated 12/19/2012.
Reponse to Poh Soo Kai’s allegations
Mr Gafor’s fervent accusations of Dr Thum Ping Tjin and others have backfired on himself. It turns out that it is Mr Gafor himself who hasn’t read declassified information holistically and who has omitted critical pieces of information.
A more holistic reading of declassified materials than the one by Mr Gafor will reveal that Operation Coldstore was a political, not a security decision proposed by Lee Kuan Yew, insisted by the Tunku and agreed by the British even before Mr Gafor’s so-called ‘incriminating’ information about communist penetration into Barisan. Communist penetration into Barisan, even if it had been true, was at best a pretext and not the reason for Operation Coldstore.
Reponse to Poh Soo Kai’s allegations
Such was the lack of a clear conscionable purpose that even the Tunku believed that Operation Coldstore was being used by Lee Kuan Yew to get rid of opposition in parliament.
‘Operation Coldstore’, as it was called, had been planned for some time. But for months before it commenced, the Internal security Council, on which the Malayan government was represented along with Britain and Singapore, argued over the extent of the arrests and their timing. Memoirs and top-secret diplomatic correspondence reveal the mutual suspicions that hung over these meetings. The Tungku believed Singapore’s Prime Minister wanted to use the operation to remove his entire parliamentary opposition; Lee was wary of the Tunku not taking equal responsibility for the arrests; meanwhile the British wanted the left-wing movement in Singapore smashed but, so as to give their actions at least a semblance of ‘fair play’, they awaited some clear pretext for doing so.
[Singapore A Biography, Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasinghamchow, page 405-406]
Blind spot in Buddhist Studies
Well, I’m following your advice in a sense, Tocharian, but I’m no longer working on the politics of Therav─Бda countries in Asia (nor Pali, etc.).
So, if you tune in to my youtube channel (or check my blog), you’ll currently find discussions of the politics of хдзш║НщА▓, ч╛дчЬ╛ш╖пч╖Ъ, х║╖цЬЙчВ║, цнжшАЕх░Пш╖п хпжчпд, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/user/heijinzhengzhi
Sadly, Youtube may be the future of political discourse for all fields of study, including this one. :-/
One good Latinism deserves another: Carthago delenda est.
Blind spot in Buddhist Studies
Why don’t you just write a couple of papers about these things and send it off to some of those journals. People publish a lot nowadays. (“pauca sed matura” is so yesterday!)