Thai language or ethics?

re: "Boost for Thai language teaching in far South" (BP, October 28, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

On reading that "Border patrol police will take over teaching the Thai language to children in the far South from 2023," who could not be yet further impressed by the extraordinary competence in yet more areas of those guardians of the nation's portals.

But why not teach English as well as or instead of Thai, thereby laying more solid grounds for a better future for the subjects of instruction?

And if the underlying concern is of weaknesses in the far South's children's ethics and understanding, for which Thai is seen as a means to inculcate the right thinking, why not have the border patrol lads directly teach ethics and epistemology? Or are there after all some limits to their areas of competence?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 31, 2021, under the title "Thai language or ethics?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2206895/money-isnt-everything
  

Arresting questions

re: "The power of a child's questioning mind" (BP, October 27, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

The Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI)'s Phusima Pinyosinwat's article "The power of a child's questioning mind" was encouraging to read. The fatal sting for the frogs trapped beneath the coconut shell is in the concluding sentences: "Change is possible. All it takes is to allow students to ask questions."

Change threatens progress that could bring reason, honesty, transparency, even justice and other non-traditional values. That is why Thai law allied to alleged social norms harshly punishes, and in many cases criminalizes, students asking questions. How many intelligent, inquisitive, educated students have been arrested in the past week alone merely for expressing opinions that pose thoughtful questions in a perfectly peaceful manner?

You cannot without self-contradiction agree with Phusima's ideas and support law that enforces ignorance of social issues. Anyone who cares for a decent education for Thai children will, therefore, oppose Thailand's undemocratically repressive LM and other laws that set the opposite example that is called for if Thai youth is to be encouraged to understand local, regional, national, or international issues.

Does the current Minister of Education fail to see the contradiction between claiming to value informed opinion of worth, something that can come only from critical thinking, and Thai law backed by blinding tradition that enforces mindless ignorance?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 30, 2021, under the title "Arresting questions" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2206547/fuel-for-change
  

Politely impertinent?

re: "Reopening glitz and glam needs a backup plan" (BP, October 26, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Is it quite polite for the consistently incisive Atiya Achakulwisut to be asking relevantly critical questions about the government led by the man who overthrew the Thai people's popular form of democratic government solely in order to save true democracy? No. It is most impertinent to be rude about the amazingly expensive extravaganza that combines the best of two internationally renowned non-Thais, one of whom was has gone so far as to have been born in Thailand before escaping to thrive creatively.

The festive New Year gala is another fine example of the sacred principle of sufficiency economics beloved of all super-rich political players, and therefore unimpeachable. No? Qualifying Thais of sufficiently simple, frugal lifestyles will flock to it, praising to high heaven the extraordinary virtue of their selfless sacrifice in living such terribly, terribly modest, understated lives in unadulterated, selfless service to their nation, for which they are even willing to be seen and photographed and videoed and commented on in attendance at a hyped-up gala performance by some genuinely famous people.

How very impertinent to raise very pertinent questions about such a display of conspicuous sufficiency.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 28, 2021, under the title "Politely impertinent?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2205427/no-justice-for-fallen
  

Sentiency is key

re: "Life is precious" (BP, PostBag, October 21, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

In his letter, Paul asks the right questions. They are also the difficult questions. If a human being is not in fact a person, either because it has never reached that point in development, or because something has happened to remove the personhood that had once obtained, then it cannot be murder to kill that person. If those responsible for the human being who is not a person decide it is in everyone's (every person's) best interests to painlessly end the life of the human who is not a person, how could that be wrong? It might be emotionally difficult. We might not wish to do it. We might very much wish that the human being were still a person who could make such decisions for themselves, thereby relieving us of the burden of deciding. But those wishes are not the case. Such feelings show that we are human persons with emotional attachments to other members of our species; they do not show that there is any weakness in the reasoning as to what is the best course of action.

Paul points out that "more medical evidence is coming out showing that the unborn child can feel." This is true, but Paul is dishonest. The evidence shows that the foetus can feel pain or has senses such as touch and hearing from an early point in development, as do the foetuses of rabbits, sheep and goats. Paul's willful vagueness is because the evidence for any characteristic of a person remains zero.

The Texas law that Paul cites is also dishonest. When signing it into law, Texas Governor Greg Abbott exposed the faith-based motive for the ban when be proclaimed that, “Our creator endowed us with the right to life and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion”: a blatant falsehood.

If merely having a heartbeat, more accurately, a detectable murmur in the gestational sac, is evidence of being a person, then there can be no doubt whatsoever that every pig, cow, chicken or fish with a strongly beating heart that we kill to turn into a tasty meal is every bit equally a person and fully deserving of the same legal protection as the six-week old human foetuses of Texas. If that sounds absurd, it is because it is. The absurdity derives from the dishonest falsehood that equates a human foetus with a person; that dishonesty proclaims a foetus to already be a child.

There is no slippery slope that so worries Paul. Such talk of  slippery slopes is a scare tactic by those who have no sound reasons to back up their unreasoning assault on the rights of actual human persons. Society is, on the contrary, coming to care more about both actual human persons and also about the suffering of sentient living beings that are not persons.  That is why capital punishment is on the way out, albeit it not in Texas, which has few qualms about killing actual human persons. That is why animal lives are being increasing protected by legislation to prevent abuse and suffering on factory farms. That is why we are encouraged to put our suffering pets and livestock out of their misery with a quick, painless death. That is why the world has taken such strenuous steps to eradicate polio, to help those suffering natural disasters, and to rapidly develop vaccines against Covid in record breaking time.

The lives of all sentient animals matter. The lives of actual persons matter the most. Respecting the right to legal abortion on request gives greater respect to the lives of human persons.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 23, 2021, under the title "Sentiency is key" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2202827/monks-be-good
  

Asylum deserved

re: "Malaysian trans woman arrested in Thailand says 'safe' in Australia" (BP, October 20, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Australia often gets human rights wrong, as seen in its treatment of refugees on Manus Island and its centuries-long mistreatment of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, but in the case of Nur Sajat, my country has got it right. She should be granted asylum to escape religiously inspired persecution by morally wrong Malaysian law mindlessly bowing down before blind faith in a famously intolerant and punitive god.

Whilst some might take this sad case as yet another opportunity to bash religions for being primitive superstitions preaching fake claims about reality and dubious moral values, perhaps even going so far as to suggest that religions be banned, that temptation must be resisted. We must remain tolerant, even of what consistently proves itself intrinsically intolerant, as demonstrated in this case by Islam.

Freedom of religion is a human right as much as the right to choose freedom from persecution by religion. The right for religions to exist and even proselytize by advertising their wares and supernatural promises must also be respected. But religion should never be supported by the state, nor should religious arguments ever be accepted as a reason for forming any public policy. Religions may well have everything to say on supernatural matters not of this world, but they have nothing of solid, rational worth to say on matters of natural reality or of sound human morals.

If faith-driven adherents wish to faithfully hold the dogmas and practice the rites of some religion, that is strictly a personal matter, one best engaged in in private with other consenting adults, preferably behind closed doors with the blinds down, the sheets up, and the lights out.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 22, 2021, under the title "Asylum deserved" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2202159/report-responsibly
  

'Squid Game' lessons

re: "'Squid Game' rings true in our new reality" (BP, October 12, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

As Atiya Achakulwisut notes, the plot of the extravagantly popular Squid Game might once upon a time have been "described as 'bizarre' and 'unrealistic'." Once upon a time. But as our understanding of reality improves with time, helped by prompts such as the latest K-drama hit, we often learn that the bizarre is reality, or that reality is often bizarre.

It was, accordingly, very thoughtful of the Royal Thai Police to take the opportunity to remind us of their level of competence. The facts, however, are that none, not even children, are going to rush out and start murdering at random because they have watched a violent TV series, not even the highly diverting Squid Game, another bit of great entertainment from Korea, where critical exploration of the human experience is not rigorously suppressed. Nor was it the case that the ultra-violent Tom and Jerry cartoons so popular in my own childhood led to any detectable uptick in violence levels among children. The remarkably violent A Clockwork Orange (1971), very popular among my generation of university students, also failed to bring down civilization, or initiate even a modest blood bath: I don't think my cohort who came of age in the 1970s was noticeably more violent than any other, quite the contrary, as mounting opposition to the Vietnam war and violence in general attests.

Only an ignorant fool from the days when myth ruled over reason and evidence would make such a silly claim premised on the notion that children and others are unable to tell fact from honestly labelled fiction. The officers of the Royal Thai Police might be challenged, but even children, including Thai children, know that Spiderman is not real, and that you don't shoot people in the head because they failed to separate their chosen shape in the sugar candy game, even a shape so complex as an deliciously curvy umbrella.

What does make a society violent are acts of real life violence, especially when committed with impunity, for example: a culture of police violence up to torturing people to death with plastic bags; an endemic culture of committing and colluding in coups against popular, democratic governments; or a legal culture that allows sending in uniforms to arrest and throw into prison young people who have done nothing but peacefully express honestly critical opinions on the Thai human experience: those are the all too real acts of violence that teach violence to society. Squid Game is not a threat to Thai morals; the same cannot be so confidently said of the Royal Thai Police and the acts of assorted other allegedly sacred Thai institutions that have too often set the example of using violence to achieve their morally dubious ends.

But having now enjoyed the entire series, it can be understood why the authorities behind the bizarre and unrealistic claims enunciated by the Royal Thai Police posing as moral guardians are concerned. It would not do to have Thai citizens drawing, for example, parallels between, say, the VIPs who make such a richly accoutred appearance oozing wealth and unrestrained entitlement in "Squid Game" and similarly masquerading groups of Thais already conveniently labelled VIPs. No, that would not do at all.

Squid Game is unlikely to lead to blood on the streets or on the local football field or around around the hopscotch squares, but it might well have some useful lessons to teach Thai youth; and that is the perhaps the real fear.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 16, 2021, under the title "'Squid Game' lessons" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2198763/squid-game-lessons
  

Foetal position

re: "Life is precious" (BP, PostBag, October 10, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

In his honest letter "Life is precious" (PostBag, Oct. 10), Ye Olde Theologian rightly refrains from claiming that human life is sacred in some way that other life is not. Since every living animal we kill to turn into tasty morsels of flesh was, until we killed it, at least as sentient as any human foetus at any point in a pregnancy, we must assume that Ye Olde Theologian is as radically opposed to the eating of meat from slaughtered animals as he is to abortion.

As for the argument from potential combined with the golden rule that we "do unto others as we would them do unto us," I can assure Ye Olde Theologian with absolute confidence that had any of us been aborted, we would not now or at any other time be troubled in the least by that previous event that precluded any such concern before it ever became a possibility. That a pile of iron ore fresh dug from the ground has the potential to become the body of a Rolls Royce is not a good reason to value it as we would an actual Rolls Royce body.

It is certainly true that "none of us have complete control over our own bodies." In fact, if the laws of science, known or unknown, are as true as the mounting evidence ever more totally confirms, none of have any more control of our bodies, including our brains and the minds that the physics and chemistry of our brains generate, than does an autonomous car have control of itself. But that limited level of control is enough for us to make decisions, to have preferences, plans and relationships, and thus to be persons with the right to determine for ourselves how we live our own lives save that we may not violate the equal rights of other persons.

And this is the flaw in Ye Olde Theologian's primary argument. A human foetus is not a person. It is not the unqualified case that life is sacred. It is not even the case that human life that is sacred: being human means merely having the 46 chromosomes that chemically define a living being as member of our species. If the adjective "sacred" is to have any meaning beyond mere fantasy of the murkiest mystery, it is that there is something very special about being a person. If anything is, it is the lives of actual, living persons that are sacred.

No foetus ever has any characteristic that define a living being as a person: it cannot reason; it does not have social bonds; it does not decide things; it does not have preferences; nor does it reason or make plans. There can, therefore, be no moral grounds against abortion. The dictates of despotic gods, whose primary commandment is absolute intolerance of dissent, as the Bible's Exodus 20:3 bluntly puts it: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," are never moral reasons at all, merely unreasoning orders given to human playthings.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 12, 2021, under the title "Foetal position" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2196411/a-simple-test
  

Abuse is no surprise

re: "French Catholic Church inquiry finds 216,000 sex abuse victims from 1950" (BP, October 5, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Yes, the numbers are horrifying, but that there were "some 216,000 victims of paedophilia from 1950 to 2020" at the blessed hands of French Catholic priests, deacons and other clergy does not surprise.

The Catholic Church is not special. It is just one more ideology of zealous true believers doing exactly what is and always has been done by despotic institutions, whether sacred, secular or both. Has there ever been any exception? Has any allegedly revered and sacred institution protected from transparency and accountability ever acted differently? It is certain, by the very laws and social taboos against free speech with which they veil their acts from fair comment, that there can be no credible denial of what appears a most likely truth.  

The Catholic Church has merely done and does what all such unspeakable institutions have always done in their dark places veiled from public scrutiny and just exposure. Unless called to account by the superior morals of liberal democracy founded on Enlightenment ideals of reason and humanism, it will continue to act as it has for at least the past 1,600 years. That is what all such despotisms naturally do. Why else would they need such symptoms as secrecy, gorgeous dress, huge statuary, monumental architecture, and taboos to hide behind?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 8, 2021, under the title "Abuse is no surprise" at URL
  

Sexually misguided

re: "OnlyFans star's arrest renews debate on sex work" (BP, September 28, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Sex is natural. Performing sex is fun, or at least it should be. And as both high and low art have for millennia attested, watching sex or sex-drenched performance is highly entertaining, even fun. There is no good reason whatsoever to think that there is anything less morally decent about paying for consenting sex than paying for consenting cooking, consenting teaching, consenting preaching, consenting surgery, or any other act where two parties freely agree to a mutually rewarding exchange. To claim that the act of freely performed sex or watching such an act is in any way morally wrong shows, on the contrary, that there is something seriously stunted or worse in the moral development of those making such misguided claims.

Of course, it must be conceded in defence of such laws as those used by officers of those famous paragons of moral excellence the Royal Thai Police to shamefully harass and embarrass the honest, hard-working creators of joy on OnlyFans that much traditional corruption would not be possible without those legal tools. And what kind of zealous moralist, ignorant alike of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill and all the other great moral philosophers through to today, would tolerate any threat to such venerable traditions rooted solidly in uncritical unreason supporting received prejudice?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 2, 2021, under the title "Sexually misguided" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2191223/too-dam-costly