Trading in merit

re: "Policeman who killed doctor enters monkhood" (BP, January 24, 2022)

Dear editor,

Though such an opinion might be deemed heretical, the young police officer who killed a pedestrian with his large motorbike appears sincerely remorseful, and his decision to enter the monkhood seems genuinely selfless and in accord with that Thai tradition. He has not denied the facts or his guilt, nor sought to excuse them with amazing tales of pure benevolence or righteousness leading to an honest mistake in the Joe Ferrari mould that is more the prevailing social more among the poster boys of the Royal Thai Police and like institutions when confronted with public proof that could not be suppressed of inconvenient reality. His acts following the awful accident appear, in short, a welcome deviation from the traditional social mores obtaining.

There are, however, some points that could usefully be clarified regarding the creation and disposal of merit in Buddhist monasteries, which merit is plainly a valuable good that can be created and transferred. First, how does entering the monkhood "make merit for his victim"? Is merit a tradeable product like pork or gold, both of which can be transferred to others? Further questions inevitably arise: How is merit measured? What is the actual mechanism for transferring ownership of created merit? And more fundamentally, what is the unit of measure for merit being transferred? Is there a karmic bureaucracy diligently keeping records of created merit and the legal transfers thereof?

But the merit business is now starting to sound not dissimilar to Bitcoin, another esoteric method of allegedly creating value that can be stored up and later transferred to create, out of literally nothing, that most basic human measure of ultimate value of them all, US$, or perhaps Euros, or more traditionally, florins.

A similar historical sacred trade that comes to mind is that of indulgences. The Christian church traditionally found the creation and sale of indulgences to wipe away the lingering taint of sin a most lucrative business until that radical monk Martin Luther set off serious reforms in his cunningly named Reformation that began with the peaceful expression of petitions for reform in 1517, his famous 95 Theses. Luther's modest proposals for reform were legally condemned by that high-level committee the Diet of Worms in 1521, and the rest is history, characterized by all the vicious intolerance, torture, and legalized murder in its name that are traditionally wed to reverence of the sacred.

Perhaps Thailand's Buddhist experts could publish some elucidation of these matters, citing the most up to date research on the business of creating, quantifying and trading in merit, and clarifying in particular how the merit business differs significantly from the indulgence business run by Mediaeval Christian monks and prelates.

 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 January 30, 2022, under the title "Trading in merit" at URL

Humour humanises

re: "Never forget Holocaust horrors" (BP, Opinion, January 27, 2022)

Dear editor,

Orna Sagiv, Israel's Ambassador-Designate to Thailand, rightly reminds us of the importance of not forgetting such horrors as the Nazi Holocaust, whereby a popular government acted in perfect accord with the law it had made up for that purpose to murder six million people, mainly Jews, but also gays, gypsies and others dehumanized as "social filth" to be cleansed from society.

It is, however, not enough to merely remember such evils committed according to law and popular social mores. It is at least as important to understand how a society of people, who presumably thought themselves basically good, decent men and women who loved their nation, could passively enable such evil to prosper.

Ms Sagiv suggests only the regulation of social media to counter misinformation and hate speech. This is indeed helpful, but if countering misinformation and hate speech means banning peaceful speech that is merely false or vile, it is seriously wrong, and plays easily into the hands of haters and deniers of truth, who will use that very excuse to ban what they deem hateful or false. It is morally safer, and practically more effective, to ensure that social mores and lawful government cannot ban what they deem hateful, fake, otherwise threatening to their own precious security, which is rarely the national security they falsely claim it.

A more positive antidote to the social conditions that lead to dehumanization of groups in society to further ugly agendas in the name of sacred nationalism is readily available: laughter. This is why healthy democracies ensure solid legal protection for the mocking of every sacred cow, from revered institutions to national leaders, and every bit of sacredness in between. Humour is a great way to humanize nationalist myths that can so easily turn toxic. Ridicule is an effective tool to remind us that pretentious figures are, after all, merely human and subject to the exactly the same silliness, pettiness, and general humanity of ourselves and every socially maligned group. Their foibles should be publicly shown so that they can be laughed at as they deserve, however offended zealous loyalists might be.

Could Hitler and his jackbooted thugs taking themselves ever so seriously and dictating that everyone else take them ever so seriously under pain of draconian prison sentences have gotten away with such legalized murder were they regularly presented as comical figures on a daily basis? Could the absurd claims made against the Jews, the gays, and the others have been taken so seriously if heartily mocked on a daily basis? Might some healthy ridicule of the social mores that enabled the Holocaust have prompted the genuinely good people in society to have had second thoughts about their blind faith in social norms that fuelled the holocaust?

 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 January 29, 2022, under the title "Humour humanises" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2255431/humour-humanises

A real no brainer

re: "Govt blinded by science" (BP, Editorial, January 24, 2022)

Dear editor,

Unlike tanks, mathematics runs on pure critical thinking. Unlike submarines, science respects facts. It was a no brainer what no brainers who fear facts and criminalize critical thinking would opt for.

 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 January 25, 2022, under the title "A real no brainer" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2252871/above-the-law-

re: "Anti-Abortion Marchers Gather With an Eye on the Supreme Court"

re: "Anti-Abortion Marchers Gather With an Eye on the Supreme Court" (The New York Times, January 21, 2022)

The statistics are perfectly clear: a solid majority even of Christians rightly believe that abortion should be legal, a matter of personal liberty consistent alike with the founding principles of the United States and of basic good morals.

Irrespective of the Supreme Court's ruling, the moral majority who support women's right to choose whether to give birth or not should vote for the party that will enact legislation, perhaps even a constitutional amendment, to protect that basic right to not have yourself turned into a slave producing babies at the dictate of others — that sort of state control of the most personal, private matters might fit with the communist ideology of China, but not with those who value democratic principle that respects individual liberty.

Persons alone deserve the human rights that come with being a person. No foetus, human, pig, sheep, cow, or any other equally living being's foetus, with or without a heartbeat, has ever displayed any of the defining characteristics of a person, so cannot be entitled to the moral consideration due actual, existing persons such as pregnant women.

 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/us/march-for-life-rally.html#commentsContainer&permid=116512763:116512763

re: "Benedict Faulted for Handling of Abuse Cases When He Was an Archbishop"

re: "Benedict Faulted for Handling of Abuse Cases When He Was an Archbishop" (The New York Times, January 20, 2022)

The joy of religious devotion vesting itself in esoteric faith rather than open, honest reason.

And that proclaiming itself unquestionably infallible, wards of inconvenient questions so as to enable centuries of abuse by a morally repugnant hierarchy got up in gaudy robes of opaquest impunity.  

It is little wonder that he Christian and other sacred ideologies side with Communist China and like despotisms in rejecting outright the secular democratic virtue of free speech that heralds openness, transparency, and accountability.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/world/europe/benedict-germany-sexual-abuse.html#commentsContainer&permid=116491368:116491368

Art of progress

re: "Thanathorn's painting NFTs sell for 3.3 milion baht" (BP, January 18, 2022)

Dear editor,

What a creative, innovative way was the NFT sale of three paintings by Progressive Movement leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit to raise money for a most deserving cause. Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) group deserves all the money that can be donated or raised for it. Thanatorn again shows himself a modern person of exactly the type that Thailand desperately needs to drag it forward from the dark days of the bad old ways blessed by repressive tradition.

And whilst it's artistic merits might be open to healthy debate and dissent, who could not be inspired by its choice of subject, the truly patriotic student activist Benja Apan, as depicted in Thanatorn's first offering? The winner of that auction has earned much merit for their good deed in purchasing the painting for 3.12 million baht so as to benefit society.

All open, transparent, and accountable, for peacefully calling for which good public morals the brave Benja Apan and other Thais who value those antidote's to the traditional corruption too long enabled by bad social mores are unjustly arrested and imprisoned in violation of good morals.

 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 January 20, 2022, under the title "Art of progress" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2250379/no-living-with-virus

re: "Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Boston’s Refusal to Fly Christian Flag"

re: "Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Boston’s Refusal to Fly Christian Flag" (The New York Times, January 18, 2022)

Since the foremost principle, literally the First Commandment in fact, of "our Judeo-Christian moral heritage" that Camp Constitution (cute name) yearns "to enhance understanding of" is absolute intolerance, a spot of intolerance extended by a healthy secular society with more enlightened human morals than those available in the Middle East more than 2,000 years ago might seem tolerably just retribution for centuries of suppression unto torture, burning, and general extermination of a swathe of heretics, infidels and unbelievers by Christians in the name of their vengeful god.

Exodus 20:3 is perfectly clear: "You shall have no other gods before me."

Some time later in the consistently not-so-loving New Testament we are warned from Paul's pen: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows" (Galatians 6:7), although this is hard to parse: whilst faithfully cleaving to the intolerance found in the Old Testament's despotic command theory of morals, the latter day Christians seem unwilling to reap what their ancestors have long sown.

But let the secular prove itself again better: support the Camp group's desire "to enhance understanding of" their ancient ideology. Let them fly their flag, and with luck reap some healthy mocking of the type Galatians falsely claims to be impossible.

 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/us/supreme-court-boston-flag-free-speech.html#commentsContainer&permid=116448317:116448317

Wealth no crime in itself

re: "Apple becomes 1st US company to reach $3tn valuation" (BP, January 4, 2022)

Dear editor,

One of the valuable features of the Bangkok Post is that, save the odd unspeakable one,  it enables comments on published articles. This usefully allows some discussion where alternative perspectives can be shared and perhaps debated: we are, of course, all entitled to our own opinion, but once that opinion is broadcast in public, it is fair that its owner be called on to support it against competing views and to answer pertinent questions.

When I read the headline "Apple becomes 1st US company to reach $3tn valuation" (Bangkok Post, January 4), I expected some strong disagreement with my own take on Apple's vast wealth smashing yet another record. Readers who have already viewed the healthy range of different opinions expressed there will know that a popular view is summed up in the one-word response of one regular commentator, who simply posted: "Gross".

Certainly, the wealth of Apple, also Microsoft and Google, which is now measured in trillions of US dollars, as their owners' wealth is measured in multi-billions, or hundred billions, of US dollars, is on any personal human standard vast, even extraordinarily vast. But is mere vastness, however extraordinary, enough to qualify as gross? I think not.

Before assigning adjectives to the wealth of a corporation or of an individual, we need to consider how that wealth came about. Did the likes of Apple and Microsoft, and their owners, become super-rich by just means? Do they deserve their worth? Let's leave aside for now the issue of what such wealthy individuals should do with their assets, whether like Bill Gates they will, if good people, give away literally tens of billions of US dollars to philanthropy, or stingily drop a miserly million or so dollars here and there to keep up a pretense of benevolence.

How did Apple become such a valuable company, making its owners so vastly rich in the process, in a matter of mere decades? In particular, is the current worth of Apple the result of just or unjust processes? If Apple had got rich by conquest, then its current wealth would be unjust; "conquest" is the euphemism history uses to describe stealing from others by use of force, and then imposing your own law on the conquered to legalize that theft. If Apple had got rich by merely inheriting what had been taken by conquest, then its wealth would be unjust. If Apple had come to be worth trillions of US dollars by unfairly getting a monopoly enforced by the state (a famous Thai telecom tycoon might come to mind here), then its wealth would be unjust.

But Apple did none of those things to become what it is today. I have never owned or used any Apple product, being a Windows and Google user, but clearly a billion or more people around the world have found that Apple products contribute so much to their lives in the way of enjoyment and productivity leading to the creation of personal wealth in a wide range of ways, material, creative, and even spiritual (learning, interacting, sharing, and so on all seem spiritual to me), that they have very happily, year after year, paid Apple for those very substantial contributions to their quality of life, just as I and a billion or more other people around the planet happily pay Microsoft and Google for their products that enhance our lives every day in many ways. Apple, Google, Microsoft, like Ford Motor Cars, General Electric, Tesla and so on, are deservedly rich because they have created vastly greater wealth for literally billions of other human beings. Their wealth is richly deserved.

As noted, questions should be, and in a just society will be, asked about what is the morally good uses of such wealth, especially the personal wealth of the individuals who own those companies, but the wealth is not intrinsically a bad thing. Having been acquired in just ways, it is not, as some would say, "gross," unlike some conspicuously vast fortunes not so transparently known to have been justly accumulated. There are also pertinent questions to be raised about how much and how openly (too often too little), is paid in taxes by such vastly wealthy people, but merely being rich is no bad thing in itself, provided the wealth is deserved as a just share of  even greater wealth created for others who each freely paid their bit from the returns on their own labours.  

None of you are perfect, but well done Apple, and Microsoft, and Google. My life is certainly the richer for your efforts to turn an honest profit that is open to healthy scrutiny and debate.

 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 January 16, 2022, under the title "Wealth no crime in itself" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2248167/not-every-hero-wears-a-cape

Moral conundrum

re: "Bill on media council gets cabinet nod" (BP, January 13, 2022)

Dear editor,

When we read in "Bill on media council gets cabinet nod" (Bangkok Post, Jan. 13) that "the exercise of media freedoms must not infringe on social mores," all who value good public morals will be deeply concerned. This must be so since being a social more never has and cannot of itself guarantee that any belief, custom, or attitude is morally good.

For most of human history, across most cultures, slavery was an accepted social more. That social more never constituted good public morals. Until recently, sexism and racism, the notions that women or members of some ethnic, national, religious, or other group, were inferior in various ways to men or other groups in society was a standard social more. And those social mores were always bad public morals. Today, many things that continue to be social mores, such as homophobia or some tradition of unquestioning respect for religious or other beliefs and sensibilities, deserve to be questioned precisely because they are so commonly accepted. Such questioning is the only way errors can be discovered so that they may be reformed.

If a social more is well-founded on good moral principles, it will stand tall and prove its moral worth when critically questioned.

But not only does  the proposed Bill on media ethics oppose good public morals, it directly contradicts foundational democratic principle. You cannot claim to support democracy if at the same time you deny the expression of ideas merely because they are unpopular, because they "infringe on (existing) social mores."

Good persons who value sound ethics will reject legislation that both panders to unquestioned social mores that may well be in need of correction, and that blatantly contradicts democratic principle.

 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 January 15, 2022, under the title "Moral conundrum" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2247847/moral-conundrum

re: "That Cloud of Smoke Is Not a Mirage"

re: "That Cloud of Smoke Is Not a Mirage" (The New York Times, January 12, 2022)

Alcohol is also harmful to its users. Its users know that, but continue to drink. Like smokers and other drug users, they perceive benefits, such as pleasure and socializing, in such activities. Have humans ever not enjoyed harmful rituals together?

There is more to life than always doing what is most healthy or most productive for an economy or most socially approved or whatever.

 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/style/smoking-cigarettes-comeback.html#commentsContainer&permid=116349268:116349268

It's a fair cop

re: "Cops culpable in condo rape" (BP, Editorial, January 11, 2022)

Dear editor,

The Bangkok Post writes, again, of "a systemic flaw within the Royal Thai Police." But consistent with his other promises solemnly sworn as exculpatory excuses in May 2014 of long overdue reform, didn't Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha already reform all that sort of thing years ago? Surely it was all a done deal long before Royal Thai Police poster boys like Joe Ferrari selflessly exemplified sacred benevolence for Thai society by torturing a drug suspect to death in an honest mistake with his colleagues at work that was unfortunately recorded then shared so that the Thai public saw exactly how their self-alleged guardians acted when they thought themselves free of inconvenient openness, transparency, and accountability.

 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 January 13, 2022, under the title "It's a fair cop" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2246679/its-a-fair-cop

Pork pies?

re: "Vendors urge pork imports to curb soaring price" (BP, January 10, 2022)

Dear editor,

I don't understand how the government importing pork can reduce prices. If imported pork is cheaper than domestic pork, why isn't it already being bought in preference to the local product? Surely some wily business people would already be taking the profits to be had were such the case.

If imported pork is as expensive as or more expensive than domestic pork, how is importing more going to reduce the price? Are the importers going to sell at a loss? Is the unsavoury reality that another costly government subsidy scheme is being touted? Or are the principles of market economics now going the way, so redolent of the Chinese communist way, of openness, transparency and accountability?

It is, one must joyously concede, encouraging to have it again confirmed and insisted on regarding the rumours of African swine fever's prevalence consistent with the findings of Kasetsart University's associate dean at the university's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine according to "Pet pig's death prompts African swine fever probe" (Bangkok Post, Jan. 9), that Thai government authorities "would never hide an outbreak from the rest of the world," let alone, one assumes, from the Thai people: a clear win for the good public morals of openness, transparency, and accountability.
 
 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 January 11, 2022, under the title "Pork pies?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2245455/pork-pies-

Abortion answer

re: "Mum tells cops she killed son" (BP, January 6, 2022)

Dear editor,

Why, oh why, is abortion not encouraged when pregnant women clearly have no means, and often no interest, in giving a child a decent home and upbringing?

Whether the murdered child's mother's claim that she brutally killed her own son is true, or whether she is merely actively complicit in a vile murder committed by her current heterosexual partner, every person concerned, certainly the viciously tortured child, would have been better off had the victim not been born, a curse he never asked for and certainly had done nothing to deserve, unsubstantiated karmic and like fantasies notwithstanding.

There being no good reason to the contrary, only faith-based dogma propagating false claims and preaching bad morals, just law allows abortion on request for at least the first six months of a normal pregnancy.

 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 January 8, 2022, under the title "Abortion answer" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2244063/thai-style-diplomacy-

Patriot games

re: "Myanmar court jails more celebrities" (BP, December 30, 2021)

Dear editor,

After the self-serving in uniform "overthrew an elected government," Myanmar's celebrities did the right thing: they stood up and spoke out for the good morals of democracy against the enemies of their nation's people. Good people, especially those who will be heard, do speak out against bad people who, under fake claims of various incredible lies lamely presented as excuses, plot, commit, collude in, sign off on, or profit from coups that overthrow a people's popular form of democratic government.

The patriotic Myanmar people now being unjustly imprisoned in strict accord with law made up to pervert justice are an example to the rest of ASEAN, too many of whose nations also suffer under the repressive, anti-democratic regimes that pervert the rule of law to criminalize peaceful calls for openness, transparency, accountability and the other good morals of democracy. Those so imprisoned by morally corrupt law are the true patriots of their nation and the people whose nation it is.

 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 January 1, 2022, under the title "Patriot games" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2240575/conjugal-confusion