Don't believe all you read

re: "Don't believe all you read" (BP, Editorial, February 9, 2022)

Dear editor,

The Bangkok Post accurately outlines Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's failures to respect basic principles of truth seeking and speaking in his reckless eagerness to point gnarled fingers when he "accused the demonstration school of Thammasat University of distorting teachings about Thailand's history and monarchy."

But the failure is a tad more profound. The students and teachers at Thammasat demonstration school clearly understand the importance of critical review of current beliefs in protecting us from retaining false beliefs for no better reason than that we inherited those beliefs from others, that, in other words, we mindlessly repeated to ourselves and to others what we uncritically accepted without considering whether the inherited belief was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This is a sure path to sincere belief in fake claims.

Honest people who value truth, who do not wish to propagate fake beliefs, which beliefs might in some cases have been around for generations, insist on a healthy discussion that considers other possibilities. This is why each generation's historians must revisit the cherished beliefs of past generations to assess and to reassess in order to establish anew, or not, the worth of some view of history, none of which is true merely because piously believed by a majority for some generations. If such discussion essential to honesty is not occurring, then the national beliefs about history, even if in fact true, are intellectually and morally in the same category as any fake claim plucked eagerly from social media merely because it fits the holders' prejudices. Such beliefs, even those as sincerely held as the certainties of the most zealous anti-vaxxer or flat-Earther diligently immunizing themselves against reason and evidence, are necessarily worthless.

Unless intellectual and moral honesty are deemed by unjust law and deluded social mores to be bad, Thammasat demonstration school, following the sound example of historians who actively review Thai history and society to better avoid mindlessly repeating fake claims, is entirely in the right.

 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 February 13, 2022, under the title "Don't believe all you read" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2263391/drug-war-reckoning