re: "Why box over a name?" (BP, Editorial, January 26, 2023)
Dear editor,
Reading the Bangkok Post's idealistic call to save sport from nationalism, even a sport so solidly founded on violence as Muay Thai, or Kun Khmer if you prefer, was an entertaining diversion.
Is anything short of war or a spot of that perennially popular, good old-fashioned cleansing genocide more ultra-nationalistic than the recently reincarnated Olympic games?
Today's modern Greek nation might also dispute the Post's cheery insistence that they cannot own such cultural relics as the Elgin marbles, on the grounds that "No one, nor country, can really own culture." Really? But being neither a human person nor a country, perhaps the British Museum can, therefore, continue to act as the (non-owning?) custodian of those masterpieces of ancient Greek culture. And ancient Egyptian culture, Mesopotamian culture, and all the rest that the arguably nationalistic Brits pillaged during their global conquests.
And then there are all those even less tangible cultural myths of special classes of people. It is a refreshing suggestion that they not be taken nearly so seriously as nationalistic Thais are alleged to take them.
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 27, 2023, under the title "Of sports and war" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2492524/of-sports-and-war
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