What does it mean when people say, "I love Thailand" or "I love Japan"?
28 December 2015 [link youtube]
It often means, "I don't want to know"; but for me (for many years) the first place I visited would be the archives and national libraries, everywhere from Bangkok to Kunming, with Vientiane and Phnom Penh in-between, and --as the video reflects-- I was often seeking out the aspects of history that tend to be omitted from "national history" (sensu stricto).
And, yeah, this is the world's most indirect swipe at my fellow vegans in Chiang Mai. It's a bit strange for me to reflect that Thailand was a huge part of my life from 2004 to 2011… and today I have no contact with it at all (whereas Japanese is, now, presumed to be my language-of-scholarship for the future).
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I was just finishing shaving using my
computer's camera because the the mirror in this apartment is really lousy so this is effectively a high-tech mirror um what does it mean when people say I love Japan or I love Thailand and I'm here thinking primarily of western expatriates I've received you know negative feedback shock horror etc in response to articles I've written lately about both Japan and Thailand and videos have recorded you know quite a while ago I offered critique of what's been going on with vegans in Thailand and Tyler has been a big part of my life I just looked it up I moved to Thailand way back in November of 2004 and what I fundamentally don't understand or don't relate to in this idea that because you like a place because you care about a place you're going to pretend that it's problems don't exist that you are going to engage in a sort of cover-up as if you yourself or a nationalist or a propagandist for that place I think it's really useful to shift the verb from love to care about if you care about Thailand can't you also care about the oppression of its indigenous minorities its minority peoples generally indigenous or not from the first day I got the Thailand I was interested in the ethnic minorities of Thailand groups like the Mon groups like the akka and the north nobody taught me that and I didn't develop that interest in response to something I didn't have some kind of epiphany some moment where I started caring with that from the first day I got there I was concerned about an interest in those grey and that wasn't only in terms of contemporary social and political problems sort of things you might read a newspaper it was also in relation to how history was written I was really aware that in reading um official history we use this in Thai studies in the history zone people like to say official history instead of propaganda but the official version of history as dictated by the Thai government has many remarkable riddles in it many omissions and many oh great lies it's not all as though it's still important to study it carefully and sometimes for example the version of Thai history written by Europeans contains lies and you find the truth in the official Thai version even though it's propaganda in various ways but if I was interested in those ethnic minorities and those oppressed and excluded peoples those conquered people's partly just to contrast their version of history to the official Thai history and partly because you know it was studying this ancient dead language pally pally relates the history of Southeast Asia and the way that say ancient Greek relates to this tree of Europe and I remember when I would go to the National Library I forget now it's official called the National Library of the National Archives in Bangkok there was a terrible exhausting difficult trip to make in the heat and so on maybe transportation has gotten better since 2004 in Bangkok but anyway it was actually always showed up exhausted and dehydrated when I finally got to that library and you know all of the books from Myanmar from Sri Lanka and even from ethnic minorities within Thailand like the Mon those books were all hidden away in a corner they were excluded from the rest of the library and where other patrons wouldn't find them and laborious Lee went there and that was the one section that really mattered to me every time I went that was the first place that was going to now in this video I'm not going to talk about why those books were especially important obviously a very small number of people with with specialized interest in the history literature philosophy history of Buddhism also would understand why those books were so important but they were and they still are an extremely small number of english-speaking people who ever studied those books till today um and you know I went back again and again and one day those books that were already discriminated against shall we say they disappeared and when I asked where they had went the woman the young woman working in the library and I say that because most of the staff there were not librarians they they just employ like teenagers to do many of the jobs there the young woman said oh all of the foreign books were removed the new library policy is only Thai books are available if you don't have special access privileges and those special privileges have to come from Parliament you have to write a letter to the National Parliament to get access to the forbidden books at the National Library this is not a religious institution this is a normal secular political institution run by the by the government and the word she used for foreign was not a nice word you know there are different ways to say foreign in the Thai language I'm the one you hear most often if you're a westerner is the term used for a European foreigner it's not the same way they refer to a foreigner from India or Pakistan and I remember where I said to a reply I could only speak a little bit of the Thai language at the time but I said in some combination of English and Thai but many of those books were made here in Thailand they're just made by ethnic minorities and she of course answered oh no same same foreigners public cameras if you love Thailand if you care about Thailand why were you there for put yourself in the position of making excuses for timing why wouldn't you be passionately trying to direct the attention of the public towards the problems in Thailand that you care about in the past I've given the very simple example of if you're vegan why don't you care about elephants or animal slaughterhouses in Thailand if you care about human rights if you care about politics democracy whatever it is I don't see how caring about Thailand equates to being a propagandist for Thailand or covering up for almost a family and I'm now experiencing to my to my sadness I can't say to my shock I can't say to my surprise the extent to which white Western people who have adopted Japanese culture in some sense who idealize Japanese culture feel that they ought to be the protectors of a largely fictional image of Japanese nationals and that they've invented if you care about Japan I think the way to care for Japan is to engage deeply with its social problems and not to try to perpetuate a fiction that Japan does not have those social problems and not to attack anyone who dares to in good faith an engage in discussion of or research of those problems maybe that's enough to say for this one
computer's camera because the the mirror in this apartment is really lousy so this is effectively a high-tech mirror um what does it mean when people say I love Japan or I love Thailand and I'm here thinking primarily of western expatriates I've received you know negative feedback shock horror etc in response to articles I've written lately about both Japan and Thailand and videos have recorded you know quite a while ago I offered critique of what's been going on with vegans in Thailand and Tyler has been a big part of my life I just looked it up I moved to Thailand way back in November of 2004 and what I fundamentally don't understand or don't relate to in this idea that because you like a place because you care about a place you're going to pretend that it's problems don't exist that you are going to engage in a sort of cover-up as if you yourself or a nationalist or a propagandist for that place I think it's really useful to shift the verb from love to care about if you care about Thailand can't you also care about the oppression of its indigenous minorities its minority peoples generally indigenous or not from the first day I got the Thailand I was interested in the ethnic minorities of Thailand groups like the Mon groups like the akka and the north nobody taught me that and I didn't develop that interest in response to something I didn't have some kind of epiphany some moment where I started caring with that from the first day I got there I was concerned about an interest in those grey and that wasn't only in terms of contemporary social and political problems sort of things you might read a newspaper it was also in relation to how history was written I was really aware that in reading um official history we use this in Thai studies in the history zone people like to say official history instead of propaganda but the official version of history as dictated by the Thai government has many remarkable riddles in it many omissions and many oh great lies it's not all as though it's still important to study it carefully and sometimes for example the version of Thai history written by Europeans contains lies and you find the truth in the official Thai version even though it's propaganda in various ways but if I was interested in those ethnic minorities and those oppressed and excluded peoples those conquered people's partly just to contrast their version of history to the official Thai history and partly because you know it was studying this ancient dead language pally pally relates the history of Southeast Asia and the way that say ancient Greek relates to this tree of Europe and I remember when I would go to the National Library I forget now it's official called the National Library of the National Archives in Bangkok there was a terrible exhausting difficult trip to make in the heat and so on maybe transportation has gotten better since 2004 in Bangkok but anyway it was actually always showed up exhausted and dehydrated when I finally got to that library and you know all of the books from Myanmar from Sri Lanka and even from ethnic minorities within Thailand like the Mon those books were all hidden away in a corner they were excluded from the rest of the library and where other patrons wouldn't find them and laborious Lee went there and that was the one section that really mattered to me every time I went that was the first place that was going to now in this video I'm not going to talk about why those books were especially important obviously a very small number of people with with specialized interest in the history literature philosophy history of Buddhism also would understand why those books were so important but they were and they still are an extremely small number of english-speaking people who ever studied those books till today um and you know I went back again and again and one day those books that were already discriminated against shall we say they disappeared and when I asked where they had went the woman the young woman working in the library and I say that because most of the staff there were not librarians they they just employ like teenagers to do many of the jobs there the young woman said oh all of the foreign books were removed the new library policy is only Thai books are available if you don't have special access privileges and those special privileges have to come from Parliament you have to write a letter to the National Parliament to get access to the forbidden books at the National Library this is not a religious institution this is a normal secular political institution run by the by the government and the word she used for foreign was not a nice word you know there are different ways to say foreign in the Thai language I'm the one you hear most often if you're a westerner is the term used for a European foreigner it's not the same way they refer to a foreigner from India or Pakistan and I remember where I said to a reply I could only speak a little bit of the Thai language at the time but I said in some combination of English and Thai but many of those books were made here in Thailand they're just made by ethnic minorities and she of course answered oh no same same foreigners public cameras if you love Thailand if you care about Thailand why were you there for put yourself in the position of making excuses for timing why wouldn't you be passionately trying to direct the attention of the public towards the problems in Thailand that you care about in the past I've given the very simple example of if you're vegan why don't you care about elephants or animal slaughterhouses in Thailand if you care about human rights if you care about politics democracy whatever it is I don't see how caring about Thailand equates to being a propagandist for Thailand or covering up for almost a family and I'm now experiencing to my to my sadness I can't say to my shock I can't say to my surprise the extent to which white Western people who have adopted Japanese culture in some sense who idealize Japanese culture feel that they ought to be the protectors of a largely fictional image of Japanese nationals and that they've invented if you care about Japan I think the way to care for Japan is to engage deeply with its social problems and not to try to perpetuate a fiction that Japan does not have those social problems and not to attack anyone who dares to in good faith an engage in discussion of or research of those problems maybe that's enough to say for this one