The Science War in
Thailand: Clashes Between Traditional and Modernized Belief Systems in the Thai
Media
Soraj
Hongladarom
Department
of Philosophy
Chulalongkorn
University
Bangkok
10330, Thailand
hsoraj@chula.ac.th
Introduction
In December
1999, a relatively old magazine reemerged in the Thai literary scene after a
period of inactivity. The weekly magazine, Arthit
(Thai for the sun or Sunday), came out in a distinctly different form from what
it used to appear many years ago. The magazine used to be a weekly news and
analysis magazine, focusing on current affairs in politics, business, just like
other weekly news magazines in the market. However, the first issue of Arthit after its reappearance in
December came with a picture of a Buddha image on its cover page, and just
below the title there was a motto: “Energy of rationality and free spirit,
showing the truth and eliminating superstitions.” The magazine is clearly
trying to put something new on the Thai literary scene. What it is trying to do
is to produce a news and analysis magazine, together with columns on Buddhism,
God, spirituality, and meditation techniques. The most conspicuous character of
the new Arthit is that it unashamedly
promotes what other magazines would shun, thinking that it belongs to the
superstitious past. Arthit, however,
embraces the issues of extrasensory perception, reincarnation, karmas, as well
as ghosts and deities in the traditional Buddhist pantheon.
Issues like
these are nothing new in the Thai literary scene. There are scores of
newspapers and magazines dealing with such topics as potent amulets,
reincarnation, monks reputed to have extraordinary powers to heal and to endow
prosperity to anyone who pays homage to him, and so on. These newspapers and
magazines, however, are regarded as 'low brow', consumed by most uneducated
people in the countryside, a large number of whom migrated to the city to find
employment. Arthit, however, projects
itself as an educational, 'high brow' magazine. It contains columns from well
known and well respected members of the Thai élite, some of whom used to have
high positions in previous governments. Usually the 'high brow' magazines would
frown upon such 'superstitious' issues. This makes the appearance of Arthit a very striking phenomenon in the
country.
Arthit,
it appears, is trying to bring about the issue of spirituality back to Thai
society after it had suffered tremendously from the economic crisis which took
place in 1997. Its purpose was to show that the way of thinking and belief of
the Thai people for the past few decades had been wrong. Thais were expected to
enshrine materialist values and follow the lead of globalization blindly. This
led to the bubble economy and crisis. As a result, Arthit tried to reawaken the Thai people to their latent
spirituality as leverage against the force of globalization. One chief arena
where this contest for the minds was being played out concerns scientificity.
Suwinai Paranawalai, one of the founders of the new Arthit and a much respected professor of economics at Bangkok's
Thammasat University, wrote in one of the articles in the inaugural issue in December
1999 that "a problem is that in this age when the cult of science worship
is in ascendancy, those who are spiritually transformed have to hide
themselves. They become alienated in the eyes of the general public. This
denial of the existence of the other, spiritual dimensions has driven the
mysterious issues underground. These issues are then absorbed into capitalism
and consumerism, creating an uncontrollable upheaval and chaos."[1]
Clearly there is here a conflict between the globalizing force, which tries to
merge the Thai economy with that of the world, and the anti-globalizing force,
which emphasizes the role of the cultural tradition and an antidote for the
overly consumerist attitude that is afflicting the Thai nation.
What I intend
to do in this paper, then, is to analyze this conflict in terms of a 'science
war', taking the term, of course, from the raging science war in the West
between the proponents of scientific and rationalist attitude (or whatever you
want to call it) and those who are against it. I will show that Arthit is a reaction against the force
of globalization and especially against the latter's use of science as a means
toward realizing its goals more efficiently. However, an interesting aspect of
this phenomenon is that, although the conflict is a real and a serious one, one
can nonetheless discern that both parties of the conflict actually share a lot
together in terms of cultural background and tradition.
"The
Cult of Science Worship"
I would like to
call the group promoting globalization in Thailand 'the globalization party',
and the other one, which opposes it, 'the anti-globalization party'. The first
party consists of the bureaucrats, business people, most economists and policy
makers in the current government; the second party, on the other hand, consists
of member of the NGOs, village leaders, and academicians who double as public
intellectuals. The war between the two parties revolve around the issue of
whither Thailand should be heading. An important characteristic of the
globalization party is that it sees itself as a progressive force, and regards
the old beliefs in ghosts and deities as nothing but mere superstitions to be
get rid of wherever they are found. This attitude is precisely what is derided
in Suwinai's article I quote above as "the cult of science worship."
That is, blind faith is put toward science as a panacea for the ills of the
society, just like in the old times when the cult of the gods were in vogue and
the gods were called upon to help during bad times.
Of course the
globalization party does not see itself this way. As a progressive and
modernizing force, members of the party (sometimes genuinely) have good
intentions toward the society and its people. They see science as bound up with
economic progress and prosperity, as well as with globalization. Advances in
science should lead to more economic growth, and so on. During the economic Boom
Years starting in the early 1990's and ending abruptly in mid 1997, this
rationalist attitude was very strong, as it was perceived to be the right way
of thinking. Everybody, it seemed, turned their backs against their own
cultural tradition, especially its spiritual and epistemological part which
forms the core of the tradition itself. Outward expressions of the culture
remained, but these were stripped of their real meanings. People did not pay
particular attention to what their cultural tradition told them how to behave
and what to believe, but for them culture became merely another commodity.
Culture became something they do out of habit from earlier generations without
pausing to think what it was all about.
Alternatively,
the culture and the force of the earlier generations of Thais were channeled by
the globalizing force to acquire whole new meanings and practices. Monks were
traditionally expected to be the exemplar of virtue and the living embodiment
of Buddhist teachings. However, during the madness of the Boom Years monks were
regarded as a means to help people become even richer. Their spiritual powers
were co-opted and channeled toward creating more wealth to the people. That is,
as people still believed that some monks had supernatural powers, the people
flocked to well known monks and asked them incessantly for blessings and
amulets, which would bring them good luck in their business dealings.
Spirituality became subservient to consumerism.
It is a very
curious situation that the belief in science and rationality occurred side by
side with belief in supernatural powers of the monk to create more wealth. But
I think we can understand this situation better if we realize that science,
rationality and technology here is nothing but their outward and objective
faces. What the Thai people wanted was anything to help them become wealthier -
and if science and technology can do the job, then so much the better. There is
little discussion about the belief systems underlying the conduct of science.
In this case, science is taken on a par with superstition. So long as they can
do the job, then they are valuable.
Thus, when Arthit attacks 'the cult of science
worship' what it attacks is not science per se, but the attitude to science
which takes it as an agent of material acquisition. Its portrayal of
superstitious issues made it a controversial publication. What is precisely
controversial in this is that, unlike the usual 'low brow' magazines, Arthit tries to make these issues
'scientifically respectable.' Instead of assuming that these issues are real,
writers presenting these issues in Arthit
are fully aware of the criticisms leveled against these issues by the
progressive, rationalist party and are defending them employing learned
methodology previously preserved to the rationalist party only. This
controversial attitude not only has made Arthit
a unique publication so far, but has also resulted in Suwinai himself being
criminally charged with misleading and providing false information to the
public. This shows how serious the issue of traditional versus modernized
beliefs is in Thailand today. This matter concerns the case of the pret, which is a kind of ghost in the
Buddhist cosmology, to which I now turn.
The
Pret Controversy
According to
Buddhism, prets are creatures that
suffer as a result of their bad deeds in their previous lives. They are
generally portrayed as extremely thin and tall; their mouths are as small as a
pinhole and they are always hungry, as they cannot find enough food to feed
them. They don't have any clothing on their bodies; give out exceedingly bad
smell and are always moaning loudly out of intense pain and suffering. Anyone
who does one of the following misdeeds will be born as a pret in his or her next life: corruption as a public official,
saying bad things to a monk, burning forests causing animals to die, and
others.
In early April
2000, an issue of Arthit came out
with a purported photograph of a pret
on its cover page, together with an editorial detailing the experiences of the
editorial team of the magazine who had ventured into a pret territory in Northeastern Thailand and apparently met and
photograph a pret for publication.[2]
The team went to a forested area in Udon Thani, a province northeast of
Bangkok, called 'Kham Chanode'. This area is widely believed by locals to be a
sacred place, the place where hell and earth connect and where hellish
creatures such as prets can appear to
unaided, naked eyes of living human beings. The team went to Kham Chanode under
the guidance of a man, known as "Ajarn Koo" ('ajarn' is a word
denoting a special position as a professor or a guru), who claimed to be a
spiritual leader who knew how to bring up pret
for inspection. Ajarn Koo and the team went into Kham Chanode on the night of
March 21, 2000 and saw a few creatures purported to be deities protecting the
place. Finally the team saw (or thought they saw) a tall, exceedingly thin
creature wearing nothing and putting its hands out wide. The team took two
photographs of the creature, which Ajarn Koo said was a pret, and these photos were eventually published in Arthit, together with the long editorial
arguing that prets actually existed.
The issue
immediately caused a tremendous stir in Thai society. People started discussing
whether prets actually existed or
not. Even though the Buddhist canon directly mentions the existence of these
creatures, together with other dwellers of hell as well as of heaven, many
Thais were reluctant to admit that they actually exist. Many took the 'instrumentalist'
stance and said that the belief in the existence of pret was a useful one in maintaining the moral order. This
instrumentalist position seemed to be the mainstream one officially upheld by
the elders of the Buddhist hierarchy, who are desirous of maintaining some sort
of a harmony between Buddhism and modern science.
However, Arthit cared nothing about
instrumentalism. Its stance is that Thai people in the past knew nothing and
would have cared nothing anyway about instrumentalism. For them prets were as real as elephants or
horses. Thai people today, on the other hand, are so remote from the religious
and cultural tradition that they forget what the teaching was like just a few
decades ago, according to the editorial in the magazine.[3]
What the article is trying to do is to bring back spirituality to the Thai
people, to get them back to their roots as Buddhists who believe in the reality
of prets and not as clever gimmicks.
Implicit throughout all this is a strident attack on the globalization party
and all it entails. The economic crisis was said to be due to the Thai people
forsaking their spiritual roots and the Buddhist moral order; the antidote is
to get them to believe in the actuality of prets
and by implication all the other deities and ghosts in the Buddhist cosmology.
This is not just a belief per se. The editorial article in Arthit does not intend Thais to become fundamentalists. But it
can't be denied that it wants Thais to fear becoming prets in their next lives. If moral order cannot be maintained
through modern means, then perhaps the old way should be resorted to.
However, about
a month after the publication of this pret
issue, another team of "pret
hunters" approached Ajarn Koo and asked him to show a pret in Sanam Luang, which is a large field right in the middle of
Bangkok, for all the people to see on the auspicious occasion of Visakhabucha,
the day when the Buddha was born, attained Enlightenment and died, which this
year took place on May 17. The issue became much more visible in the public's
eyes when the Thai Rath daily, the
most circulated and influential daily newspapers in the country, put the issue
on its front page. At first the tone of the news appeared to be in approval of
the deed. However, after a lot of discussions and debates on whether prets could be summoned in real life.
The tone of subsequent news reports on the subject turned negative. Finally,
the real identity of Ajarn Koo was revealed. He was in fact a charlatan, a
master con man, who had swindled money from many people by pretending to be a
monk or a guru. It turned out that the pret
sighting reported in Arthit in April
was a major hoax perpetrated by Ajarn Koo and his followers. As a result, Ajarn
Koo was arrested. Suwinai at first tried to defend his master, and doing that
he was accused by a woman who claimed that he defamed her by saying that the
woman, who had filed a charge against Ajarn Koo for swindling, had no
credibility since she had consented to follow Ajarn Koo in the first place. In
the end, the court refused to grant bail to Ajarn Koo, and Suwinai escaped
indictment because the woman eventually dropped the charge. During these few
months the whole country was fixated by the incidence. Talks and discussions on
prets and other creatures of Buddhist
cosmology came to public attention; this had never happened before. Debates
were between those who believed, as did Suwinai and the Arthit magazine, that prets
were real, and those who perceived themselves as progressive, scientific and
rational. These latter group viewed prets
as only a sign or at most they concede that they exist, but only in a
transcendental realm which no modern science can attest. (Suwinai, however,
later admitted that he was duped by Ajarn Koo. He said that he followed Ajarn
Koo because of his strong faith in the master con man, who appeared very
respectable. However, after he had learned the truth, he was still adamant that
his program of bringing spirituality back to Thailand was on the right track.)
The
Science War in Thailand
It is quite
clear that the debate between Arthit
and its rationalist (and skeptical) opponents reflect a greater conflict on
which way Thailand should be heading as the new century is dawning. In its rush
toward globalization, many fear that Thailand will leave its cultural roots and
traditions behind, with disastrous consequences. The economic crisis, which
still persists even today, presents a clear support of this point of view. On
the other hand, the globalizing and progressive party, though admitting that
the economic crisis was due to wrong policies, nonetheless strongly claims that
the only way out for Thailand is not through isolation and fetishism of the old
traditions, but through increasing competitiveness in many fields, which
naturally requires a strong performance in science and technology. Those who
criticized Arthit for misleading the
public were of the opinion that it is not appropriate to publish in a
respectable magazine a report on sightings of prets, even though prets
are mentioned explicitly in the Buddhist canons. This would only make it more
difficult to diffuse positive attitudes toward modern science and technology to
the population, which is perceived to be a key toward solving the problems in
the country.
We have seen,
however, that Arthit's attack on the
attitude underlying "the cult of science worship" shows that the
direction proposed by the globalization party has been shown to be wrong.
Thailand should never follow the same path again. Instead it should reexamine
its culture, its past and historical traditions in order to strengthen its spiritual
resources which would be an antidote for the senseless frenzy of the Boom
Years. This debate is still being played out today, and it is still unclear at
this moment who is the winner or who will emerge the winner in a foreseeable
period to come.
This science
war is quite different from the war in the West, where opposing parties fight
over what should be taken as the epistemic status of science as well as its
position in society. As the Sokal Affair has shown, the war in the West is
between those who would like to affirm the legitimacy and the justification of
the scientific enterprise, and those who wish to criticize it, to cut science
down to size, so to speak. In a way there might seem to be a parallel between
what is happening in the West and in Thailand. Those who wish to justify the
objectivity and epistemic status of science could be regarded as an ally of the
globalization party in Thailand, and those who oppose it with the anti-globalization
party.
However, when
examined more closely, the parallel works only at a superficial level. The
globalization party itself is situated within the cultural milieu of Thai
society. Outwardly, they propose a kind of adoption and integration of
'scientific culture' into Thai culture, in the same way as Margaret Jacob
describes in her book.[4]
That is, what is being proposed is not the kind of adoption of the scientific
attitude and a wholesale rejection of the past as happened in the West during
the scientific and industrial revolutions. But inwardly the force of
traditional culture remains very strong. The globalization party looks at
science and technology as a finished product, which could be adapted from the
West to Thailand. Less emphasis seems to be placed on the actual practice of
science than scientific knowledge as a product. Here one can see that the
beliefs of the globalization party stems from the traditional one of looking
for a kind of magic or outside help when faced with problems, and science and
technology are such magic. To illustrate this a young chemist was recently
interviewed in another magazine and he said that it was much more difficult
doing science in Thailand than in the US because in Thailand in order to obtain
the resources one had to have the right connections.[5]
According to
the globalization party, science and technology are indicators of economic
competitiveness, and so Thailand should embrace them. The party wants Thais to
become 'modern' in the sense of thinking and believing in the rationalist mode,
because they, perhaps naïvely, believe that in order to be 'modern' or
'globalized' one needs to adopt such an attitude—even though only on the
surface, so to speak. There have been calls for more public spending on
research and development, as well as reform in science education. However, one
doubts whether this effort will eventually succeed in making Thai culture a
scientific one (in Jacob's model) because there are many grains in the
scientific culture which run against some typical Thai traits. In fact, most
calls for more science in Thailand neglect to consider this question of
culture, believing that science and tradition could stay within their separate
domains within the same society.[6]
However, if science really were a culture, to keep the two strictly apart would
be problematic.
It would
require much more study than available in this paper to do justice to the claim
I just mentioned. Here I can give only a few examples. In order to integrate
science into culture, not only science as a body of knowledge has to be taught
to students, but the whole political and social structure has to be revamped,
since science does not exist merely as a body of knowledge, but a set of
practice which would not prosper if this is embedded in other types of
practices which do not promote it. For example, Thais usually want to have a
high standard of living without working hard for it. But as we learned from
Jacob, this is quite contrary to the entrepreneurial attitude so important to
the integration of science into culture.
Conclusion
The science war
in Thailand, then, is a conflict resulting from modernity and globalization
that is spreading all over the globe. Many fear that the tide of globalization
will eventually erase cultural differences and create one giant, 'monolithic'
global culture. However, I have tried to show that both sides of the war in
Thailand still belong to the same culture. Then what are some of the
implications for the science studies community? I think one implication is that
the task of integration of science into a culture originally foreign to it is
much harder than it might appear. However, I think this can be done if we
recognize that, instead of forcing a culture into science, we should instead adapt
science and put it inside the context or the mold of the culture. This could
make it easier to integrate science into a culture, if it is indeed a desirable
thing to do that.
Paper presented at the
Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science and the
European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, "Worlds in
Transition: Technoscience, Citizenship and Culture in the 21st Century",
University of Vienna, Austria, September 27-30, 2000.
[1]"Dr. Suwinai Paranawalai Speaks about the "Sacred Mission" of Arthit" Arthit Magazine Vol. 22 no. 1100 (December 1999): 31-39, p. 33 (in Thai). The translation is my own.
[2]"Prets are Real: Bad Politicians, Fraudulent Rich People and Sinners BEWARE!" Arthit Magazine Vol 22 no. 1112(9-15 April, 2000): 26-35 (in Thai).
[3]"Prets are Real: Bad Politicians, Fraudulent Rich People and Sinners BEWARE!" Arthit Magazine Vol 22 no. 1112(9-15 April, 2000): 26-35 (in Thai).
[4]Margaret Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
[5]"Dr. Sanong Ekasit: Before Becoming a Scientist" Update 15.157(September 2000): 89-93 (in Thai).
[6]It is one of the chief characteristics of the Thai people to keep different domains in their lives separate. However, in "Future Vision for Science and Technology in Thailand" (in Science and Technology in Thailand: Lessons from a Developing Economy, Yongyuth Yutthavong and Angela M. Wojcik, eds. [Bangkok: NSTDA/UNESCO Publishing, 1997]: 129-138), Yongyuth Yutthavong, a noted Thai scientist, discusses the relation between science and Thai culture, looking for ways for Thai culture to contribute to the former. However, absent from this discussion is a critical attitude toward Thai culture itself. The culture presented is highly idealized, and only those parts of the culture which appears to support science are selected. There is little discussion of how the two can interact in a meaningful way. For example, there is no discussion of how Thai culture itself needs to change in order to accommodate science, and no discussion of how science itself could be adapted in order to fit and to serve the culture.