If you have read this blog enough, you should have recognized one important shift in my standpoint.
I have been much more critical toward "morality".
I actually have some story to tell you about this. As the student from Thammasat, when I first come to Oxford, I was filled up with ideologies on morality. Many of my thoughts and arguments related to development were justified on the ground of morality.
When I did my first essay for anthropology, I wrote about consumerism, justifying it as dangerous based on morality ground. Although there're plenty of Thai famous academics who said the same thing, my first essay was tore apart by the professor. He argues, which I found out later to be right, that in an academics point of view - it is not legitimate to justify anything based on "moral" ground. To write a good academic piece of work at international level, morality from Thai perspective doesn't really have any use.
In addition, going through a tough course on anthropolgy of development, I also come to realize the drawback of morality. Morality itself have a close relations with power. If you are critical about some part of the Thai history, then it should not be too difficult to realize that many events in Thailand clearly demonstrate this point. Reading history from many developing counties, I also realized that "morality itself is not bad, but when it is used by people - then it can become a means for domination, oppression, or even for demolition".
Hence, I concluded that "let's keep morality to be about practice, not to be about....saying words that make you look good"
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3 comments:
For me, the political conflicts in the past few years have taught me that morality can easily be mis-used and over-used.
From poverty reduction policies to military coups, morality has been used over and over again by ALL sides of the story. Be it Thaksin or the military junta or the academia or the press or the people's coalition...
As a matter of fact, I see less and less morality from the exact people who are using morality as the basis for their course.
Don't get me wrong though. I'm not saying morality is not a good thing. I do think that morality is a good thing for society, and that it should be promoted.
However, morality shouldn't be the solution to all problems or the basis for important course of actions. Public policies or political movements should not be driven by morality - they should be driven by solid reasons and evidences.
After all, in many occasions, morality is extremely subjective. And this is why morality-based arguments can likely trigger conflicts and violence.
And last but not least, I strongly believe that placing too much emphasis on morality is DETRIMENTAL to the development of democracy and society in general. Overuse and misuse of morality, especially by those in a power struggle, natually discourage the constructive and intelligent discussions and pariticipation.
It's nice to see good deeds happening here and there in our society, but the world of politics and business is too dirty and complex for morality to be a leading force.
Looking at the political conflicts in the past few years, I think it's time for us to talk less about morality and focus more on the "real" stuff.
One important point to add. The use of morality can provide a good means toward 'depoliticizing' the problems.
Unlike 'real' stuffs, morality is difficult to argue with, isn't it?
wow! it has been very good reading u guys' idea. i agree with u alL.
For me, I just think that the implementation of ideal policy to real action needs mixture of subjective and objective part. While,using over-morality exceed logical thinking is nothing more than hidden (negative)desire driven. And, in the end, it simply solves nothing, just wasting the time for advertisement.
However, I do think that for society to be more objective in arguing or in implementing policy , rather than being subjective, that society would need time, in order to climb up developmental ladder.
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