Anti-mask sentiment as reductio ad absurdum worldview indicator

 

This isn't what you might think, not another long-winded way of saying that 35-47% of all Americans are idiots, for rejecting mask use during a pandemic, and supporting the worst President in the last 100 years.  In fact I'm going to conclude the opposite, that something else entirely is going on.  It's not a simple conservative versus liberal narrative either, stopping at saying that blind spots can occur related to "buying in" to that side, or even to both.  But it's much closer to that.

I'm going to explain why this one case indicates that personal worldviews, in general, aren't based on reason or rational thought. 

My own conclusion is that people are not using reason to the extent they think they are, ever, that our worldviews just aren't based on that.  This applies to liberals too.

It will take some doing to hear me out, to follow this, so people with a low tolerance for reading won't make it through it.  

I think that we can look at this case and general issue from a different perspective (than blaming a near enough to half proportion of Americans for being stupid), and work back to some assumptions about how our worldviews / personal realities are structured, assumptions that don't "hold up."  It would be quite difficult to notice that context issue I'll make a claim about, or to verify it, even if that is true, without a special case highlighting the contradiction.  

There are some moving parts to what I'll say that need to be mapped out separately, and I'll try to keep that simple.

1. what a reductio ad absurdum logical form means

2. why anti-mask sentiment and Trump support aren't rational positions

3. what I think led to those irrational positions

4. connecting these perspective issues, absurdity, and worldview structuring

5. what this tells us about the nature of experienced reality (/ personal worldviews) 

6. examples of non-rational worldview basis

7. the positive side

1. what a reductio ad absurdum logical form means

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum:  

In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for '"reduction to absurdity"'), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity"), apagogical arguments, negation introduction or the appeal to extremes, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.[1][2] It can be used to disprove a statement by showing that it would inevitably lead to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion,[3] or to prove a statement by showing that if it were false, then the result would be absurd or impossible.[4][5] 

It's not directly how I'm using the concept or form here, because I'm starting from accepting that a line of reasoning (or state of being, really) accepted by many people did actually lead to an absurdity or contradiction, not just that it would lead to one.  It's roughly the same thing, just in a different form.  

This means that either the assumptions supporting that reasoning were false, or else that steps taken in the reasoning process were invalid.  No need to overdo it with wrestling with logical forms or process here; I'll keep it simple enough that you won't need to re-read some Logic 101 content to keep up (or really we might be on a 200 level class with all this, or even in grad class scope, with actually applying it to real life well beyond grad-level studies scope).

The basic theme, the general context for what logic is all about, is that if you start with accurate (true) assumptions and use valid reasoning steps (derivations) then you will get an accurate, valid, or true conclusion.  I'm really mixing logic terms and ordinary language framing here, blurring the actual meaning just a bit, but this has to be able to work as both formal logic theory and a description of reality, for what I'm describing.

Their example is this, in that argument in the Wikipedia page description:  The Earth cannot be flat; otherwise, we would find people falling off the edge.

That works, right?  Lots of other arguments against flat Earth work as well or better, about satellite images, how it works out seeing a ship approach or move away from the shore, the changes in seasons and day lengths, how flight paths and times give you relatively direct experience of different distances around the globe.  Let's get back to considering this though, the example form.

There is no edge to the Earth, which can be identified in different ways.  It's a little harder to spot how this works since both the initial assumption (the Earth is flat) and the final conclusion, that people could reach the side, or fall off it, are absurd.  People have been traveling around the globe in lots of forms for a very long time, so that part is surely false.  The assumption that "the Earth is flat" can't be right.  Still, it sort of works in that form too, that if there was an edge eventually someone would experience that edge, no matter where it was, and no one ever does.  I think the flat-earther maps really try to posit that a frozen wasteland circles the known Earth regions, which doesn't work for a number of different reasons.

cool enough, error aside (photo credit:  https://physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/)

It would be fine to skip ahead to applying this to anti-mask sentiment, without any need for pointing out the absurdity of that (how it's foolish to reject use of that protection during a pandemic), but let's pause there for a short time to get that framing clear.

2. why anti-mask sentiment and Trump support aren't rational positions

Rejecting use of masks as protection during a pandemic is clearly an absurd position.  The problem with such a line of reasoning is again clear in the outcome:  a substantial proportion of the US population has rejected isolation practices and mask use, resulting in the worst pandemic spread in the world (more or less; considering per-population numbers maybe it's really only one of the worst).

To me the "deaths" stats tell this story better than the case counts, since that's the final, real impact:

it kept getting worse after that too

A number of European countries, major developed nations, aren't so far off that stat related to per-100,000 population mortality, but we can still consider the American case separately.  I talk to people in different countries on a regular basis, so I do have some feel for what is common and different related to pandemic perspective and routine protections in different places (for example, in Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden), but that would make for a long discussion on its own.

I'm not going to completely justify here that it was in fact refusal to wear masks and practice isolation that "caused" that severity and impact.  It was, and people who might think otherwise you just can't reach.  This is about why you can't reason with them, why they've set aside logic and common sense entirely, embracing a break from reason.  Actually strictly speaking it's not limited to that; I'm also suggesting that the "other half," or everyone in general, never did base their personal reality on reason, although they seem to, or we just naturally assume that they do.

To me all of this works equally well for explaining Trump support in general.  As I see it Trump was clearly the worst President of the last 100 years, or at least on a very short list of contenders.  He failed to help resolve the pandemic in any way, with his main role in that issue being spreading mis-information, at times even interfering with States' resolution efforts.  Stopping support for the WHO during the pandemic works as a clear example, as do 100 other issues, or gaps, cases of failing to do the absolute minimum as a leader.  But it will keep this simpler to focus on the pandemic and mask example, since there's already considerable ground to cover.

3. what I think led to those irrational positions

The simple answer:  conservative perspective bias.  Let's unpack that some before dealing with it directly though.

If you catch a standard "liberal" understanding, or even centrist take, if there was such a thing in the US, anti-mask sentiment and pandemic denial in general leads directly from one main cause:  stupidity.  Surely there's something to that, but it can't just be that.  It could, actually, to a limited extent, but let's break down further what that would mean.

Trump's support base has stuck at between 40 and 45% over the course of his term.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Different polls pass on different results, with the orange and green shaded spaces representing different points occupied by different results.

It would require citing a lot more poll results to link that to pandemic or mask-use perspective.  Just checking a summary of different results about pandemic concerns reveals that's not a direct mapping:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/

We're not seeing 40% of all Americans say the pandemic is nothing to be concerned about, but 30% do say they are "not very" concerned, or "not at all."  It's not completely a given that the conservative / liberal mapping that is most definitely connected to that Trump support issue carries over here, but of course it does.  Catching the right poll isolating that clearly would take more looking around than I'm going to put into this, but a graph of approval or disapproval of Trump's pandemic response is a step in that direction (again cited in that same source):

81% of all Republicans approve of Trump's handling of the pandemic.  As is typical that didn't change at all in relation to the known details of the pandemic changing, or the severity of impact, or the steps that Trump did or didn't take.  There essentially was no Federal-level pandemic resolution response at all, and the US fared the worst of any major, developed country in pandemic outcome, so this really works as an example of an absurd situation.  

It's not an absurd conclusion to a logical argument, which is a different thing, but in a similar way--I'm arguing, at least--landing on a completely absurd point of view or opinion had to stem from the same kind of problematic reasoning form or assumptions starting point (two completely different things, to be clear).

It's common knowledge that the mapping of Trump support, Trump pandemic response approval, and a lack of concern over pandemic risk all map together, as a broad, interconnected conservative position.  If you don't live in the US maybe not, or if you've somehow avoided hearing about Trump and the pandemic over the past year.  Good job, if so; but then you couldn't possibly also be reading this, because avoiding such widespread information would take an unusual degree of isolation from mainstream ideas.

Conservative perspective bias is the cause, not stupidity.

I'll give liberals that the two possible root causes (among others?) probably overlap quite a bit, but I can't accept that 40-45% of the US is less intelligent than the rest, that the break-down of conservative political inclination maps directly to intelligence.  I wouldn't be surprised if there was some correlation, maybe even a lot of it, but intuitively it absolutely couldn't be that simple.  This research paper actually concludes the opposite:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265852713_Cognitive_ability_and_party_identity_in_the_United_States

Carl (2014) analysed data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), and found that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who identify as Democrat. An important qualification was that the measure of verbal intelligence used was relatively crude, namely a 10-word vocabulary test. This study examines three other measures of cognitive ability from the GSS: a test of probability knowledge, a test of verbal reasoning, and an assessment by the interviewer of how well the respondent understood the survey questions. In all three cases, individuals who identify as Republican score slightly higher than those who identify as Democrat...

A later work questions some assumptions in that paper and rejects that finding, described as such (in a comment of a separate citation linked to in that page):

... In two recent papers, Carl (2014aCarl ( , 2014b analyzed data from the United States General Social Survey (GSS) and concluded that individuals who identify as Republicans have higher cognitive ability than individuals who identify as Democrats. In the current paper we replicate his analysis using appropriate controls and show that there is no important difference in cognitive ability between Republicans and Democrats. ...

More recent work yet  (from 2018, versus 2014 and 2016 for the prior two citations, respectively) shows the opposite trend (with results probably varying significantly based on assumptions and methodology, as indicated even in that last short citation):

..Meisenberg (2015) found that intelligence had, since the 1970s, gradually lost its modest linkage with Republican party identification in the U.S. The combination of these two observations nicely matches the present findings: as economic issues decrease in importance relative to social issues, high-ability voters should increasingly prefer left-wing parties...

One thing seems clear:  we simply can't assume that the roughly 40% of the US population who are conservative Americans that support Trump, and almost certainly much more prone to down-play pandemic severity, and to reject mask use, are less intelligent.  It's not that the least intelligent 40% of Americans are that Trump support base, so it's easier for them to reject mask use and any CDC advice, for not having the normal (average) degree of capacity to think things through. 

Some Trump supporters are in that lower-range intellect group; the image of an overweight American, driving a large pick-up truck with a lot of US flags flying from it, making claims and statements that make no sense, points to a real thing, a population segment.  Some of them believe that the coronavirus vaccine has a tracking microchip in it, and so on.  But that's just not who that entire 40-45% is; it can't be.

This is a good place for an aside, and example that shows how this works.  Some of my family members support Trump, and reject mask use, related to me being from a rural, conservative area in Pennsylvania.  My parents are more liberal.  Both obtained graduate degrees, both are of well above average intelligence, and they are on the opposite page.  But the case of two nephews helps highlight how this is a cultural phenomena, not primarily a cognitive issue (or at least I'm asserting that; the point of reading this is to think it through for yourself, not to accept what I say).

One of my nephews recently posted a video to Facebook of him rejecting mask-use policy at Wal-Mart; really the standard Trump supporter / conservative paradigm.  He was probably a bit irate, using profanity, wearing camouflage, not clean-shaven, and so on.  I've not seen the video; the last two parts are about how he always looks, with only a description of the rest passed on to me, about his conduct.  

Oddly he's in a high-risk group; he was born with a serious heart condition, with only three chambers in his heart, so that getting coronavirus would almost certainly kill him.  But he rejects mask use.  There is a chance that he has problems breathing with a mask on, because his lung function is greatly reduced by blood-flow issues (not directly related to that organ, but it works out that way).  If he was irate because it's not workable for him to wear a mask (which seems unlikely, but at least conceivable), that would be one thing, but more than likely his protest took more a standard "muh freedoms!" direction.

So far just typical, the expected norm, beyond that health-risk twist.  He may well be of average intelligence, but given that he had problems in school studies and didn't make it through an attempt at college education he may not be at that level.  To some extent that's not really the point.

To back up a bit, it goes without saying that I love my nephew, and do think less of his reasoning ability and perspective in relation to these themes, but in a broader sense I don't think any less of him as a person.  Part of how that works will be clearer as I finally get to the point.

His brother did make it through university education, and did well.  He probably is of above average intelligence, as their sister is, who also completed that education step.  His brother is also conservative, and supports this "anti-mask" position too, while my sister rejects Trump support and pandemic denial, in all forms.  The position / conclusions mapping isn't to intelligence, in their cases, it's to conservative political bias.  They tend to wear beards, own guns, and all the rest, the standard stereotype.  And to support Trump.

slightly annoying but also funny

It's a bit of a stretch to extend this case to the entire US status, but I'm not trying to.  The studies of intelligence versus American political bias land in the same place; it's just not about that, or at least not only or mainly about that.  Maybe there is a bit of correlation, but it's not that simple, not a one-to-one mapping.

It's very hard to believe that conservative bias could have led people to elect Trump to be the President, based only on having watched some of "The Apprentice," and seeing how he is as a person.  But of course that happened.  It's hard to relate to Trump's approval rating sticking at around 43%, based on continual revelations of corruption in government, personal failings, ethical violations, ineffective policies, botched international relations issues, pandemic denial versus pandemic resolution effort, and so on.  But that happened too.

It's harder yet to place all that.  How could it not relate to cognitive disconnect, a problem with seeing basic patterns of events, to use of intelligence and reasoning?

My own conclusion is that people are not using reason to the extent they think they are, ever, that our worldviews just aren't based on that.  This applies to liberals too.

4. connecting these perspective issues, an absurdity, and worldview structuring

We've reached more than one absurd conclusion, beyond the pandemic issue, and rejected that conservatives are just "stupid."  They are a bit gullible, maybe, prone to sticking with perspective themes well past the point of them completely failing, but that's something else.  An assumption leading to this point caused that to happen.

I'm claiming here that the assumption that failed is this:  that people in general are essentially rational.

For most your first reaction should be "that can't be it."  For some others it would be "obviously, of course."

Other theories or explanations could also explain this outcome.  One that's been drawing attention lately is that Trump following resembles conditions found in a cult, with acceptance of obviously flawed perspective a result of programming.  That kind of works, that Trump supporters didn't arrive at embracing falsehoods quickly, but were led there step by step.  Google-search brings up one example of this position, but it would be stated in other forms:

Trump World Is A Cult. Can Its Followers Be Saved?

It’s been over a month since Election Day, and other than surreptitiously greenlighting the transition to the Biden administration, neither Donald Trump nor his inner circle (nor many of his supporters) have publicly acknowledged the results of the vote. There are a variety of narratives that Trump World™ has perpetuated to explain the loss, including voter fraud, and followers are not only buying them, but are also spreading even more nonsensical theories online. 

A relentless acceptance of blatant lies coupled with unconditional support of a leader are classic symptoms of cult-like behavior. Perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders described it best: “The GOP has ceased to be a political party. It is now a cult.” 

While some might be tempted to dismiss this rhetoric as mere hyperbole, several key aspects of cults — including a charismatic authoritarian leader and an extremist ideology — are present in Trump’s case, explains Janja Lalich, Ph.D., cult researcher, professor emerita of sociology at California State University, Chico, and author of Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults.

It's not a surprise that a professor focused on investigating cults sees Trump following as a cult, but the general point is still well worth considering.  That source is also worth reviewing (although I won't summarize more of it here, the specific parallels).  In a sense it's not so different than what I'm proposing, with one notable difference:  it postulates that Trump supporters, and Republicans in general (which do map together, as we've seen in poll results already cited here) have broken from rational thinking, while I'm claiming that people never were as rational as it seemed.

I'm going to have a problem making my case, which should be clear already:  something led to a breakdown of reasoning (tied to thinking that wearing masks during a pandemic is a bad idea), but I can't "argue back" to what that was.  Maybe I'm assigning such a low status and usefulness to reason that I lose the right to argue anything based on making this assertion.  If it's true, it would just be some random ideas that tend to map to reality in an interesting way, or "paint an image of it" is probably better, not a clear description of it.

Let's back up to consider where we are, how the ideas have tracked so far.  I can cite research that seems to indicate that it wasn't low intelligence causing this problem (gap in perspective / false conclusion); I didn't get far, but I've already done that.  It could've been cult-like conditioning, what is being asserted.  Actually I kind of tentatively accept that.  Conservatives / Republicans were willing to overlook Trump's personal shortcoming in order to first elect him, and it was one step to the next from there, ignoring third-party input that he wasn't ok personally, ignoring warning signs, onto finally rejecting that an in-progress pandemic was real.

Now that 3000 people are dying a day it's far less common to reject that a pandemic is happening at all, because that just doesn't work.  When it was 1000, a truly horrifying long-term status, it was easier to accept that it was "just comorbitities," even though that worked as yet another example of an absurd conclusion and perspective.  The CDC has long since been explaining the relative input of other conditions and causes, but this was never about exploring and accepting the best known and supported explanations.

I'm moving on to claiming that liberals also base their worldviews on predispositions and favored biases that lead to final conclusions, and don't primarily rely on reason.

The gap here is obvious:  I have no alternative, no other absurd conclusion to base that on, or other type of support.  Maybe I could postulate one, but it's not going to work out nearly as well as pandemic denial, or anti-mask sentiment.

Let's try an example from 2020 events:  defunding the police.  At a glance maybe this is ill-conceived, poorly thought-out, or maybe there is something to this.  Couldn't other types of counselors and support personnel do some of the current work conducted by the police, limiting the strain on police service support, and even allowing for transfer of police funding elsewhere?

I think not.  As you "dig into" this issue, per my take, it's another case of starting with a conclusion based on political bias, and never really connecting it back to any form of valid reasoning or practical outcome.  The police are regarded as racially biased, in at least some cases, so this solution works to reduce the scope of their contact with the general public, which is seen as a desirable outcome.  It's punitive, to some extent:  reducing police function and funding ties to penalizing them for doing a bad job (as a consistent, whole group, which sort of doesn't work).

The connections people try to set up in support of this idea don't end up working, or making more sense of it.  It turns out that the police aren't doing that much social-work type counseling, and in almost no cases of police response can you "swap in" a social worker.  Risk of violent reaction by the parties they interact with occurs in a lot more situations than bank robberies or domestic disputes.  Conducting traffic stops triggered by violations are very dangerous, for example, and you can't just separate a speeding ticket issuing function from what else might occur (apprehending a known fugitive, irrational violent response, less straightforward processing reaction to drunk driving, etc.).  

They use cameras and automated systems here in Thailand to give out speeding tickets (and in Australia; I found out both in the same way), but that removes the helpful service of having police take drunk drivers off the road, since camera systems aren't flagging signs of that, yet.

Still, it doesn't work in the same way, considering this example in relation to the conservative case (and the anti-mask issue).  Maybe those liberals supporting this are just swept up in considering a broad range of solutions to a perceived problem, some of which beyond "many cops are racist" could be valid, and maybe some of it could actually work.  Some people advocate the direction as a thought-model more than as a likely solution.  

At this point I'm going to need to move through a lot of explanation that doesn't work as well-grounded claims to flesh this out, which I'll cover in the following section.  

I never did do justice to the "worldview structuring" part in the last heading, and this is so complicated and involved that it won't work to cite a poll graph or research paper to get there.  This part has to rely on my own take on things, which is quite easily rejected, simply by claiming "that's not right."  If I am right then sweeping it aside in such a way can't adjust the facts of the matter, regardless of whether that underlying context becomes clearly known or not, or even personally recognized by any individuals.

5. what this tells us about the nature of experienced reality (/ personal worldviews) 

I'm claiming that liberal and conservative biases inform how we interpret reality.  And people in general aren't as rational as they may seem (none of them; I mean a standard structure for organizing reality, not about a specific range of low-function individuals).  Clear enough, right?  Really that extends way beyond the US political spectrum.  What Americans call liberals and conservatives, and the strands and patterns of thought they represent, do tend to map over to how people in other countries see things, but not completely directly.  

Again I've touched on an issue here that would best be evaluated in a different longish article, one that I won't go further with.  I can add, before leaving off, that I live in Thailand, so I am intimately familiar with another set of biases, reasoning processes, and conclusions, having lived with those day-to-day for 13 years as a part of a Thai family, Thai company, and through witnessing Thai political issues and disturbances.  All for another article...

This line of thinking, that people aren't rational, really occurred to me through a completely different approach point, through the study of Buddhism and then Western philosophy.  No amount of blog-post articles could do justice to either set of themes; both are broad sets of individual topics.  If I were to start in by claiming that "Buddhism says..." or "according to my own study of logic..." that would be problematic.  Onto the requisite resume citation anyway; that won't justify what I say as well-grounded but it does inform the context it's derived from, to a limited extent.

I did spend over a decade studying Buddhism on my own, prior to spending two educational reviews focused on that subject, as both religion and philosophy, in a BA and MA programs at Colorado State University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  I was ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk after that (only for a bit over two months), and lived in a Buddhist society for 13 years since (13 years in a month; I had only been ordained for about 6 weeks at this point 13 years ago).  As topic-exposure resumes go that's decent background for claiming that "Buddhism says that...," but I could still be dead wrong, or go on to assert nonsense after that starting point.

with my current adopted daughter, who is getting old now (13; just a kitten here)

Anyone speaking for Western philosophy is going a bit far, regardless of background.  The subject tends to splinter, so that a sub-theme expert can proudly and confidently assert their views on their own narrow range, but not the general scope.  "Logic" is too broad to count as a sub-theme, if that's intended as relating to how people use reason within their approach to reality.  I've taken a few logic classes (three, I guess, not counting a fourth studying how binary logic and design works out in an engineering course, in an earlier Industrial Engineering degree pursuit).  It's not enough to say I understand how human reasoning works, and what its limits are; no one can make that claim.  It would be nice if they could, if that just suddenly became clear.

Within the actual practice of Buddhism--which is a completely different thing than the academic study of it, oddly, or the religious practice, as I see it--you do examine the nature of your own reality.  That's assuming that Buddhism is even about that, that it's a set of tools and practices for use to examine and clarify your own reality, removing specific forms of errors claimed to exist.

The funny part about explaining Buddhism is that it's really that set of tools, more than it is a description of the conclusions.  Meditation and mindfulness practices, guidance on a functional approach to personal ethics; these aren't explanations for how reality is.  Parts of the "wisdom" section are that, teachings about what is likely to drop out along the way, as incorrect assumptions likely to require revision and simplification.  

But these would take on different forms in different people.  Not all worldviews and perspectives would contain the exact same errors.  The ones not related to your own case aren't particularly helpful or relevant, in terms of applying Buddhist practices to resolving problems with your own perspective.

Buddhism isn't necessarily a completely rational process either.  It's not a logical puzzle to sort out.  People aren't said to be completely reason-based.  Reasoning is definitely one facet of human experience, one part of what a worldview is, but probably not even the main part, if there was such an underlying singular foundation or most-important cornerstone.  You don't resolve problems of reasoning using reason itself.  How does it work then?  We're right back to that being too long a story to do justice to here.  An example can help, but that's about it.

A very simple, perhaps overly simple, case can help, one that I recently cited for a friend in discussing this subject.  Let's take the case of "road rage."  In a more moderate and universal form that's just anxiety or dissatisfaction related to spending time in traffic.  No one really likes that.  My son always hated that as a small baby, crying loudly when the car slowed or stopped, which was curious; if he was too young to cognitively put it all together (as he was), why was he so upset about wasting his time?  I don't know.

The anxiety isn't rational.  It's not that the hundreds of other people and cars clogging the road system are conspiring against you, it's only that there's a problem (eg. a car accident), or as likely the road system just wasn't designed to support the current traffic volume.  It's not easy to "just relax" and accept the circumstances.  But at the same time there is no value or benefit in experiencing a high level of anxiety.  It certainly doesn't make traffic move faster.  It should be possible to understand this very familiar context and resolve the problem, to just accept reality as it is, right then, and related to accepting this delay as a routine part of daily life (to the extent that someone can't just move, or quit their job).

It's just an example.  In fact it is possible to come to terms with this source of anxiety, even to fully resolve it, but it's not simple or straightforward.  Reason alone won't do it.  Acceptance of the experienced conditions of reality on a "deeper" level is required.  This spatial model only goes so far (the "deeper" part), to be clear.  To some limited extent a rational experience of reality is "resting on" a foundation of underlying assumptions and levels of experience, but not in the same way that a house sits on a physical foundation.  They are simply different scopes of experience, with a bit more complex a causal relationship than that implies.

How would one "deal directly" with this traffic anxiety?  In the Western paradigm seeing a therapist, talking it through, being guided to examine feelings and assumptions, in order to eventually resolve an unconscious internal contradiction, an intolerance for undesired delays.

Let's jump way ahead.  Could a conservative Trump supporter use this approach to resolve their anti-mask sentiment, to seek psychological counseling, examining underlying assumptions leading to this false and problematic conclusion?  That's exactly what that conservative cult topic professor was suggesting, only stopping at "maybe."

Could liberals examine their biases and framing issues related to police racism, and police duty scope, in order to resolve coming to a problematic and false conclusion that cutting budgets would be a rational, effective solution?  Sure, why not.  

The problem is that in neither case would the conservatives and liberals in question really dig down to that level of assumptions.  They would get stuck at the "higher" level of debate; do masks really work?, how do I interpret evidence and sources of authority?, what are the problems with the information sources I've been drawing on?, is dislike of liberal themes leading to accepting any opposite position or conclusion?, etc.

It works on the liberal side too.  Again, a running theme in these ideas, it's problematic in seeing the underlying pattern that in many of these cases liberals are currently "more right."  Obviously masks help reduce pandemic risk.  Obviously Trump, the person who was a bit unhinged as a reality television star, who led businesses to numerous failures, and fairly obviously and purposefully evaded tax liability (do we even need to add "allegedly" at this point?), wasn't making that much better decisions as a leader of the country.

The reason that I know that reality isn't rationally based is because I've examined my own personal experience of reality.

That's going to sound like a stronger claim than I intend to make, but it is what it is.

I've already demonstrated that conservative bias has led to absurd conclusions.  It's possible that a cult-like form of programming was a main root cause of that, but I'm offering that it was only possible because reason doesn't play the role we typically think it does in constructing a worldview or perspective.  Glancing at an example of a liberal position following a similar pattern (the defunding the police theme) would be unconvincing, because it wasn't absurd to the same degree, or in the same way.  

Digging into liberal gender definition themes, or universal basic income acceptance (why don't we all just not work if we don't feel like it, and live off free money handed out by the government?) could go further.  

But really reason can never clearly define the limits of reason.

Buddhism gives us other tools to use.  Western philosophy approaches a really, really broad scope of problems and themes from a lot of different perspectives, but a lot of that relates to making false starts, or heading off on relatively irrelevant tangents.  Analytic Western philosophy (the branch I was a part of, more or less) tends to use reason being functional, valid, and comprehensive in scope of application as a starting-point assumption, precisely the range I'm questioning.  If you do question that premise you are no longer "doing philosophy," at least not within the scope of that agreed-upon approach.  The Continental branch might be more accepting, but then the terminology used and range of individual approaches is completely different.

I think it works and is helpful just to note that "something went wrong" related to a lot of conservative political themed perspective and conclusions.  I've not put together the last piece of the puzzle here, how deconstructing my own worldview assures me that it's a common problem in worldview building and perspective instead.

Covering that is another 2000 word article task, and it may or may not be one that I ever get around to writing.  It may prove impossible to write it.  There was no singular, "aha!" revelation that informed me of that.  I read hundreds of books, and continually examined my own worldview and immediate experiences over a period of two decades (or roughly three now, given that the process never really ends, but that first 20 years of exploration was more informative).  I'm reasonable enough, but not completely rational, as I see it.  Reason only goes so far as a basis for what I do, and how I see things.

6.  examples of non-rational worldview basis

That was already a decent place to leave it, but this stands out as a gap, doesn't it?  I never would be able to justify why people don't structure their personal reality in a rational way, but I can pass on examples.  Let's extend two examples already passed on, the one about driving and the pandemic theme.

Of course "road rage" is a better example of an emotional reaction, but that doesn't justify that our relation to driving experience and moment to moment planning and expectations changes aren't rational.  I think I can cite and example of how this works though, not serving as solid evidence, but some indication.

If we start out driving in the morning and run into heavy traffic we automatically shift the tone for that day, into a "running late" mode.  We would naturally expect that other delays will occur, or else at least feel apprehension about this.  To some extent--I'm claiming, at least--our normal expectations tie to emotional tone, and shifting frame of reference tied to analytic interpretation as it overlaps with emotional response.  We expect it to be a "running late" sort of day.  

In part that's already a given; time was lost.  In part it's rational to expect that heavy traffic in one place could relate to heavy traffic elsewhere; the cars are going somewhere, some where we are going.  But then this can also shift expectations, beyond what rationally links.  Emotions work as both an internal reward system and to establish tone, framework for dealing with experienced contexts, and the second part goes beyond rational analysis.  This "off day" theme can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's not completely separate, but rejecting mask use, or that the pandemic is a serious thing, also ties to experience setting the tone and context for further experience.  If we know someone in our family who was sick with corona virus, or a contact has died, that changes perspective more than any number of external stats.  It's just how people relate to ideas and experiences, normally.  This isn't a rational context, because sampling is very uneven, and not a good indicator for likely future experience.

Then ties to information sources also comes into play.  In the US right now there is a divide in media sources that maps to political affiliation, and liberals and conservatives get different news.  Someone active online would experience much different exposure than someone drawing information from television and print news, regardless of which side they fall on.  Rational versus emotional information processing, or other variants, all need to stem from a basic supply of starting point information.

Really what I'm claiming is more severe than that, but it hasn't been fleshed out here.  I see it as an illusion that we really are basing our worldview on the type of construct I've just implied (better or worse information sources + logical or rational processing, with bias as a potential disruptive factor).  We "go with our gut," in relation to decisions, and our life-paths and immediate experiences follow patterns derived from the experiences of others.

To fill in how that works one needs to understand what national culture and sub-cultures are contributing, which is no small task.  All of that is generally not fully observable, until there is a very significant problem that brings it to light.  It's a bit like a fish not fully noticing that it lives in the water, or us being less aware of air as our life-context medium until something unusual comes up (eg. taking an elevator and noticing the pressure differential across a height change).  Moving abroad brings up what that context was contributing, but even that process takes a long time.  It took me about three years for Thai culture context (perspective) to become normal to me, and it really starting feeling familiar only after about a decade.

There is a commonly experienced illusion that we are constructing the analytic interpretation of reality moment to moment, that the ideas all add up to a rational construction and control of the activities of our lives, the cause and effect streams, broad decisions and moment to moment choices.  Per my current understanding human experience is not like that.

The pandemic risk and traffic examples definitely don't add up to a conclusive counter to this general expectation.  Buddhism gives us tools to spot how we do construct our reality piece by piece though, using meditation to calm the mind, and flag forms of noise, and mindfulness practices to notice the components as they occur.

Typical errors in worldview building or analytical structuring occur in decision analysis, but this has too many tangents in it already, to go into that.  It comes to mind because my wife tends to try to make decisions based on outcomes, not expected outcomes, leaving no room for external variability.  It's funny seeing that play out again and again.  

It's just one of countless forms of typical irrational experience (or really non-rational experience).  In the end we build up reality out of assumptions, habits, and vaguely defined goals, and then try to justify it all as reasoned out, when really it's not.  It's probably better that way, since intuition and gut-feel somehow give us more input to work with, and we often do better basing most decisions on hunches instead of reason.  The more removed a topic is from human experience (eg. related to computer systems development, or I guess to some extent even to pandemic risk) then the more helpful reason would probably be, because those hunches are going to be based on pattern-recognition not based on much of value.

7.  the positive side

So far a natural read of all this might be quite negative, relating to it framing people as a lot more limited than we typically tend to see them.  But not necessarily.

If people are relatively rational, let's say motivated and self-determined by an even, 50-50 balance of rational and other inputs and internal processes, then they are largely responsible for all the problems, personal gaps, and evils in the world.  And for how they themselves are, really.  But if people inherit assumptions, patterns, biases, meaning frameworks, self-identification themes, and so on, and typically never consciously examine these then they are more "off the hook" related to being a primary cause of their own self-nature.

Really I mean to head in that same direction without the emphasis on praise or blame, which that last statement just invoked.  On that positive "praise" side, it also takes away credit for people being self-determined at the same time, to accept that luck and a broad range sub-conscious inputs make up who we are, and the ideas we accept and work with.

Self-identified religious gurus and tea sales

 

A friend recently brought up an interesting subject of discussion, raised initially by someone claiming to be "spiritually advanced" in a Facebook group post introduction.  The problems with this sort of claim and context seems obvious enough:  what if such a person was either making up those credentials, using them for some other type of gain, or wrong about their own assessment of attainment?  The "average cult leader" is someone best avoided.

But then it's all not as simple as it first appears.  How do we distinguish an ingenuine master-type from someone who really has had unique, helpful, and informative experiences, who wants to share perspective deriving from those?  Is the problem only related to someone running a scam, or using that as product or service marketing, or is there a broader grey area to be concerned about?  

This example led into such concerns.  It will be helpful using it as an approach point, so first unpacking what that guy claimed, and what context seemed to relate to making the claims.  Some degree of speculation is involved in any review, so I'll try to be careful about flagging which parts are added by my own intuition, which really is most of it, in this case.

About two years ago someone posted a personal introduction in a Thailand-related Facebook group.  Who it is doesn't matter, or whether this guy really is a scam artist looking to sell something based off false claims, or else a genuine and accomplished spiritual seeker who really would be helpful to others, if one were to seek out further contact.  In the end it does matter, related to his case and actual contact, but this will talk around what goes into making such a distinction, and how different contexts matter.

His back-story was that he had just spent some years meditating under the guidance of a master, as part of an established tradition.  I think it even included reference to an actual cave location, and either martial arts or qi gong, but to some extent those details aren't critical.  It was also associated, if not then soon after, with selling tea.  That's a bit of a red flag, coupling offering spiritual insights with a literal product sales-pitch.  In the initial form it was just an introduction though, not a clear marketing step.

I responded to my friend's question, asking about that context and that guy, in discussing my concerns over such a background, in relation to that person making specific claims about spirtitual-scope accomplishments:

I don't know any stories about him cheating people or anything like that. He was telling stories about training in meditation and something like kung fu (martial arts or qi gong) under a master, claims which are typically problematic, but in some instances there could be validity for that.

Related to the specific subject of spiritual attainment, you could find someone in China to certify that you are anything at all by email, with no background. You could be a kung fu master, tea expert, master electrician, whatever you wanted. Real "spiritual" training and experience typically wouldn't come with titles.

He was promoting himself as spiritually advanced; the reference was to training in a cave under a master, or something such. Taken alone the claim implies a related gap. As I see it he is embracing evaluation of that status in taking up the promotion. Someone offering others advice about some meditation practice in a Buddhism group is one thing; that does imply accomplishment, but only indirectly, towards helping others. Using such direct claims as background to sell tea is something else.

This is the problem with [another similar case of a person using a spiritual role to sell tea]. No one can tell how spiritually advanced he is without meeting him, but he is definitely using a spiritual angle to sell tea, for material benefit. I talked to him only one time, mentioning some background with tea and Buddhism as an intro, and he bypassed any further discussion of both subjects to try to sell me a subscription. He's a salesman. That's fine, but even selling spirituality is problematic, to really serve the other role. It can be promoted, but focus on the sales side and literal profit makes one no different than Joel Osteen.

Probably both guys are decent people, and a good bit of that rejection [mentioned in other comments in more detailed form related to other people's takes] does relate to subculture based expectations. I personally don't care for ego and focus on materialism to adjoin spiritual claimed status; my own negative reaction probably relates to something like that.

It could sound like a contradiction, saying that they are probably decent guys, and that it's ok for people to judge and dislike them. As I see it the positioning as a religious figure or accomplished practitioner is the difference. A Christian minister needs to be more ethical than most people to serve that role. Joel Osteen is fine in relation to the ethical standard we hold stock brokers to, but not remotely ok as a Christian minister. This guy brought up the scope in direct claims, and for sure he's using that scope as part of tea sales business. He implicitly embraces being judged differently, since he is tying a business sales function to an image and a background context. Then the last step about me guessing his personal context based on his claims is a bit thin, mostly just speculation.

The introduction based on spending years in some type of meditation training was probably based on some truth; I don't doubt that part. The next implication of spiritual accomplishment is more problematic.  But I get why some genuine, valid, informative experiences would naturally lead one to try to "bring wisdom from on high" to others.

That clearly left off with the open-ended conclusion that I don't know how this case works out.

One unusual twist here is that the context helps us try to fill in the gap related to knowing how genuine this form of self-identification really is.  Pairing it with selling something is a red flag, but not necessarily a clear indication of the context being false or invalid.  He easily could've had interesting, useful experiences that he really would like to share.  He could also just happen to sell tea.  We have to judge further from other input, or completely suspending judgment is an especially valid approach.

It helps to reference what an "accomplished Buddhist master" actually does look like, but to be clear it won't work to hold anyone who has had any other degree of exposure to the same standard.  The modern paradigms that come to mind are Ajarn Chah (of the Thai Buddhist forest tradition), and Thich Nhat Hanh, of the Vietnamese Zen tradition.  Both are regarded as accomplished, well-informed, personally-transformed and genuine teachers.  The Dalai Lama is along the same line and type, with opinions varying as to whether his political stance and purposes reinforce his spiritual leader role or conflict with it.

Thich Nhat Hanh; we don't have that many genuine spiritual guides like him

Both of these teachers emphasize personal practice, study of core teachings and practices, embracing an unusual degree of humility, and a rejection of materialism.  To be clear I've shifted from Asian spiritual themes in general to focus on Buddhism here; it could be that qi gong practice, or Taoism, within a yoga tradition, or whatever else, doesn't retain the exact same focuses but are also valid.  Equally valid?  Who knows; that's the kind of thing people need to explore on their own personal journey, and decide for themselves.

A materialist theme was one underpinning thread in what the person was communicating (in the introduced status), but only indirectly.  Adjoining the very limited description of practice background was a context including special clothing, elaborate furnishings, and art-collection oriented teaware.  To be clear I don't see all of these as problematic at all in relation to anyone's personal interest in tea.  It's fine to bridge over to collecting teapots, and statues and figurines, owning unique tables and cabinets that relate to the interest, and wearing traditional Chinese martial arts inspired clothing (or other robes; whatever it is).  Those interests aren't invalid in any way, or even problematic.

a dear friend combines interest in tea, teaware collection, and ceremony, and it completely works

The potential problem is connecting ownership of a lot of "stuff" with spiritual attainment claims.  To me that's a contradiction with that context.  One would typically start such a spiritual journey by limiting focus on ownership of a range of items that expands their self-image definition.  Not right away; setting up some sort of shrine and owning some meaningful symbols would be typical, but pretty soon in focusing on internal versus external connections would come up.

form can seem to overtake function, or maybe this is just an everyday look (photo credit)

The cave context itself works as an example of how we would tend to use intuition to break down what is implied but not directly expressed.  There's nothing wrong with meditating in a literal cave; that could be a quiet, comfortable, isolated natural space.  It could also be seen as a red flag related to a teacher putting image above function.  The same would come up related to actual certifications of attainment.  You might wonder, do such things even exist, would that be common?  There's no tight connection to the rest of this but an interesting tangent comes to mind.

judgement based only on appearances is problematic; his religious practice could be completely valid and useful

I don't want this to be about "naming names" but during the time I was ordained as a monk I went on a retreat to a different sect's meditation center well outside of Bangkok, arranged by my "monk-teacher."  I don't think it was chosen as the best possible location and setting for such a training, or the most authentic source, it was just relatively close, and set up for that kind of visitation.  

That sect was and still is controversial for selling a lot of magic amulets and such, for focus on material gain as a part of the organization context.  Stories about talking statues I heard there were really crazy.  They use that revenue to build larger and larger facilities, a theme that comes up in some US Christian ministries.  I didn't care for the teachings or form of meditation practice, which related to a accepting that the Buddha was alive in a heaven realm (a bit of heresy there), and to "guided meditation" focusing on trying to see crystal angel images and such.  If you said that you visualized a certain thing you would be given a certificate announcing your level of attainment.  All not good, as I saw it.  I didn't want any certificate.

In the end I don't know how genuine or spiritually advanced the guy I'm discussing here is.  Meeting him would help a lot in making that distinction.  It's a problem defining yourself as spiritually advanced, but not the same kind of problem I might seem to be implying.  People do experience shifts in perspective and even distinct breakthroughs in spiritual progress.  If that is what triggered his self-declaration there's a pretty good chance that he's just the kind of person someone pursuing a spiritual path would want to meet, and would be lucky to meet.  Just as likely he has experienced some positive aspects of spiritual pursuit and still wouldn't be helpful, due to not getting far, and not having prior exposure to the right kinds of teachers and practice, especially related to placing unusual experience after it happens.

I may be over-reacting to the coupling of spiritual attainment claims with product marketing.  We always tend to be biased in relation to expecting what we already experienced to repeat, and prior negative conditioning could be steering me in the wrong direction related to this.

I've not really fleshed out a sort of worst-case yet here: what if that guy had unusual, interesting, potentially helpful personal experiences, but then derived a number of relatively inaccurate, unhelpful, and potentially damaging conclusions and personal practice steps from them?  That can happen.  

To clarify context with an example, some people really do believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and then it matters whether Traditional Chinese Medicine is a set of valid practices or not, or a complete scam.  Maybe it's in the middle, with forms varying, and to me that seems likely.  If that third option is the fact of the matter then it would be possible to run across better and worse references.  Someone with limited legitimate exposure and information, actual positive contact, could have the best of intentions but still pass on very bad guidance.  Experiences would vary in relation to differing exposure, and the exact same external inputs would affect different people differently, in terms of ingesting rare herb or root supplements or undergoing different practices.

I've met a tea vendor before who also sold TCM herbs as a separate second business, and asked him about that subject (not one of the two people I've already discussed).  He wouldn't say if it was valid or not, but his participation in the business implied that he either saw it as valid or else thought it wasn't but didn't care.  

He implied that it was legitimate, but instead of defending it he pushed the validation step off to other people involved who did the TCM analysis and prescription, roughly fulfilling the doctor's role (in the separate Western medicine context).  He saw himself as more covering the function of a drug store, which doesn't try to validate the use or effectiveness of anything sold, they just offer it for sale.  Fair enough.  If he personally thought it was a complete scam that still seems a bit unethical, but withholding judgment is perhaps still a potential option.  I'm not sure to what extent he was really "bought in," or else was working within an ethical grey area instead.

This paradigm can't really hold for someone advocating meditation / spiritual practices; they would have to be involved, and completely bought-in.  Using that range of experience as a background for unrelated product marketing is perhaps a step closer to a grey area.  Really a tea vendor is either selling high quality, good-value, as-sold tea products or else they're not.  If they cite health claims that they don't believe in themselves or tell mythical stories that they don't think are true that sort of doesn't matter.  No one really knows which health benefit claims are valid anyway.  If it relates to a product-background detail maybe it does, or maybe still doesn't; if the tea really doesn't come from beside a wishing-well where some magic event occurred in historical times.  

It's probably a more common case for a tea to be sold as from a specific village area when it's really from an area next to it, or as a spring harvest version instead of fall, or from young farm-grown plant sources instead of older natural environment tea trees.  The "red flags" sort of matter, because if part of the background isn't real the rest might not be either.

Ideally people should be buying tea for the actual experience of that tea, not as part of a story.  In reality different themes like that do tend to mix.  Spiritual attainment and tea quality and experience might seem an odd coupling but it wouldn't be completely new for them to combine.  Tea experience can take on a meditative form, and the principles and practices found in religious context can support that, and can positively couple with it.  Mixing the sales aspects, and marketing, with spiritual practice scope becomes a little strange; one general theme here in this writing is being aware of potential problems with that.

I wrote about that more directly in a blog post about mixing tea experience and "cult" experience, religious group participation, in a limited form.  It's less of a sweeping critique of anything remotely like that than an initial title summary may imply.  I personally don't see a problem with combing varying forms of interest, tea with mindfulness and religion practice, tea experience with aesthetic interest and art collection, and so on.  Focus on the most extreme forms, which would tend to be more negative, helps highlight the scope of the concerns, but in general limited mixing would probably typically be positive.  Even the more extreme example I mention, related to a contact I've discussed here, is probably experienced generally positively by most people who come in contact with that group and form.  

I'll cite that other blog post for further reading:

On tea popularity and tea cults

About an unusual meditation experience

There is a story about something that happened to me once when meditating that I don't tell very often.  I never really knew what to make of it so there was never a lot of point in sharing it with others.  A friend just experienced a death in her family, a terrible tragedy, and it partly, relates, so I'm writing this down and passing it on related to that.  She would just think I'm crazy, but I suspect it won't be occurring to her for the first time anyway.

[Later edit]:  I thought better of publishing this, and am checking back in on the content 3 1/2 years later.  Why not mention it, since few people read this blog anyway?

It's about meditation, something that happened once during that, and I suppose it could be interpreted as being about lots of other things, about something vague and spiritual, or even about death.  I'll start with the event itself, what happened, and then never really will get far with interpretation.  It sort of goes without saying that this was "all in my head," given the subject matter.  That's the part I could be clearer on, what it means, how "real" one could say it is, but as for me I don't say.  I tried to place it more back when it happened, around 25 years ago now, but I let that drop after awhile.  I went on to study Buddhism more formally in two philosophy and religion degree programs, but instead of being about sorting this out all that was about communicating things I had found out.  That didn't really work.


To begin, I had a strange feeling once when meditating.  For anyone interested in dismissing most of the rest I can explain that was in my younger days, during a stint as a ski-bum, and it was kind of a given that people were exposed to different drugs back then, and I'm not saying that wasn't a factor.  It was a different time, the early 90s, but things haven't changed so much.  Except that where I was, Colorado, has since legalized the drug that was already most common then, marijuana.  It didn't seem like such a big deal back then but it was illegal; now personal use of it in that state is not.  I was using marijuana regularly then and had experimented with different psychedelic drugs.

It started with feeling an unusual anxiety.  Feeling a bit of anxiety related to using marijuana is completely normal; that's a main side-effect.  I had just taken a couple of weeks off of that habit, due to preparing for a drug test for a job I was applying for.  Drifting off into considering strange ideas also wouldn't be so uncommon.  For people that have no exposure to the drug it's perhaps not as intense or unusual as people may expect related to drug use.  Or maybe it really is; people growing marijuana have put lots of effort into increasing the potency and types of effects over the last 20 or 30 years, and it's hard to imagine where that has led now.  This was different though, not really an experience related to some crazy strain or "getting too high."  It's hard to summarize, but I'll give it a go.

I had been meditating for awhile, nothing too serious or interesting, so I relaxed to focus a bit.  It may be familiar to anyone doing yoga--which I did a little of, in part related to being flexible for the snowboarding I did then--that breathing adjustment is part of that.  It's nothing too far out there.  It just turns out that to relax your mind or focus your body developing even and deep breathing helps.  It's funny how it seems to actually work both ways; when you are relaxed your breathing naturally deepens, even seems to "come from" a different place, to change from chest breathing to more stomach / diaphragm based breathing instead.  All that gets to be a long subject so I'll leave it at that, that getting in the habit of adjusting breathing to be a bit slower and more from the stomach can help someone relax.

[Another later aside]:  I took up yoga again seven months ago now, in a completely different form than that earlier practice, which was on my own, without instruction, based on using a text for reference.  At that time I would do a series of a dozen or so standard poses, all relatively slowly, trying to relax into those positions.  This required changing breathing and letting muscles and bones settle into relatively unfamiliar positions, releasing a lot of held tension to accomplish that.  

The yoga practice I had been doing recently was with an instructor, and it was more a cross between that sort of practice and calisthenics.  There were themes to individual classes, like Intro, Essential, Stretching, Twisting, Core Strength, and onto advanced ranges more likely to draw on Indian yoga category names.  Sun Salutation variations came up a lot, guided to be practiced at a fast pace, so that physical conditioning also came into play, along with flexibility and balance.  The breathing that instructor recommended was fast and rough, more timed to correspond with motions than to slow and relax the body.  

I have no idea if the breathing part "worked;" I wasn't able to take the practice far enough to get a feel for that.  My flexibility never really developed, related to not stretching in between classes, which I often only attended for one hour per weekend.  Running was probably a negative factor.  I would stretch before runs, which I'd typically do twice a week, but it seemed like leg flexibility decreased along with the leg muscle conditioning.  Sitting at a desk for a work-week definitely didn't help, but then the yoga seemed to offset some of the impact of that.


[Back to the original writing]:  But why do breathing exercises or practices?  Relaxing is nice, but why go that next step, to link it to breathing.  I was using yoga as stretching, which it sort of is, but it's also different, and you need calm breathing to be able to do some positions.  Of course this relates to mental and physical state too, it's not just about some magical effect of breath, but it was all coupled naturally enough.

So just then, related to this meditation experience, I used regular breathing to calm myself--nothing interesting just yet.  In a way it worked but it felt as if the anxiety ran deeper, as if I could somehow continue to follow that experience.  I'd never really had any experience like that before, of being able to recognize and "follow" a feeling; I was only messing around with meditation a little.  Oddly it seemed that I could really stay with that feeling, sort of explore it more deeply, in a sense I can't explain at all.  Finally it seemed this experience of anxiety was really related to some deeper experience of fear.  But what would I be afraid of, really, related to drifting off inside my own mind?

I can't convey what it was like but I want to say that it was like travelling into the experience, even though that makes no sense.  I felt the normal experience of myself start to fade a bit as I did so.  Finally I had a choice, to go back, to stop, or to release my apprehension over really experiencing this fear, and go on to see and experience what it really was.  Oddly it seemed the reservation was over not existing in some sense, losing myself, since there seemed to be some core connection to ordinary perception that I was examining.  Somehow it only seemed possible since I could set or "lock" my breath, to stabilize it as a slow form of diaphragm breathing.

None of this made any sense, and it still doesn't now, which is why I never communicate about it.  I'm talking about vague feelings and interpretation of an odd experience.

It felt as if at a deep core of myself the connection to even experiencing, in general, related to this apprehension, an odd type of reservation or a desire, a fear of not being.  Saying that "I felt fear" really doesn't do the experience justice.  I wasn't afraid, in a conventional sense, like when you are in a bad neighborhood and you don't know what is going to happen next.  Some part of that carried over though, a vague uncertainty, and a relatively tangible experience of fear itself.  I let that go, just experienced it, and moved into the center of it instead of trying to avoid it.  In that process I experienced flashes of my life, in a strange sense, but not like memories, like I felt connections dissolving.  It was like I was gone, along with a normal form of experience.

There was another side.  Things were already strange but this is where it gets more so.  I'd stopped with the "I," so it was a different form of experience.  It wasn't really sequential, not related to other types of experiences, not really sensory.  The fear ceased, and "below" that was an unusual experience of selfless connection, an immersion, a dissolving.  I didn't really seem to experience myself, but an odd kind of positive, broader energy, somehow tied to a sensory experience of light, even though I wasn't "seeing" anything in an ordinary sense.  Without a normal flow of time for reference it was all not really clear.

And that was kind of it.  It seemed a bit like the experience of light, so closer to that in terms of sensory scope, but just different, odd.  Later I kind of came out of it, so it seemed I had really just fallen asleep, that it was an odd dream.  And so it could have been, or so in a sense it really was; what else could internal experience be?

After that

The really odd part was how it changed me; of course I could've just imagined that, or fell asleep and dreamt it.  I was a good bit different after.  That inner dialogue, inner voice we all naturally hear, went quiet.  That alone would have been odd, to experience myself in a fundamentally different way than I ever had, but that wasn't the end of it.  Things seemed different.  It was kind of odd to experience at first, but meat seemed way too common to me to eat it, to what I was made of myself.  I became a vegetarian, immediately, and didn't get back to eating meat for over a decade and a half (after some health problems; living in a country without many vegetarians--in Thailand--made it hard).  There was nothing particularly idealistic about that part; it just seemed like a natural thing to do, as if actually eating meat should've seemed unnatural all along.  I gave away what was in my refrigerator; the change was that fast.  

I'd never had any significant experience of any "sixth sense" or anything like that but unusual things seemed apparent, things about to happen, or happening nearby out of sight, details about people.  It would relate to a sense of expecting someone to walk in a door, to what was happening elsewhere, or in the immediate future.  I didn't know what to make of that so I didn't make anything of it.  It was just something odd that would happen.  In one instance I had a strange impression of someone around that time and asked him if he had either had an unusual form of meditation experience or had died before, and he was surprised that I asked, since he had been resuscitated in relation to severe trauma from a car accident.  I can't really describe what seemed different about him.  He lacked the noise and roughness other people exhibit.

You might wonder how this relates to death, since I mentioned that, and so far it seems not to connect, beyond that odd example.  I didn't really know how to interpret it, but the flashes of my self, not so much memories, but about connections, and the vague relation to light reminded me of those near-death stories.  I don't think that I died, of course; in fact I know that I didn't.  The part that seemed vague at the end, that I didn't say much about, seemed to relate to dissolution into the experience of a greater underlying whole.

I did wonder if any of this related to how people are on a different level.  That fear felt really fundamental, and of course the other experience had some odd universal connection feel to it.  I don't know.  I got the sense that the fear was connecting to something very basic and common, a fear of death, the kind of underlying experience we never really examine or couldn't really embrace, generally.  My interpretation was that one main connection point we have to life experience is fear that it will end, that this ties us into a lot of how we see ourselves, setting up an underlying tension that we don't really consciously notice.  

The rest, it seemed like somehow that related to what we really are.  It didn't feel like I "came back" with answers, of course.  I did get a sense we have nothing to worry about, in the broadest sense, that it's all connected, and ok on a level we never could experience, at least not as the selves we are.  It seemed like the separation of individual self from everything else that we experience is mostly just misinterpretation, if that makes any sense.  It seemed like a "self" is really just a collection of attachments, ideas, feelings, and expectations, but we aren't that at all.

Years went by and I never placed that experience.  The effects of it that I just mentioned faded to some degree over time, some parts relatively quickly, some never really going back to a former form.  I felt like I always was a much quieter person mentally than I'd ever been before, that my inner dialogue never really did resume in the same type of form.  It did come back though.  The odd effect of sensing things about to happen or insights about people faded quickly enough, maybe over a few weeks.  Not a lot changed otherwise.  It seemed I retained just a little capacity to stop being myself if I tried to.  But why would I do that?  It doesn't really shed light on the rest of this but a couple of reasons come to mind, purposes, and describing that works as a tangent.

It's sort of just a trick that someone can do, but it's easy to experience if someone else is lying if you experience how they experience themselves, if you change to be them instead.  There's nothing to it; you just stop being yourself temporarily, and naturally absorb more of them.  I've heard of a similar practice, or perhaps an identical one, described as exchanging self for another.  It doesn't take any special ESP access to know what someone near you is experiencing, on some level, because they exhibit it in so many ways.  Even without talking, but people are very expressive when they convert their thoughts into communication, even when they are guarded and filtered.  Maybe especially then, in a limited sense, because you can sense a different kind of tension in them when there is a divide between what they say and what they think.  Sometimes people who experience no core, inner other self can be scary.  Being mentally quiet, consistent, and genuine is one thing, existing as a less ego-based self, but some people are pure randomness, just disjointed, to themselves there is no center.  That alone doesn't make them bad people, but that form is really strange.  It can work out badly.


This part is a bit of a different tangent, but aside from that, for sports purposes, an odd type of experience of selflessness can be useful.  It turns out you can only perform a difficult physical task up to a certain level if you are thinking about what you are doing, because that overlays a "you" onto the experience, it creates a bit of a feedback loop, "you" do it, then you also analyze and experience it.  It's more direct to just do it (like the Nike ad, right?).  

This takes a different form, and makes sense in a different way, when the margin is so small for what you are doing to even be possible, when being completely in that moment is absolutely necessary, or else it won't happen.  Snowboarding was a good example.  I would "board" bumps / moguls (actual terrain features caused by people making turns, like a small mound maybe two yards / meters across), and do so fast enough that I'd go through / past / around more than one in a second, or several.  You can't think and react that fast.  I would use tricks to drop conscious perception of the actions back when I snowboarded, like singing in my head, but eventually you can just go there mentally, and drop out layers of mental participation.

Maybe rock climbing is a better example.  Your mind can be a bit scattered and you can still snowboard in unusual ways, but there's something compelling about hanging on a rock face by fingertips and the edge of an oddly designed shoe.  You can stay at that edge, at the limit of what you can do, but overthinking it any at all won't work.


Anyway, fast forward a couple of decades and I wonder what all that was about myself.  I can't imagine this would be reassuring to anyone else but somehow I'm sure that we've nothing to worry about, related to death, and to life too.  I'm somehow certain that we connect and it all "makes sense" on a level we'll never be able to experience.  It's nothing at all about making sense, about reasoning, or about us, in any remotely conventional sense.  I had the impression that an experienced self is more about mental habits, assumptions, and preferences than any underlying part of what we really are, that a conventional form of self-experience is just really about the noise part.

Later thoughts and tangents:

There are lots of directions I might take further thoughts in.  It seems there should be a better way to place that experience, and the changes in perspective that resulted from it.  There are differing conventional descriptions of odd forms of experience, but it would be problematic to match it to one.  

Certainly 25 years later I've changed perspective related to what it meant, and how I view my ordinary life.  I've finally got back to meditation again, a practice I only revisited once in between during a two-month stint as a Buddhist monk.  During the pandemic I was able to meditate regularly for a month or two, related to gaining some time and energy due to my daily commute dropping out.  I've even been considering a connection between running focus and meditation, since for both you are at opposite extremes of the experience spectrum, dropping out all physical and most mental activity, or else engaging your body in repetitive, familiar physical activity.  Not much of all of it completely links together, or really informs what that experience was about, or what it may have meant.

To me it seems like I'm a normal person; maybe that doesn't come across in this.  If anything I seem much more normal than the average person.

I can't pass on much for advice or summary related to any of this, but I do want to make one last point.  In reading up on different forms of meditation experience the idea came up of people having unusual experiences tied to drugs (as I did), and being "reborn under the sway."  Anyone going through something like this should seriously consider parting with any negative habits right at that point, any attachments that seem questionable or problematic at all.  

It's too long a story to relate to how that played out in my case, but cutting that cycle short right then would've been better.  Instead I did a longer version, and dropping out some normal attachments and retaining one primary and somewhat negative one didn't go well.  I'm not saying that marijuana is bad, but if you experience a reset of some sort letting such a habit go then would probably be for the best.  I guess the same could be true for a move; eventually I parted ways with that habit related to making other conventional changes, including that one.

Are Thais racist against white people?

That must sound like a strange question, that splitting off who are the main targets of unequal treatment might be appropriate, starting out with asking if Thais are racist full stop.

My take is that answer is simple:  they are.  There is a mainstream, well-accepted prejudice against black people, Indians, and people from the Middle East.  It just is what it is. 

All of this came up recently in relation to a story by Richard Barrow about being turned away at the most popular tourist-attraction temple in Thailand, Wat Pho.  I'll get back to that.


Of course some people are not racist at all, everywhere.  Some see people of all races, nationalities, social status / income levels, and gender self-designation and relationship preference as completely equal.  Good for them.  As I take it the concern relates to the norm, what would be typical.  It's just my impression, based on living in Thailand, but I understand that some very limited degree of racial bias is quite normal in Thailand. 


None of this bias is expressed as the kind of dislike and preferential treatment that seems to stir up social context concerns in the US now.  Some white people there actively dislike black people; this is not a secret.  A black person getting murdered by a white policeman isn't as much of a rare exception as it should be, but it really is an exception.  The more common forms really are nothing like that, even there.  Racial prejudice that should be very uncommon there does occur though, verbal confrontation and violence, resulting differences in hiring practices and prison population, etc.  Of course the cause and effect sequences are all quite complicated; economic and other factors come into play.

Here in Thailand racial bias is very mild in comparison, more related to who some people wouldn't be open to being roommates with.  That typically wouldn't come up anyway, since all those minorities are not prevalent in Thailand, except there probably is a significant Indian population.  Race inspired violence and even public expression of racial slurs don't really come up very often. 

To be clear "people from the Middle East" is not equated with Thai Muslims.  That group is fairly well accepted, even though there is ongoing violence related to a Muslim separatist movement in the far South of Thailand, because Thais are very open about respecting other religions.


The initial question is odd because Thais generally have a positive image of Western foreigners, of white people.  Of many minorities; Thais love Japanese and Korean culture too.  They don't necessarily see them as essentially completely the same as Thais, and I never will do justice to that complex cultural perspective here.  And all of this will just be based on my own opinions; that goes without saying.  Let's start with introducing the perspective from a couple of other angles, from expat perspective (that of local Western foreigners).

Dual pricing at national parks, and so on

It's a running complaint that foreigners aren't treated equally here.  Some of the examples could seem trivial, but it's easy to see how the perspective builds up from different causes.  An obvious example is that foreigners pay more to enter national parks, or places like zoos, or museums.  Visiting a temple associated with tourism is free for a Thai, but Wat Pho just increased the visitor fee from 100 baht to 200 baht (from $3 to $6).

There's really no justification offered for any of that.  Someone might claim that Thais pay local taxes, but then foreigners living here do too.  The idea seems to be that if someone is wealthy enough to fly from a different part of the world to visit that they can then afford to pay $3 or $6 to visit an old temple, but that this is a burden on many local Thais who earn very little.  Without being spelled out it could mean that, or something else instead.  Either way it works out to something like an extra tax on tourists.

dual-pricing was normal in the last place I lived too, in Hawaii (photo credit)

It doesn't stop at those few places; if anything a disparity of cost widens in local markets, where items are often bargained for versus just sold for one price.  How that works out is complicated; most things Thais don't bargain for when buying, they just know what is negotiable per convention.  Sometimes menus can be printed in two languages, with two listings of prices, but typically it's not like that; that would be an extreme case.

Of course some expats (local foreigners) see it all as unfair.  Some recognize that they earn a completely different scale of income as almost all Thais and take no offense.  I can put a scale to that easily enough.  It's my understanding that a foreigner working here as an English teacher would tend to start out around 30,000 baht per month ($1000), with some earning up to 70 or 80,000, all still for high school level teaching.  Some in very bad placements might earn only 20-25k but that would be an exception.

Per my understanding Thais working in a local school would tend to earn only 15-20,000 per month, without much potential for that to scale up.  Some would probably be closer to 10, for exceptions on that lower end.  An average Thai college professor might earn around 30,000 per month, equivalent to what a foreign English teacher with limited qualifications could easily earn, someone lacking a degree in education.

Thai general perspective of white foreigners

Telling this story almost has to involve how this general perception seems to have changed.  It's my impression that just before I moved here, a dozen years ago now, the impression of foreigners was different.  There was an automatic status associated, and an expectation that such a person would be more qualified as a subject specialist or manager, for example.  That was shifting even back then.

Today a lot of Thai companies actively avoid hiring any Westerners for any reason, and international companies tend to get by using almost entirely Thai staff, because it works out better.  It offsets any need to work around Thai language, higher pay expectations, and cumbersome work permit and visa processing.

It would involve too much summary to explain how white people are seen by Thais, in general.  There are a few standard running themes in perspective, both positive and negative biases, but any given foreigner (or Thai) would express that range differently, and how the balance works out.

Sub-themes complicate things.  At one point there was an impression that any foreigner working here was either an English teacher or subject specialist in an international company, for example someone working in IT (the field I do work in, just for a Thai company).  Retirees would fall into a separate category, with stereotypes mapping to those types of cases.

In general the impression was always mostly positive, it seems, and that is still true today.  "Positive but different" can be an unusual range though; it opens a space for perceptions to be partly negative too.  And other sub-themes come up, about foreigners marrying bar-girls, or backpackers, or foreigners being more likely to have a bad temper, and ignore the social convention to stay calm in public expression.  It's probably best to by-pass all this for now and circle back to a local event that seemed to trigger a lot of "white" resentment about this unequal treatment.

Thais only admitted to a main Bangkok temple, Wat Pho

The main foreigner news blogger, Richard Barrow, recently "broke" a story that he had visited Wat Pho and was turned away for not being Thai.  That's actually what happened; only Thais are being admitted now.  Later on it turned out that the main hall tourists visit there, the large Reclining Buddha statue, is under construction, and with that and corona social-distancing concerns the temple opened only for locals from around the time period of June 5 to the first week of July.  Reasonable enough, but of course all that wasn't part of the initial story.  Other outlets ran the story too:

(Coconuts) ‘Thai People Only’: Famed Bangkok temple refuses entry to foreigners

(Bangkok Post) Thais only policy is racism, pure and simple


Signs at the front only said "Thais only."  Staff couldn't add detail to that, a justification or explanation.  The Wat Pho Facebook page mentioned concerns about social distancing, and gave a limited description implying the limit related to ceasing tourism but not religious observation.

a  June 3rd announcement about re-opening, not mentioned in Richard Barrow's post a week later

It sounds like just a misunderstanding, right?  Not exactly.  For one thing it triggered a lot of foreigner resentment, and validated and confirmed a lot of their pre-existing concerns about racism.  If there was absolutely no difference in perspective and treatment of foreigners it would be easier to brush all that aside, but it's not like that.

The dual-pricing issue is really just one of many concerns.  Current government consistently, repeatedly limits foreigner access to visit or stay in Thailand, even though tourism is a major industry that props up the economy.  Many foreigners living here also bring in a lot of revenue, spending retirement money here, or spending a lot on maintaining a second home, or building up a business (which is highly restricted related to foreign ownership).  Rules can change month to month; interpretation of regulations can change, even when the laws themselves don't.

The last step, one step too far, seemingly, was requiring foreigners to purchase a relatively expensive, oddly described insurance plan to limit impact from foreigners who can't pay their own medical bills.  Normal enough, right?  Except that it could also be seen as yet another tax in disguise.  Given how US health care support initiatives tend to go it's all familiar ground; the starting point made sense but the end result and final form less so.

So reactions to that latest story of discrimination were what one would expect:  displeasure and disappointment.  Taken alone it wouldn't mean much, especially with all the details included, which weren't initially available, the part about construction.

To get to how unfair or tone-deaf this is in relation to this background issue it doesn't hurt to go back and consider how reasonable the restriction really is.  Are all Thais visiting Wat Pho for religious observance, and couldn't a foreign local be doing the same, even if they were born in a different culture?  I'm in an unusual position to consider that, since I was a monk ordained at Wat Pho for two months.  That seemingly makes me a counter-example, but then it's also not that simple.

that was a rough morning; an early start and a lot of formal ritual

my son was a novice there too

making a bin ta baht offering to her brother

The "Thais only" restriction considered further

I'll grant that a difference in how people of the two different races and backgrounds are seen is probably the main real issue at play.  But does it even work to split off the "religious observation versus tourism visit" themes?  Kind of.

There's probably more gap on the Thai side.  Thais really are visiting as a tourism practice, along with that having a religious meaning to them.  It wouldn't be possible to divide the two though.  It would be like when a Catholic visits the Vatican; of course it's both tourism and there is personal religious meaning.  I don't think it's anything like a Muslim visiting Mecca; there just isn't that extra level of religious significance to a main Thai temple versus the other hundreds of them in Bangkok.  It's "higher," more significant in history and meaning, but nothing like that context found in Islam.  I suppose that means it works to bracket (set aside) how this plays out for Thais, and accept that it sort of works.

Most foreigners visiting Wat Pho are just tourists.  I don't mean that in some limiting, negative sense; there's nothing wrong with tourism as an activity and interest.  Most wouldn't consider themselves Buddhists.  Some could, and that's where things get interesting, and relevant.  Does Richard Barrow see himself as a religious Buddhist?  I have no idea.  He had added that he was there to pay respects, and I take that as a genuine interest in religious expression.  Others might not; I guess it could be interpreted differently.

Participation and paying respect could be different things, too.  If I visit the Vatican I might feel a personal awe and deep respect for the history and shared meaning there, but the formal personal religious meaning could still be all but entirely missing for me.  I could greatly respect Catholicism but not see myself as participating in a form of it, even if I was Protestant.

What if a foreigner sees themself as a Buddhist?  I don't think Wat Pho was really thinking this through enough to split out that possibility, and consciously reject it through their policy.  I talked to a monk friend in the administration there and he just didn't seem to get that as being possible.

Of course he would relate to me potentially being seen as Buddhist, by myself or others, since I'm in a Thai Buddhist family.  And I was ordained there, and married there, and visit for some religious holidays (missing most--typical of American religious practice), the usual connections any Thai might have.  I studied Buddhism for over a decade prior to living here, and have two degrees in religion and philosophy, focused mainly on the study of Buddhism (and one in industrial engineering; that story makes no sense).

a Buddhist wedding vows ceremony

I still kind of don't see myself as a Thai Buddhist.  I think that really relates to how I relate to categories and labels though.  Obviously I'm white, American, married--I fall into lots of groupings.  But I tend to keep the self-labeling to a minimum.  And I get the difference between how different people would relate to a subject like Buddhism.  I definitely try to live by Buddhist principles, and Buddhism has been a major influence in my life, and I will continue to participate in formal observances as a member of a Thai Buddhist family.

It doesn't map over very directly to the liberal take on Protestant Christianity I was raised with.  That was quite loose and open; if you say that you accept Jesus as your personal savior you are 100% in.  You can even reject that he is the literal son of God, and see the part about him coming back from being dead as pure fiction, and you're still fine.  If you accept the teachings as valid that's good enough.  Even going to ceremonies is a bit optional; up to you.  You're still not that much less Christian than anyone else, if you see yourself that way.  Maybe just as Christian as the Pope, depending on personal mapping out of those themes.

Thai Buddhism is a little different.  It's hard to fill in how, to give it a full description.  The form is seen as meaningful; the monks chanting actually has an effect.  Believing ideas in literal form makes a difference.  To some extent even being born into a Thai family would make a lot of difference.  Because of racism?

No; because of their literal take on the mechanics of karma.

Karma in Thai Buddhism

This will be a really tough one to explain.  A couple of examples will point towards how it works out but 10,000 words on the subject wouldn't make it clear.  The monks chanting has karmic effect, kind of like magic.  Giving the temple 100 baht for restoration also does, and offering 1000 baht has more effect.  So far so good, right; no tie-in with racism or national bias yet.

Being born a Thai relates back to your karma, to your place in human society.  Someone born into a European country or the US would have a different karma.  Someone being born wealthy here, versus poor, ties to a different karmic background.  It's not as if they definitely deserved it (both placements), but to some extent that's how it is taken, it relates directly to what they did in prior lifetimes.  You can't simply strip away your karma; it identifies who and what you are.  It made you who you became before you even existed, this time around.  Even the options that present themselves for change are the effects of karma, along with your inclination to be open to those, to some degree.

It's not even really necessarily seen as a value-determining factor, it's just how things are.  It sounds a bit like the Indian caste system, doesn't it?  It should; it's probably derived directly from that very framework, from an earlier version of it, adopted along with the Buddhism religion form.

This means that saying "we are all equal" is kind of a nonsensical thing to say or believe, according to a Thai perspective.  In some limited sense sure, but Thais tend to focus on individual rights a lot less.  That's because the assumed context is completely different.  The "self-evident truth that all men are created equal" would be complete nonsense for them.  Equal in what sense?

Obviously some people are born into wealthy families and some into poor ones; some people are born into wealthy countries and others into poor ones.  Some are born in such poor health that they are destined to die young, or are deformed, and others possess exceptional physical and mental capabilities.  It's a silly thing to say, that everyone is created equally.

If the state tries to enforce that, if it's an underlying premise within a society, then sure, to that degree it's true.  But in most cultures and countries that would be seen as unnatural, or at least unrealistic.  Even in the US it kind of doesn't actually work in practice.  That went without saying a month ago, all the more so now.

To be clear as I take core Buddhist teachings people are seen as just as equal as within Christianity (or possibly more so, in relation to varying interpretations within Christianity).  It's more the case that putting a flat-level value judgment on everyone isn't how things work.  I suppose that folds into culture more in relation to state defined roles, which are much more implicit here. 

It's worth remembering that in the US the ideal that "all men are created equal" was written and provisionally accepted at a time when people could own other people, as property; concerns over theory versus practice come up everywhere.

Resolving the contradiction

Another tough one, right?  How can people seen as equal--in a general sense--and more positive in some others (the perception of white people here roughly equating to a higher status level), be completely cast aside, forcing local Thais to see everyone as equal? 

Foreigners aren't granted the authority to re-write local Thai culture in their own image.


To local expats (foreigners living here) this temple entry issue is a clear sign of racism.  Under their expectations and paradigm it would have to be that.  Here it kind of is, but it's also a bit silly to set up the expectation that there can be no separate treatment of Thais in relation to foreigners in Thailand.  That would be like rejecting that local Hawaiians pay less to enter the Waikiki zoo.  You just can't put that on them; you can't shift local expectations and rules.  That example ties back to a completely different history and context (the US sort of "stole" their country), but in either case you are trying to swap out local expectations and context framing for your own "improved, higher" version.  Local cultures don't work that way.

The only way this could be resolved, from either direction, is for the expats seeing this as racism to understand the Thai perspective, or for the temple administrators (the monks; it is ran by them, not a PR firm or tourism council) to completely "get" a Western perspective.   Even for people reading this explanation of the underlying context that wouldn't work.  Some part of what I've claimed here would seem wrong, or oversimplified, or it would seem that I've rushed to accept something that just doesn't make sense.  Neither perspective and context makes sense from the other perspective; in part that conclusion is absolutely correct.

I'm discussing the underlying context, a level of assumptions, and worldviews, ordinary perspective, and reasoning is what gets built on top of all that.



All of this results in an odd cycle of how foreigners living here see Thailand and Thai culture, played out over and over in individual cases.  Some few "integrate;" they actually do see things more as Thais do, and take up a role more or less within their society.  They're still farang but the context becomes clear.

More commonly people go through a familiar shift:  they see Thailand as a paradise where everyone is friendly and things are simple, then they recognize pros and cons, and then they hate parts of the local culture for being unfair, for aspects of local systems to be "rigged against them."  And that last part isn't necessarily completely wrong; go into a court system opposed to a Thai and your chances of a favorable ruling aren't good, never mind the actual circumstances.  Go through a divorce, as many do, and you will have exactly that experience.

Those foreigners are all just either at the middle or towards the end of that cycle.  It's not paying $8 to go into a zoo or park, when Thais pay $2, that's getting to them, it's everything.  That's just a symbol.  Based on the expectation that the state and related institutions should see everyone as equal, which is carried over from where they are from (unless they just moved from Hawaii), they are being slighted and cheated.


Next one might wonder:  do the pros and cons of being treated separately not add up to a more even balance for white foreigners, given that Thais aren't actually racist against them? 


Maybe; sort of.  The advantages are hard to place though, and if you would end up valuing most just being seen as normal, as equal, then your main desire and goal is to not accumulate that set of positive biases over other Thai residents.

It's tempting to go into what I mean, how being white automatically maps over to an equivalent social status as a wealthy Thai.  That part is what I mean in relation to how 10,000 words won't cover the context well.  A white person would get more respect, which would lead towards some exceptions being made in unusual cases.

White people also act the part of sources of revenue, to some extent, as the people who pay more in markets, who pay the higher tier in dual pricing, the ones who get more traffic tickets, and play a role in an unusual taxation for needing special medical insurance, and a visa and work permit.  Getting better service in a restaurant--or whatever that extra benefit is--comes along with being charged more across a broad spectrum.

There is no resolving all this.  It is what it is.  At least by understanding it a foreigner could live at peace with the exceptions and additional demands, and a Thai could understand their own worldview that much better.  Bitter, through-the-whole-cycle expats never get there.  They simply accept that Thais are biased against foreigners instead.  It's not really that simple.  They are just seen as different, slightly higher in status in one sense, and not a participant in local group-inclusion benefits in another.

The end of the Wat Pho racial discrimination story

Wat Pho finally posted this on their Facebook page:


Due to restoration in progress on the Reclining Budhha and paintings inside the building it is not allowing access to non Thai nationals, it was decided that for the safety of tourists it would restrict access. It has been discussed and the temple should reopen to all from 1st july 2020. It was decided that it was a good opprtunity to use the situation with covid 19 to do the work that was needed, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience and disapointment people may feel.


Not bad; still not a complete explanation or resolution, but close enough.

Richard's Facebook post has 1700 comments and over 1000 shares; the PR damage was done.

That temple is ran as a religious institution, not mainly as a tourist attraction, so the negative PR would be seen as a bad thing, but it's not the same case as if that would happen to Disney.  They do generate profit to use to support other temples, to pay for maintenance and utility expenses, and to support school systems.  But they just aren't as marketing and profit oriented as a commercial tourism destination would be, which is why this came up in the first place.

not a PR cover story hoax, it would seem

Post-script:  while editing the final version of this I ran across this related Richard Barrow post:


Ancient Siam in Samut Prakan  (https://facebook.com/muangborantheancientcity) is doing a special welcome back promotion of only 465 Baht for an annual pass. I inquired about this as I live nearby but was told only for Thais. Foreign tourists must pay the usual inflated price.

❗️WARNING: This tourist attraction has a #2pricethailand policy.


Dual-pricing discrimination is definitely a real thing in Thailand, not just limited to national parks, zoos, museums, and main temples.  If you show them a local ID (as a foreigner) they will give you the day-pass rate that Thais pay, which isn't so bad, you just aren't eligible to buy the annual pass.

Maybe as in the US it will take a round of protests to draw awareness to this injustice to get that resolved.  It is an odd contrast, considering a drive to get a privileged and higher income foreign minority group on-par lower pricing with a broad and much lower average income local population.