Tying It All Together

                                              Photo by Anand Tuliani

You'll note from the title of this post that my previous wordplay on "Thai" lacks its (dubious) humor for me, now, at the end of our journey.  The unequal distribution of suffering has always haunted me, but never as much as it did on our trip to Thailand.  I recognize that even in comfortable little Gig Harbor there are cruel disparities between those who have and those who do not, but there was something about being a tourist in the presence of such destitution and suffering in Thailand that made the trip a soul tribulation for me.


On the one hand I am relieved that I did not turn my head to the suffering.  I'm even relieved that it affected me; it would worry me if I were impassive in the face of suffering.  Empathy and compassion do not in and of themselves change circumstances, but I carry a deep belief that feeling the suffering is a necessary witnessing, an honoring of the reality.

I have long objected to the symbolism of the three "wise" monkeys with their injunctions to hear no evil, do no evil, see no evil.  I believe we must see and hear the evil.  And yet, for me to have done so, in the comfort of our posh resorts and rented car and bottled water and fancy restaurants, felt like its own travesty.  Yes, Thailand's economy surely benefits from tourism.  But I fear the "economy" is inevitably about the rich getting richer.  The poor only marginally benefit.


Clearly my Marxist-feminist leanings continue to influence my perceptions. I believe that capitalism displaces self-sufficient community, which characterized most countries prior to Western encroachment.  And the motivating force in capitalism is greed, that unnatural and most distinctly human of drives.  More, more, more, says the capitalist.  It is a virus the west spreads.


And yet, irony of ironies, it is the capitalist economy that facilitated our trip Thailand, where there were also moments of pure bliss.  Though largely reserved, it seems, for the 1%.


I am very glad we went, but I'm not sure I can ever feel wholly justified in being a tourist again where such abysmal poverty, such desecration of the environment, and such exploitation coexists with such profligate luxury.  Louis Untermeyer wrote in the poem, "Prayer,"


                                                               Never let me dare forget

           The bitter ballad of the slums.

Most of us necessarily forget the "bitter ballad of the slums" every day, in order to function.  But it feels morally unconscionable to cruise those slums in an air-conditioned car. There is no defense for the egregious disparity in the distribution of wealth in this world; I deplore my role in maintaining that disparity.  

Untermeyer's poem continues:

Open my eyes to visions girt

                                                             With beauty, and with wonder lit —

                                                          But always let me see the dirt,    

                                                             And all that spawn and die in it.

I saw the beauty, and the wonder in Thailand.  I also saw "the dirt," and I grieve all that spawn and die in it.  I pray for a world in which the immense bounty of this blessed planet is equally shared by all.