A Sea Of Red

The blood-letting Thai demonstrations was quite a chilling message. It was a show of how far they'd go within their capacities of citizens and religiosity. Most external observers would think it to be a thoroughly silly act with a whole waste of precious blood, but to these guys, they were drawing on one of the most potent forms of retaliation they know of - cursing the government with superstitiously unlucky blood and playing on symbolism to create avenues for their needs to be heard. "If they are willing to step over our blood and go home, then the government truly doesn't care for us," one protestor warned. It is almost silly to draw rationality into the picture. These people would consider spilled blood more worth the while than stashing packets of donated blood to save lives, and you can't blame them. What is reasonable for one person is unreasonable for another; our rationalities are bounded by external forces that shape the choices we make.

The Thai government seems to be more content riding their luck on the matter. The general sentiment is that once the protestors get tired of demonstrating, they will have to get on with their lives anyway, and the numbers will dwindle. In so many countries with disgruntled citizens, that often happens to be the case. In China, the dissent of the populace often centers around practical purposes - poor ruling from a county head, unfair distribution of subsidies, lack of utilities and facilities, etc - rather than ideological ones. People often care little for ideological unification or pursuit; once their basic needs are met and all is considered fair, it doesn't matter what the intent of the government is. Life goes on. Ideological pursuits are more characteristic of American citizens, who want more than just the meeting of basic necessities but philosophical alignment.

But every now and then, some unlucky government doesn't quite get away with it. The tipping point for revolution to happen is organization. There is a lot of built up discontent among Thai citizens now, and while they are united in thought they are not united in resolve. It is not an easy process, but all it takes eventually is for a charismatic leader to rise among them, organize them and lead them for a revolt to occur. Governments systematically oppress unofficial organizations because this is the ultimate tipping cause for a political fightback. Once there is a uniting force that keeps the dissatisfied together, their individual needs will be subjugated to the group. People will begin to sacrifice themselves more. All the benefits (or ills, depending on the situation) of herd mentality, groupthink, deindividualization and social influence will subvert the 'soul' from the individual to the group such that the organization becomes an entity with a life of its own. And that's when the government that hasn't been able to keep its subjects happy will be in trouble.

Voice

Justin was just telling me about some shitty protest in NYU (New York University) where he studies now. It's like the protesters barricaded the school cafeteria and only dispersed after the school cut off the internet service and nobody could get their Facebook updates.

Apparently protests aren't all that fun and games. Protesters are actually disliked by most normal people, because they end up digressing from the original point of protest to a whole host of other insane and stupid things, turning the passing of a simple day into wading through thick sludge. In this case, things started out as a protest demanding that the school admin reveal the budgeting and funding for the school to ensure that they're not fleecing the students, but then their list of demands grew to include stuff like 'the university must give money to the University of Gaza', 'the university must give 13 full annual scholarships to Palestinian students', 'the school library must be open to the public' (i.e. the school library becomes hobo hotel), 'the school must be all green and vegan' (not that bad on first glance, but then think of all the lefty nutjob ideals about the environment), etc, making life here pale in relative excitement. But I won't stake a claim on whether such excitement is good or bad.

In contrast, when our sociopolitical club Apolitical got registered as a CCA under SMU, we definitely got on the radar and some dude made us register under some government list. The specially-designed system either filters us out somehow, or there are people employed just to sniff us or any potential dissent out. Whee.




We defend democracy by forgoing it.

Audio Candy:
David Garrett - Smooth Criminal