#26 - Confidence

     It's the end of the month and that means pay day. That also means it's the perfect time to ask people for money. The accountant at work who takes care of everyone's pay personally distributed pay stubs yesterday. This is highly unusual. Attached to the pay stubs were envelopes that asked for a donation for a temple. The way that a Thai Buddhist asks for a donation is by saying, “Do you want to make merit?” Merit is the focus of nearly all Thai holidays and in fact is the focus of many Thais' decision to become monks. These merit based monkhoods are not lifetime commitments. The usual monkhood for a person not dedicating their life to the institution is three months although longer and shorter terms do exist. If you're at all confused simply think of it as giving your karma a boost. Give 100 baht to the temple, get good karma. That temples ask for money is not unusual. Every religious institution needs money. However I would like to relate to you the following events of last night so that you can judge for yourself what kind of influence this sort of institution or practice has on peoples actual corporeal selves and the “karma” they garner in the world.

This German dance troupe who came to Bangkok
was actually an Israeli and a German who met
in Amsterdam and an Australian they recruited.
It was an interesting show.

     We saw a dance performance and then went and got dinner and after that we flagged down a taxi to get our buts home and in bed. Not the most exciting Friday night but it was a long week of hard work. (Nana started at Binumi on Wednesday.) The taxi driver was older and it took him only a few blocks to ask Nana if she would like to make merit. I will translate that which has already been translated, “Do you want to donate to my temple?” Nana politely declined, after all she had already donated to Binumi's accountant's temple that very day. In order to accurately represent her donation I believe that you should all be informed she did this only to curry favor as Nana's role at the company requires close connections with everyone and this donation greatly increased her chances of establishing that connection with the accountant. Shortly after Nana's polite abstinence a phone began to ring. It was not mine nor Nana's and the taxi driver didn't flinch. The phone was sitting in the backseat floorboard, an iphone complete with bunny ear case and all. I picked it up and Nana asked the taxi drive what to do and he said not to answer it. Nana decided that was a bad idea and answered the phone. It was of course the previous occupant of the taxi. She was at a club right next to where we caught the taxi. We were by this point halfway home and so going back was not something we were interested in. The taxi driver suggested that the owner of the phone could pay him the metered fare to take the phone back to her. This fare sounded quite fair, if not even a nice gesture. What a kind old man. Nana handed him the phone and he said he could go back to Ekkamai but not all the way to where the woman who owned the phone was. Ekkamai is about 80-90% of the way to where she was. If she wanted him to go the extra little bit to where she was it would cost her 200 baht. Our entire fare to go from where this woman was to our apartment was 71 baht. How in the hell did he figure that extra 10% was worth 129 baht? I know how he thought it was worth it. He had her iphone, literally almost a months full pay not to mention the contacts, pictures, videos and all the other personal information one can pry out of these mini diaries we carry around with us. This kindly old man who was collecting donations for his temple, himself proposing only the opportunity for you to make good on your karma was in fact completely unconcerned with karma or as I prefer to call it, “Being a decent fucking human being.” He wanted MONEY. We paid our fare at the apartment and he pulled out bills and said he had no change, he would squable with me over 9 baht and so I overpaid him a little just to get out of the cab.

     Where religious institutions and wealth intersect there is a problem. They extort and blackmail people into giving them money and then turn this confidence scam over to their victims who then perpetuate the scam onto others around them and very quickly we have the greatest pyramid sceme ever conceived of in human history.

Flyer from a Butoh dance show I saw

Flyer from a Butoh dance show I saw

     On a much brighter note Nana's performance in “The Giordano Bruno Project” was absolutely splendid, and a Catholic organization (the same organization that burned Mr. Bruno at the stake) donated boxes upon boxes of proseco to the show in an effort to help the Camillian home, which provides a place for disabled and HIV positive children to grow up in a community where they are neither stigmatized nor shamed for things they have no control over.

     So what do we have? Is it Buddhism vs. Catholicism, West vs. East, Prohibition vs. Boozers...no. We have organization and the power that comes with that organization. Institutions that can flex their muscle in the millions and who's budgets measure in the billions and who's actual worth is in the trillions which need only become populated by people who actually want to make good on their promises to help humanity. Or we can start small. We can make each other feel confident that we're not here to ply with confidence tricks. We can accept a decent fair to bring a girl her phone who (I hope) paid her fair fare to get where she was going.  

The Pridi Banomyong Institute's Envlace on a night where two performances
will be viewed. I went to the Butoh performance on this night.