A passport to happiness is all you need

A passport to happiness is all you need

Like a sinner praying for salvation, I pray that the Ministry of Education will launch the "good deeds passports" project before the next full moon. Kids, parents and disciplinarians are dying to wave it around like a diploma of sanity, or an amulet against ghosts and anarchism. The Education Ministry is so educated that it has tapped into the zeitgeist: moral bookkeeping, and control of the happiness barometer (check out the military carnival at Sanam Luang), will guarantee the bright future of democratic Thailand.

The passport may be just an idea, but its timing is no coincidence. This is the year when the pendulum of morality swings hard one-way. All authorities are suspended, all clocks rewound and all judgement rests on cold steel guns. In order to prepare myself, I’ve jotted down entries in my passport of good deeds — my personal diary of scruples that I fondle and treasure like eternal bliss. It’s time you start writing too. Here goes:

July 20: I burned all my copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

July 20: I wanted more points, so I burned all my copies of Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Ulysses (the most dangerous book, because it shatters the fossilised and baptises individualism), and all Thai journals published by mad people after Oct 14, 1973. I also burned a copy of the 1997 charter; it smelled like barbecued liberty.

July 21: I bought a lottery ticket from a blind man. I was surprised that he charged me 100 baht but thought my problems had been brilliantly solved.

July 22: Pledging solidarity, I took a selfie with a soldier at the Happy Festival at Sanam Luang. Then I condemned the US, the EU, the UN, Unicef, the CIA, the NBA, the NFL, Fifa, Nasa, the BBC, CNN, the NYT, ISIS, Asean and anyone who lacks an understanding of Thailand’s exceptionalism and our unorthodox path towards long-lasting democracy. Indonesia should learn from us, not us from them.

July 22: I read the interim charter. I praised it (moral points: 100). I killed my belief that the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) was going against the flow of time and history, that they shouldn’t force us to keep black caterpillars but allow them to become butterflies — crippled, cancerous, imperfect butterflies, but butterflies nevertheless. For moral points, I threw away my idea that with Section 44, which allows the junta absolute power, it’s no longer about Thaksin versus Suthep, or Yingluck versus Abhisit, or the military versus the rest, but about the way we choose to perceive the world and its governing principles, the way we decide our place in history, and whether we choose to live in the present or in nostalgia.

July 23: Abhisit Vejjajiva raised an eyebrow at Section 44: "There are questions as to why the NCPO needs the power to intervene in the legislative and judicial branches." How could he? I condemned him (moral points: 90).

July 23: I agreed with my friend that the military has to "clean house" despite having to burn half of it to kill the germs (moral points: 110). So when I read Section 48 — the equivalent of a blanket amnesty — I didn’t question my silent friend who once tore his hair and ripped his heart out against the other blanket amnesty. I went along with him and didn’t in the least suspect that while the circumstances are different, the exculpation and scot-free clause are the same.

July 24: I helped a blind man cross the road. He still charged me 100 baht for a lottery ticket.

July 24: I joined the chorus of dissent against Yingluck Shinawatra’s trip to Paris (moral points: 550). I rejected the speculation that her vacation — her flight, her exile, her last airlift out of the war zone — was a preordained affair struck among the string-pullers whose invisibility we’re subjected to endure, just like when her brother left the country years ago. There’s no script among the elites. There are no pawns on the table. There are no conspiracies, only pure good and pure evil.

July 25: I praised the decision to cut a road right through a national park. I praised the three-trillion-baht rail project. I praised institutionalised nationalism. I praised the good deeds passport project. I praised everything and deleted the meaning of "criticism" from my memory. For moral points, I’m ready to give up any idea — to denounce my inner life, to let my prejudices run deep and my intelligence run low in order to live in a happy stupor forever.


Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.

Kong Rithdee

Bangkok Post columnist

Kong Rithdee is a Bangkok Post columnist. He has written about films for 18 years with the Bangkok Post and other publications, and is one of the most prominent writers on cinema in the region.

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