Your correspondent John Arnone (''Don't look to the chaotic West'', Postbag, Oct 21) must have a very different and narrow definition of ''culture'' to me.
He says: ''Western culture is a waste of time because there is no Western culture any longer.'' You might not like the way Western culture has evolved, Mr Arnone, but Western culture most certainly exists.
We must understand that all cultures, with the possible exception of the cultures of rare and isolated aboriginal communities, are a fusion of many influences, ideas, people migration, trade and a thousand other things.
The great culture that grew in Europe during the ''Age of Enlightenment'' and the Renaissance, and which spread across the world to influence almost every other culture, was itself a hodgepodge of thousands of years of different cultures.
Elements of Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, among other cultures, fused to become the culture that perhaps Mr Arnone fondly remembers and so sadly misses.
Even the Arab world made significant contributions with astronomical, mathematical and architectural inputs.
Neither is Thai culture pristine. As Voranai Vanijaka points out (Sunday Forum, Oct 21), Thai envoys visited China, India, Persia, England, France and the Vatican at least as early at the 17th century, and over the ensuring centuries European cultures had an increasing effect on Thai culture, some of it good, some of it bad.
Indeed, Thailand's main cultural plank _ its Buddhism _ is an import.
DAVID BROWN
Rayong
Chaos is creative
I disagree that ''there is no Western culture anymore''. Western culture (what you see in American movies, fashion, use of language) originates primarily in Los Angeles and New York and is a constantly evolving thing.
The fact that it is constantly evolving is partly why the rest of the world consumes it so eagerly. I'd suggest that you are confusing ''chaos'' with the creative process.
Or at least you may be ignoring that chaos is often a necessary first step in the creative process.
I imagine that most Thai parents send their children to American universities because they think this kind of education will lead to them making more money.
These parents value the critical thinking skills that can only be taught in a culture that allows free speech.
Thai children don't have to go to America to get exposed to the good and bad of American culture. If they chose to watch the recent presidential debates they would have seen two men using their critical thinking skills to argue and confront each other in a civil manner.
I do understand your apparent distaste for American culture, Mr Arnone. I'm an American and American culture can sometimes seem like a smelly toilet to me.
But we do have to remember that good things sometimes grow from what seems at first to be disorderly and chaotic.
ALAN REEDER-CAMPONI
Fight for freedom
Again a great Sunday article by Voranai. Only a small correction: in Europe it is not so much Christians fighting Muslims.
It is more a non-regligious, sometimes outright atheistic majority (or at least a very big minority) of people which does not want _ after fighting 500 years to get free of the clutches of a very repressive religion, the then Catholic Church _ to be again told by another repressive religion _ now Islam _ what to do, what not to do, what not to say, what not to print etc.
Some conflicts are also a fight for freedom or to preserve freedom.
DR KARL REICHSTETTER
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