I was born three times. Firstly from my parents, secondly from dharma and the teachings of the famous monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and finally from knowledge. After the uprising of October 14, 1973, I became interested in politics and philosophy. I was inspired to be an activist, working for various NGOs to improve people’s lives through the arts, too.
I might have killed myself if I hadn’t found dharma. My parents were rich but lost everything. My father became disabled after their break-up. Dharma taught me to live through suffering, and to love reading and writing poetry even more.
I’m interested in travel writing. In art, it’s called Impressionism: documenting your feelings or emotions. I like to travel all over Thailand and document what I feel along the way.
Pristine nature makes my imagination flow. I view scenery like a painting where wind recreates the brush strokes. These feelings inspired me to create the TV show Kien Paen Din [Write up the Land]. It took me two years to cover all of Thailand’s provinces, and then I expanded it to Laos and Vietnam, which I’m releasing a new book about this month. I now plan to do the same for all the ASEAN countries.
ASEAN is a treasure. Just look at Myanmar, they are rich in natural resources and everyone wants a piece of it. We [Thailand] are proud that we are so developed, but we’ve actually already lost a lot to outsiders because we don’t care about local wisdom anymore.
Young people in rural areas go to college and then never go back to work in their homeland. They leave the elders to take care of the land, which eventually falls into the hands of the wealthy. It’s a circle of consumerist failure. If we don’t reform now, it will get worse.
Thailand is a victim of modernity. We have great natural resources; rich in food and safe from natural disasters. But we overlook these precious assets and care only for consumerism. We have an insatiable hunger to spend. We’re also one of a handful of tropical countries who account for only 7 percent of the earth, but produce 70 seven percent of the world’s food. We’re a piece of meat that the powerful countries prey on.
If you want a degree, go to university, but if you want knowledge, meet the farmers. Our youth head to uni in the hope of earning high salaries. There’s no patience. The result is they lack knowledge and don’t know how to work hard.
Thai politics is like old Thai novels. There are many villains trying to be heroes.
The real heroes are the people who have awoken to express their rights. I’ve lived through the dark eras of protest—1973, 1976 and 1998—and I’ve never seen people so active. There have never been so many people coming out to speak their mind as on the streets now. Any government will surely be afraid to ignite their wrath.
Political parties used to be tools of the rich, but now these rich people are the politicians themselves. It’s become an economic game for them. The Thai idiom meaning “playing politics” reflects this.
This country is like a tree. The roots are the economy, the stem is society and the top branches are politics. If the politicians are good, society will get the nutrients it needs and we’ll be economically strong.
People have three forms of common sense. The first is self-consciousness, or doing things for themselves. The second is ideological, a general sense for improving things. And the third is political, a combination of the first two. Thaksin Shinawatra had everything it took to be a good leader, except political common sense.
Our society is a clash of thoughts and beliefs. We used to live in a society in which law and order was based on morals and traditions. Nowadays, people, so-called liberals, try to reorganize society by injecting new thoughts which do not correlate with the fundamentals. It results in a lot of inflated egos.
TV and movies destroy our tastes. The media is so powerful today and it means no one’s taste is unique anymore. Everyone wants to look just like people on TV.
Art can empower people. I wish to use my position in the National Legislative Assembly to encourage people to better themselves through art.
