How do you realize your country of birth is not perfect?

 

It goes like this: I was born and raised here. This is my country. This is my cathedral.

 

And then one day, for one reason or another, it sets in…an irking feeling that something is amiss, that maybe you have it wrong for one reason or another, that perhaps…more than perhaps…it IS true!...things are not only not perfect, rosy and just, but seriously out of kilter. Justice isn’t the reality you have been conditioned to believe and learned to accept. Rights aren’t really automatic and always defensible. Authorities often abuse their power and are left largely unaccountable for it.

 

The realist, of course, perhaps generally those somehow born as realists, already know all of this, and have known from early on. They learn to adapt, to roll with the punches and take a stand where they think they can make a difference. Some of them get into politics or the Peace Corps and DO make a difference. Some speak and write and join protests and convince other sleeping souls among them that things are as much like the Matrix as were in the movie.

 

The real pain is when you become unhooked from the line that feeds you, that keeps you unaware, that insulates you from your actual surroundings and you suddenly, gasping and shrinking from the searing pain of that searing pain of disconnection, realize that this…this suddenly bright, shockingly alien and horrible environment you are in and have always been in, is reality.

 

More pain can, and often does, await after the awakening when you experience other Matrixes that at first seemed to offer recluse from your own but then turned out to be merely another version of Version One.

 

Charles Jenkins and Joe Gordon were both victims of the Matrix Syndrome, as most of us are. By birth we are plugged into a symbiotic relationship with a structured conditioning device made up of state, society, government and the physical world, and become an offshoot of what that device is not just capable of turning out but of what it is designed to turn out. In a democracy, autocracy, monarchy, dictatorship or republic…it does not matter. There is also a companion Matrix Syndrome, one where when disconnected from the old and reconnected to the new we naturally believe what we see with our own eyes. We dismiss the early onset of delusion in our new environment because the one we left was rejected and the new one is different and thus somehow better. Thailand has become a paragon in this new reset of illusion because of the nature of its realities and illusions. There is so much to love, so much to enjoy, so much to benefit from, to occupy oneself with that, relatively speaking, there is so little left to criticize…and certainly, if one weighs the pros and cons, it’s better just to shut up and remain silent. And often, not just better but lethal to try to make a point. One’s family relationships, business success and personal security are tenuous in the light of reality when putting conscience into the ring with injustice.

 

Joe Gordon came back to Thailand and was arrested, held in prison, denied bail. He discovered defects in his country of birth that were shocking and disheartening in the extreme. Not to speak for him, yet the observation is that illusion, as shown above, is so easily shattered with injustice. And there is usually little, if any, help for the victim.

 

Charles Jenkins also found defects in his country of birth, America. Drunk he then walked into North Korea expecting one thing and finding another. The harsh realities of life under yet another system that is replete with injustice were forced upon him with even harsher treatment than Joe Gordon found in Thailand. Gordon was in a wide sense given the same denials and absence of rights that Jenkins received, but in Gordon’s case he got off a lot lighter. Meaning that if Thailand continues down the path it has so far chosen to travel, its people and those who love it, yellow or red, Thai or foreigner, loyal or republican, will face increased denial of the basic rights that all of us on this planet are, and should be, entitled to. When “the” authorities are able to conduct affairs of state and society with such impunity, when victims of illusion and delusion become so apathetic and enamored of their plight, hope is frugal unless that terrible unsayable tool of change is brought into play.

 

The price of such change is always high, the need is always prolonged, the options always limited.It begets itself. Violence.