absolutelyBangkok archive · Culture shock
Originally published Aug. 24, 2010
Well that title is stolen. I’m too dull to come up with something as creative. Stolen from a recent BBC Documentaries… But this seemingly internally inconsistent, loaded term attributed to Lenin does ring a bell, doesn’t it.
We’re all some kind of useful idiots at some point in time. Well maybe not you. But the most useful idiots are those breeding like rabbits in times of crises when it’s hard to not have an opinion. Such as the Thai political crisis we’re still in — when opinions become facts.
What’s a useful idiot? Try this: “Intellectuals have a terrible tendency to adjust the evidence to fit their preconceptions. They decide they want to believe in something, they will believe it — and if the evidence is Oh-you’re-wrong they just hit the evidence over the head and do the chops on.”
A definition by journalist Bruce Anderson — and here’s one by historian Donald Rayfield:
“It’s someone who doesn’t think they’re an idiot, who thinks they’re highly intelligent, but is so easily persuaded to buy flattery from people in power that they’re prepared to serve their purposes and allow themselves to be duped — or even just to lie for the sake of advantage.”
That covers about any color. So as a useful idiot it’s no crime to say there’s no crime when you see no crime because you want to see any crime. It’s that easy, really.
There is a culture of useful idiots right here in Thailand, as described by this handy Guide to the Perfect Thai Idiot.
Nah, am not stuck in the past. Am not trying to downplay the the challenges ahead just because it’s quiet when I open the window and there are no gunshots outside.
Don’t know about you, but during the past few weeks without blogging I really got used to this outer illusionary peace. Could live with it — and don’t feel guilty; even though, in the eyes of some, it’s sickening and grotesque to not applaud the poor farmers standing up to the junta…
Leading to the more basic question. What’s an idiot.
The author of all authors about the tragedy of the human psyche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, dedicated a work that became one of the most brilliant achievements of literature to this human condition:
The Idiot.
Dostoyevsky’s idiot is a good man — whose goodness seems to bring disaster to all he meets. An imperfectly perfect man. Like everyone. Everyone’s an idiot. There’s nothing to be ashamed of being an idiot.
The problem is when you’re goodness, for no obvious reason, becomes exceptionally useful.
Time to move on.
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