Start of the new year and I’m starting to work on a new paper, a new country and a new topic. Why not make a new post, something I haven’t done in quite a while. It has just struck me that understanding is at best a fleeting illusion. Within myself (and I don’t think I’m alone) there is a need to understand the world around us. We draw on examples–limited and incomplete–to draw out some sense of reason for a linear stream of events. Understanding is something that comes quickly–the ‘I got it now’ feeling. But this sense of understanding is fleeting.
Currently I’m trying to understand contemporary Thai politics. The lens I’m using is about 15,000 political campaign posters plus hundreds of news articles that I gathered in Thailand during the election last June and July. Right now I’m honing in on a number of themes and attempting to understand (well…’guess’ is a better word) what is driving those themes. Ultimately, I’m realizing more and more that it’s a mere attempt at simplifying social chaos into a coherent set of statements. While we might be able to (appear to) explain part of the social world within a few statements it strikes be as very much a process in the creation of illusions, soon to be replaced by new modified illusions. An unending stream of false understanding.
