(image source: http://www.nadyadee.com/)
Avatar is the story of a group of humans attempting to kick the native humanlike creatures, called the Na'vi out of their habitat on a planet-like moon named Pandora, as their habitat sits right on a rich source of a very expensive mineral. The movie shows the Na'vi to be backward and spiritual, whereas humans are scientifically advanced.
In Pandora, all living beings from trees to animals and the Na'vi are interconnected through some sort of physical connections, which Dr. Grace the scientist claims to be more complex than the type of connections found within the human brain. Everything there seems to have some magical forces within it so much that it makes you feel that you are so small and trivial in this much unexplored and unexplainable world. A sense of being part of something larger than life and than self-interest individualism pervades this imaginative world.
Not unlike the world of Pandora, every square inch of Thailand was and to some extent still is full of magical forces, which of course scientific people would call superstitions. Thai people don't make any distinction between different religions, but everything held sacred is essentially merged into one. Even though most Thais declare themselves as Buddhist, they worship Hindu gods, respect ancestors in the Confucian way, and exalt all the local deities and sacred beings hidden in anything from the land, trees, forests, rivers, farms to any objects of value, such as textbooks and traditional musical instruments. Other people are treated as part of the family, as the familial terms such as grandmother, aunt, father, big sibling, and little sibling, are widely used when we converse with strangers. (I remember reading a book written by a westerner that mocks the fact that all social behaviors of the Thais are predictable by the difference between the ages of the people involved in the interaction.) A sense of pantheism is a major theme in Thai society. With that comes the sense of collectively living together under something that is larger than all of us, something that is much unexplored, and something that does not need to be explained.
Then, along comes globalization. Even though all superficial behaviors are the same (we still worship everything and call everyone using familial terms), everything under the surface is changing very rapidly (or has completely changed). All the great resources we possess and once worshiped as part of the larger conglomerate of sacred things were utilized for capitalist purposes. Of course, rivers, trees, and forests are great economic resources. Ancient temples are turned into tourist attractions. Age-old deity statues become pieces of modern decoration in pubs and restaurants. Loy-krathong, the 600-year-old festival to thank the Goddess of the water and river, is much commercialized. Songkran, the Thai New Year when younger people pour water into elders' hands to pay respect to them, is pretty much the most fun festival for locals and tourists alike to throw water to complete strangers. Of course, we still worship everything, but return-on-investment seems to be the main concern during the prayer session.
As a strong believer in free market as I am, I almost wonder whether our mental well-being has been improved much since the advent of globalization. As much as I believe that a sequel of Avatar will show the comeback of the human invaders, I don't think Thailand can be completely shielded from the outside world. We cannot just denounce capitalism and turn against it. Learning to ride the tide in our own way is probably the only way to save our Pandora.
