Turnings and generations in Southeast Asia

Quoting:

Religious Upsurge In Vietnam

Religion is on the upswing in Vietnam. As the country continues to experience socioeconomic instability and insecurity, an upsurge in beliefs, rituals, and ceremonies worshipping spirits and ancestral deities is in progress, a new study reveals.

Anthropologist Monique Selim surveyed workers in Hanoi and discovered that Vietnam's decision to open up to a market economy, taken in 1986 but concretized four years later, caused a dramatic upheaval in people's social references. In the face of these changes, more people are turning to religion. Besides symbolizing hope and freedom, liberalization of religious beliefs in Vietnam is a principal factor in building national cohesion, social peace, and cultural identity.

Particularly popular is th Lieu Hanh creed, which, like all religious practices, had been banned for 40 years by Vietnam's Communist regime. Based on a mythological princess enshrined in Vietnmese history, Lieu Hanh is associated with protection, good fortune, and the possibility of climbing the social ladder for individuals and their children.

The flourishing of religious cults, as well as searches for the dead and missing from wars against France and the United States, have helped to reconsitute families, says Selim. This in turn facilitates an easier route into the mainstream of society and contributes to a sense of societal security and stability.

Dear Tim,

It sounds like a typical awakening period.

John

The 1926 timing of Cao Dai would be consistent with an Awakening if Vietnam has recently entered one. The syncretic nature suggests an Awakening more than one of the other turnings.

(The Atlantic, Feb. 2002, "Oh Gods" by Toby Lester)

(~*~)

The 1926 timing of Cao Dai would be consistent with an Awakening if Vietnam has recently entered one. The syncretic nature suggests an Awakening more than one of the other turnings.

(The Atlantic, Feb. 2002, "Oh Gods" by Toby Lester)

(~*~)

Dear Tim,

Interesting article. Vietnam's crisis wars were in the 1890s and the
1960s, so 1926 was definitely an awakening period.

My theory about new religious movements is that they get launched
during awakening periods, and become either established or
extinguished during crisis periods.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Tim,

Interesting article. Vietnam's crisis wars were in the 1890s and the
1960s, so 1926 was definitely an awakening period.

My theory about new religious movements is that they get launched
during awakening periods, and become either established or
extinguished during crisis periods.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Article entitled "Red Music" Rocks Out In Vietnam, trendy teens get into old war songs by Richard Siklos. Page 16.

Quoting:

"The Ben Thanh Audio Video store in central Ho Chi Minh City is teeming with young Vietnamese, many in school uniforms, perusing the shelves for the latest releases. The faded royalty of teen pop-the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, Britney Spears-grin from a photo shrine on the wall behind the cash register. Compact discs of Western music (most of them pirated copies) are a predictably popular choice among these shoppers. But a new genre is gaining fans and ringing up sales in the Britney demographic: compilation CDs with titles that translate into Battalion 307 and Spring of '68, for example, and feature local pop idols singing updated renditions of patriotic songs about the war with United States.

"For much of the past quarter century, so-called red music, or nhac do, has been performed wearily but dutifuly at school assemblies and public concerts on major holidays like February 3, the aniversary of the founding of Vietnam's Communist Party. But in the past year or so, the music has undergone a revival in Hanoi karaoke bars and the concert halls of the former Saigon-known locally as HCM City.

"Unlike Western music fans who turn to genres like punk and thrash metal to rebel against their parents, young Vietnamese are identifying with mom and dad's music through tunes like "Salutation to the Heroic Ma River" and "Uncle Ho still Marches with Us," which Communist soldiers belted out on the battlefield. "It inspires me about history," says Le Minh Thang, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Law. Kelvin Hung To, a 22-year-old fashion editor, says his favorite song is "The Youth of the Ho Chi Minh Generation." (Ho Chi Minh, the former president and spiritual leader of the current Communist regime, died 35 years ago.) "I listen to these songs to respect the time my people devoted their youth and blood," says Hung To. "They remind me that living must have ideals."

Quoting:

"Still, the fact that red music is drawing a new generation of fans is a strange cultural development, considering that two-thirds of Vietnam's population of 80 million is now under the age of 30; most of the country is too young to have been directly touched by 'the American war,' which ended in 1975. Young fans aren't turning to these battle tunes out of anti-Americanism-on the contrary, most Vietnamese bear few ill feelings and yearn for closer ties with the United States-but because they are bored with a steady diet of foreign pop and Vietnamese love songs.

"Some bands and artists play their red music straight, as the sorrowful or inspiring anthems their composers intended them to be. Others remix the tunes by setting them to pulsing dance beats or adding new lyrics. 'The new versions are not as good as the old but they have a new style, and people like that,' says Tran Xuan Mai Tran, a 22-year-old piano teacher and coordinator at the government-run Youth Culture House across the street from the Ben Thanh CD shop.

"It was Tran's notion to hold a red-music event featuring only pop acts at an outdoor concert venue. Composer Pham Dang Khuong, the cultural center's deputy director, agreed it would be a nice idea 'to remind the youth about this kind of music'-but based on similar efforts in the past, he said, 'We thought no one would come.' Instead, the first red-music concert, in March 2003, sold out, and the showcase has now become a much-anticipated event, packing in as many as 4,000 fans on the last Saturday of each month. The show features a rotating lineup of performances from girl groups like May Trang ('White Cloud') and the 'N Sync-esque boy band TiTi-Kids, who each sing one contemporary song and one revolutionary song. At a recent show, screaming, sweaty fans sang along to May Trang's rendition of 'Spring in Ho Chi Minh City' and jumped on stage to place flower leis around the singer's necks. Some fans camped out all day in the scorching sun while scalpers hawked tickets for 10 times the 40-cent entrance fee.

"There is some question whether the musicians' motive is heartfelt nationalism or just clever Western-style marketing. 'The pop bands only play red music to please the authorities and to market their brand-to tell the public that 'Hey, I'm not only good at love songs,' says Hung To. 'I never believe that they play red music with true zeal.'

"The pop princesses of May Trang disagree. The foursome stand on an HCM City street corner at nightfall in impossibly tight matching gold pleather outfits with low waistlines and tiny spaghetti straps tops. Hair and makeup are garishly model-perfect. The four girls' mothers are perched on the nearby mopeds that brought them to tonight's concert performance. between last-minute applications of blush and lip gloss, the girls acknowledge that they can't possibly know what it was like to live through the time these songs were written for. But that's precisely why they are increasingly relevant. 'These kinds of songs are eternal-they glorify the love of the country,' says the group's leader, Thu Ngac, 21. 'People can sing them anywhere and anytime.'"

"Burma Criticized as Worst Human Rights Violator"

Not that most people especially care, but the Burmese military junta may well be the most perverse and repressive regime on the planet, which is a particular shame because the country was one of the most successful social democracies of the post-colonial world in the 1950s (under U Nu), and has been allowed to stew in its own poisons by the west for almost fifty years.

Originally Posted by The Dude

"Burma Criticized as Worst Human Rights Violator"

Not that most people especially care, but the Burmese military junta may well be the most perverse and repressive regime on the planet, which is a particular shame because the country was one of the most successful social democracies of the post-colonial world in the 1950s (under U Nu), and has been allowed to stew in its own poisons by the west for almost fifty years.

Why are people all about the planet to be treated as if they are not moral actors in their own right? Why this contempt for the moral reasoning of others?

Kosova, Rwanda, Cuba, Burma, etc., etc. either suffer from the West's indifference or the West's interference or both. After the West is but a dim memory, wickedness will still pop up here and there and it will be someone else's (as it ever was) fault. Does everyone here at T4T recall when the Hittites were to blame for their actions and inactions?

Give him the tools and training for fishing and he's depleting the resources of the sea.

Originally Posted by BBC

The number of boats being provided to tsunami survivors in Indonesia's Aceh province could lead to problems of over fishing, relief workers warn.

Should they be given fewer boats? Will they begin to log the hills so that boats can be built? Will the hillsides become denuded if boats are built from local timber? Will the erosion of minerals kill the fish in the sea and stop the spawning in streams?

The trouble that comes with a gift of any kind. :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Originally Posted by The Dude

"Burma Criticized as Worst Human Rights Violator"

Not that most people especially care, but the Burmese military junta may well be the most perverse and repressive regime on the planet, which is a particular shame because the country was one of the most successful social democracies of the post-colonial world in the 1950s (under U Nu), and has been allowed to stew in its own poisons by the west for almost fifty years.

Why are people all about the planet to be treated as if they are not moral actors in their own right? Why this contempt for the moral reasoning of others?

Kosova, Rwanda, Cuba, Burma, etc., etc. either suffer from the West's indifference or the West's interference or both. After the West is but a dim memory, wickedness will still pop up here and there and it will be someone else's (as it ever was) fault. Does everyone here at T4T recall when the Hittites were to blame for their actions and inactions?

The people of Burma fought for decades to expel the British, and established in the immediate post-war years not only an extremely successful Buddhist democracy, but a thriving economy. The Burmese enjoyed unprecedented freedoms and access to the spoils of middle class life. What they wanted was for these new freedoms and prosperity to persist, not for a military junta to seize power, and systematically loot the country's resources when they weren't finding new and more imaginative ways to torture and murder their countrymen. This is not a case where the people want fascism or autocracy, but a case where some people have risked everything to bring back what Burma had.

I'm not suggesting that the 82nd Airborne be deployed to Rangoon tomorrow, and although the overlapping interests of the military industrial complex and congress, the white house, and the Washington Post editorial page about should make us suspicious of their bloviations about the Wonders of Democracy, I think we should also recognize that some countries really do want something resembling western-style democracy, and have even shown themselves on occasion to be rather good at it. Unlike the people of certain other countries, the people of Burma actually want our help. They really would greet us with flowers and garlands, but of course our cars don't run on rubies.

And of course it appears that Americans increasingly agree with you.

Vietnam, Now {A Reporter Returns by David Lamb (Copyright 2002)

The author is described as "the only newspaper correspondent from the Vietnam War to later live in peacetime Hanoi. A distinguised Los Angeles Times journalist who has reported from more than a hundred countries...." Quoting:

"Often I asked middle-aged Vietnamese what they thought of the post-war generation. Their response was about what I would have expected to hear had I raised a similar question in the United States: The twenty-somethings had it too easy; they hadn't known war; they were too materialistic, cared too much about money and themselves. There was no denying they wanted their cellular phones and Nike sneakers and Honda motor scooters, but that didn't make them unique. After lagging so far behind the rest of Southeast Asia for so long, they were just discovering what other kids in the region knew: The only thing money won't buy is poverty."

The author first arrived in Vietnam in 1968, and returned in 1997.

Quoting the author:

"I was delighted when the Vietnamese surprised me with an unpredictable response, which they did regularly. I asked my standard question about the young one day when I went to interview a Vietnamese businessman about the new economic order. Nguyen Tran Bat was fifty-five, a former North Vietnamese soldier who had started studying Marxism as a teenager. Given his credentials I was pretty sure I knew what he'd say. But he said:

"'The young today love their country no less, I think, than my generation, but they love it in different ways. We wanted peace, unity, security. This generation wants Vietnam to be football [soccer] champion of South Asia. It wants its singers to perform like Michael Jackson. It's materialistic. It complains about the pace of reform. The kids are restless, impatient. If they live in the Highlands, they probably want to go to Hanoi for action and opportunity. If they live in Hanoi, they want to go to Ho Chi Minh City. And if the live in Ho Chi Minh, they want to go to California.

"' And you know what? I don't blame them for complaining. It's the responsibility of the young to complain. How else do things improve? Crying for the past is an instinct but the reasons my generation gives for wanting back the beautiful past are not persuasive to the young. You can't prevent the young from doing their own thing. They have their own values and principles and whatever you think of them, those values are going to be the values of this nation ten years from now.'

"How about twenty or thirty years instead of ten? I suggested.

"'No, ten,' Bat said. 'We've turned a corner. There's no going back. Things are moving fast in a lot of subtle ways, faster than people notice.'"

Quoting the author:

"One of the things that surprised me about Vietnam's first postwar generation was how apolitical and accepting of tradition its members were. No one would think of talking back to his father or teacher. Young men still expected their brides to be virgins. They didn't get tattoos or dye their hair purple or wear their baseball caps backward. Attitude was not a problem in Vietnam's culture. Conformity was the norm."

"It would be easy to dismiss my observations as those of someone who had discovered only what he wanted to hear or see. But every American I met in Vietnam, whether tourist, businessperson, or former GI, had the same reaction: The Vietnamese liked Americans. They had forgiven, if not forgotten...they had put the war behind them in a way that many Americans hadn't...Schoolchildren studied it as only a brief page in their country's 2,500-year hsitory.

"Perhaps the Vietnamese of the North weren't haunted by the war because they had won it...

"Although I searched for explanations, I never doubted that the Vietnamese affability was sincere. Just as they didn't much take to the gruff and somber Soviets who overran Vietnam after the American War, they genuinely liked the gregarious and curious Americans who traded jokes with them, asked them about the war, and knew the value of a smile. And I think they were just as aware as I was that Americans and Vietnamese share an almost inexplicable bond...It is a liasison woven in tragedy and common suffering...."

The author described the poverty, the bleakness, of the post-war period.

"The unified Vietnam...was a dark-spirited place. Everything smelled of poverty. Everyone was hungry. No one smiled. Just owning a bicycle qualified a man for middle-class status.

"Slowly, ever so slowly, the Communist Party took the first timid steps toward a free-market economy in the late 1980s. The fog of desperation lifted...."

"The better things got, the more the lingering animosity toward the United States faded. It was replaced by a sense of relief that life was on the mend. Hating took energy-energy the Vietnamese wanted to expend in more productive pursuits...."

Cultures of the World

Vietnam

by Audrey Seah/Charissa M. Nair



Section on reliegions states that the Cao Dai sect was founded in 1926, and the Hoa Hao sect was founded in 1939.

"The Hoa Hao sect has been described as reformed Buddhism based on personal faith rather than elaborate ritural."

"The Cao Dai sect was founded by Ngo Minh Chieu. He sought to create the ideal religion by fusing Buddhism with Christianity and elements of Taoism and Confucianism. Cao Dai is actually the name given to the Supreme Being, who is represented by the symbol of the divine eye as revealed in a vision to its founder."

Countries of the World

Vietnam

by Amy Condra-Peters


"According to the history of the Cao Dai movement, God revealed Himself in 1919 or 1920 to Vietnamese civil servant Ngo Van Chieu and in the 1920sto a few other men. Under the name of Cao Dai, God ordered the men to establish a new religion to unite existing belief.

"The Cao Dai faith was officially founded in 1926. It teaches that all religions have the same origin and worship the same God. Cao Dai principles emphasize the pursuit of oneness with God through the abandonment of worldly desires. Believers devote themselves to the worship of God, to works of service for the community, and to personal purity and purification. Through mediums and channelers at seances, people also contact the spirits of ancestors and famous historical figures to ask for guidance and blessing. Some of the personalities, including Jesus Christ, French heroine Joan of Arc, English playwright William Shakespeare, and Russian dictator Vladimir Lenin, are recognized as patron saints of the faith.

" Hoa Hao is a type of reformed Buddhism that favors simple worship over elaborate ceremonies...."

I am currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, doing some sightseeing prior to the Toastmasters International Convention that starts this week. (My Significant Other was sent over by Toastmasters; I have free hotel and just had to pay for air fare, so I grabbed the opportunity.

Very interesting city. Very gleaming and modern, lots of construction cranes and traffic congestion. Watching the women is very interesting. KL is about 45 percent Malay, 40 percent Chinese, 10 percent Indian, and 5 percent other. Malaysia is a majority Moslem country, and the Malay women wear anything from western clothes, to jeans and tunic and a hajib (scarf), to a loose outer robe and hajib, to what Alonzo calls the "Ninja" look -- black robes with just a slit for the eyes. The bizarre thing is that you'll see a Ninja woman walking by herself, shopping, and haggling with the shopkeeper over the price of jewelry.

Superficially, I'd place Malaysia to be in 3T mode still. The construction reminds me a lot of the DC area, circa 2005. Also, the country became independent in 1957, which could be the end of a 3T that began around 1940ish when the Japanese occupied Malaysia. However, I'd be very interested in hearing what others have to say.

Here is the image of KL

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I am currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, doing some sightseeing prior to the Toastmasters International Convention that starts this week. (My Significant Other was sent over by Toastmasters; I have free hotel and just had to pay for air fare, so I grabbed the opportunity.

Very interesting city. Very gleaming and modern, lots of construction cranes and traffic congestion. Watching the women is very interesting. KL is about 45 percent Malay, 40 percent Chinese, 10 percent Indian, and 5 percent other. Malaysia is a majority Moslem country, and the Malay women wear anything from western clothes, to jeans and tunic and a hajib (scarf), to a loose outer robe and hajib, to what Alonzo calls the "Ninja" look -- black robes with just a slit for the eyes. The bizarre thing is that you'll see a Ninja woman walking by herself, shopping, and haggling with the shopkeeper over the price of jewelry.

Superficially, I'd place Malaysia to be in 3T mode still. The construction reminds me a lot of the DC area, circa 2005. Also, the country became independent in 1957, which could be the end of a 3T that began around 1940ish when the Japanese occupied Malaysia. However, I'd be very interested in hearing what others have to say.

Here is the image of KL

I spent just two days ashore there when our ship stopped in Port Kelang in the 90s (we were the first aircraft carrier to pull into a Malaysian port, IIRC--at least since independence anyway). KL is just a short train ride inland from the port.

I remember it was very difficult to get a taxi--they all seemed to be occupied or on their way to picking someone up, and wouldn't stop. The city had a feeling of growing too fast for it to be able to keep up with itself. The Petronas Towers very much dominated the skyline and looked almost eerie at night, whereas today it looks like many new highrises have sprung up underneath them.

A shipmate I was along with had a woman in Muslim headdress knock on his hotel room (the "hotel" was a simple honeycomb of partitions like you find in a lot of places in SE Asia in the 2-5 dollar range), who wanted to fool around with him. Turns out she had a husband (or some male minder of some sort, maybe a brother) and he ended up chasing my friend down the hall of the hotel like he was going to beat the crap out of him, yelling loudly--I was just waking up then. Pretty bizarre, all things considered. Scary situation too. Hope the woman didn't get it too badly afterwards.

Overall, a fairly clean city relative to Manila or Bangkok, but with a few growing pains. Lovely women (as a 20-something male sailor that's what I noticed more than anything, lol). Some interesting variation in architecture underneath the glass highrises (like I said, these were sparser then).

I wouldn't mind visiting again--and I'd love to see Penang, a place I never got around to. I liked Singapore a lot too.