Burn Before Reading
02 June 2018 | Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Friday 1 June 2018
Last couple of days in Indochina. Jan, as is her custom, has become close personal friends with everyone we've met. Final major activity will be a tour of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek "Killing Fields" of Pol Pot's Communist Khmer Rouge. Sorry to end a wonderful trip on that bit of horror, but the logistics worked out better.
Royal Palace impressive. Wouldn't want to live there. Very baroque in red and gold. Again exemplifies that for all its perks, being a royal in any country must really suck.
References to Norodom Sihanouk are evident all over town. As a politician and a royal he was probably the most influential Cambodian in the Twentieth century. He became king in 1941 and finally abdicated to his son in 2004 after periodically serving as elected Head of State. His narrative is way too convoluted to go into, but among other activities he was instrumental in booting out the French, collaborated for a time with the Khmer Rouge, both supported and fought the Vietcong and generally made a nuisance of himself for 63 years. Nobody's perfect.
Saturday
Visit to the "Killing Fields" presents a quandary, too horrible to be sardonic and too obviously ideological to fit this blog. Just a couple of inappropriate and eminently ignorable comments (that can't possibly apply to any of us anyway) before returning to the far more important and entertaining boat stuff.
The next time you want the government to pass a law forcing your benighted neighbor to live and act in a way you think he should because you know better, give a thought to the virtual or actual murder of 45 to 70 million people by Mao, 20 million by Stalin, 11 million by Hitler and a quarter of the Cambodian population who died at the behest of Pol Pot. These guys were all trying to help their people, too. Of course, all our officials are pure of heart.
Humans have an innate sense of right and wrong. We are genetically disposed to be cooperative because survival of the species required it. Sane people seldom commit evil acts knowing they're evil. Those that do are a relatively easy problem. Normal people commit atrocities because they've been convinced it's good. Historically this has been accomplished through religion; socialism is a more modern method and because of its broad emotional appeal insidious. Doing good is far different from feeling good about what you do and usually involves an alternative version of the Golden Rule: Don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. Live your own life well, let others live non-aggressively as they wish and pay attention.
Jack