After a gap of about seven months, I find myself once more back in the pleasant environs of The Jolly Frog in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Actually, to be a tad more accurate, it has now been renamed to The Smiley Frog and, to a small extent at least, revamped. It still attracts some of the same sorts of characters that made it such an interesting place to stay as before, but clearly not as many as previously. As I write these words at 10:30 on a Thursday morning in the airy restaurant of The Frog, I find myself alone but for one other guest who, in similar fashion, is tapping away at a laptop to her heart’s content.
Staff outnumber customers by a ratio of about 4:1 in the restaurant and, subjectively at least, it feels as if they do throughout the establishment. They seem, for the most part, to wander around relatively aimlessly trying to look busy but with very little useful to actually do. Thailand is, at least at times, a very hot and humid place and this seems to have lead to a kind of widely accepted, and very pragmatic, lethargy. Few people rush anywhere, apart from perhaps on the roads where one wonders if it is the widespread belief in reincarnation or a native carelessness that leads to the routinely reprehensible recklessness one sees there.
Other countries seem to have very different attitudes. I was reading recently about a phenomena that originated in Japan but seems to be spreading throughout more or less the whole of the so-called ‘developed’ World. It is known as ‘Karoshi’, basically a term used for the process of literally working oneself to death. Many workers in Japan, particularly those of the white collar variety, will quite routinely work until 10 or even 11 p.m., staying hours after their allotted time performing invariably unpaid overtime. Often they follow this with bouts of heavy drinking, a few hours sleep, and then returning to the office early the next morning.
Staff outnumber customers by a ratio of about 4:1 in the restaurant and, subjectively at least, it feels as if they do throughout the establishment. They seem, for the most part, to wander around relatively aimlessly trying to look busy but with very little useful to actually do. Thailand is, at least at times, a very hot and humid place and this seems to have lead to a kind of widely accepted, and very pragmatic, lethargy. Few people rush anywhere, apart from perhaps on the roads where one wonders if it is the widespread belief in reincarnation or a native carelessness that leads to the routinely reprehensible recklessness one sees there.
Other countries seem to have very different attitudes. I was reading recently about a phenomena that originated in Japan but seems to be spreading throughout more or less the whole of the so-called ‘developed’ World. It is known as ‘Karoshi’, basically a term used for the process of literally working oneself to death. Many workers in Japan, particularly those of the white collar variety, will quite routinely work until 10 or even 11 p.m., staying hours after their allotted time performing invariably unpaid overtime. Often they follow this with bouts of heavy drinking, a few hours sleep, and then returning to the office early the next morning.
Obviously such a lifestyle is deeply unhealthy. Many succumb to the stress and end up having breakdowns, becoming alcoholics or, all too frequently, simply dying, usually of heart attacks or strokes brought on by the extreme hours, sometimes they choose suicide. The Japanese government, after many high profile cases in the recent past, have been embarassed into legislating that the maximum amount of overtime that can be legally worked in a given month is an eye watering 100 hours. Such a high figure perhaps reflects the cultural attitude to service and work in that country. Given the societal expectations that are prevalent in Japan, one is aware that this is only a perfunctory exercise, people will continue to work in excess of even these astonomical limits.
Other countries, notably China and South Korea, are reporting more and more incidents of the same problem. The motivation is subtly different in these countries perhaps, a mixture of the notion of ‘going for it’ in order to be a ‘success’, familial piety a la Confusciu (or the idea that you should devote yourself completely to the furtherance of your family or group), and ‘face’, the notion that you should be concerned with how you are perceived by your fellows. Appearance is everything in China, you not only need to be successful but you need to be seen to be successful - hence the perceived necessity for so many wearable consumables: badges of rank denoting how successful you are and hence how high your status is. Apple as a company loves China. Their sales there are phenomenal, with Chinese customers often literally climbing over each other in order to be the first to own the latest iphone or laptop.
To some extent, Karoshi is now beginning to appear in the West as well. It is often driven by many of the same motivators, though perhaps pure consumerism plays a much greater role. Much like China, a person's worth, often even their self-worth, is dictated by the ability to afford the right products. Part of the process, in the UK at least, is the willingness is go into ever greater debt in order to ‘afford’ particularly nice cars, TVs or sofas. Whatever the motivation, the effect is much the same, with people feeling obliged to work longer and longer hours of almost invariably unpaid overtime to keep their ever increasingly demanding jobs.
One cannot help but wonder, given the damage to our planet, our personal lives, even our health that such unhealthy consumerism has brought, if is a wise way to go. Our very existence and pertinence to society seems to now be measured in how good we are at being consumers. Perhaps, finally, it is time for a paradigm shift. a shift away from being consumers to being producers, to stepping outside the economic system and becoming responsible for the basics of our own lives. A shift away from the top down model of consuming ready made goods and foods to a bottom up model wherein we take responsibility for our own lives and become producers rather than consumers.
This phenomenon can already be seen occurring in the US and, to a certain extent at least, in the UK. The realisation that the current way of being is not working and is deeply unhealthy on many levels struck many after the economic crash of 2008. Lots of people lost much of their wealth, their status, sometimes even their homes in the US in the aftermath of that crash. This lead to a questioning by many of the assumptions that consumer society is based on. Do we really need to live in such large houses? Do we need the gas guzzler? Do we need to go to supermarkets to buy plastic wrapped food soaked in salt, sugar and various chemical concoctions when we can produce good, wholesome and healthy food ourselves?
Such thinking is beginning to question some of the most fundamental assumptions that Western society has lived by for the best part of a century or more. More is always better is being challenged by those of us who appreciate minimalism; big governance and its centralised model which tends to favour industry and corporations (and itself, of course!) is now being seen as part of the problem, not part of the solution; the notion that one needs to be a ‘success’ in material terms is now perceived by many to be a form of neurosis rather than anything positive or life affirming. The times clearly are a-changing, as Bob Dylan once famously wrote.
Back here in the Smiley Frog restaurant a pleasant hour has passed and the place has become a virtual hive of very slow motion activity. A lass clad in turquoise smiles over to me as she continues to soporifically mop the tiles. The waitresses listen to a Thai talk show and studiously avoid eye contact hoping that the few customers they do have will go away. The gardener (he does a great job, even if he does it very, very slowly) wanders back and forth trying to find something that might need his attention.
As I finish the blog for another week, I find myself pondering the possibility of a trip up to Laos at the end of the month. Some Thai people apparently are of the opinion that the Loatian people are lazy. Given the soporific pace of life here, Lao laziness must be something to behold...
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