Originally published via Armageddon Safari:
“Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain? Tell me, have you these in your houses? Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?”
-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Of all the cancerous cultural exports America has inflicted upon the unsuspecting innocents of the Third World, the mega-shopping mall is arguably the most unforgiveable.
Overpriced soulless condo buildings with kitschy names and AI-developed slogans are a close second.
Seemingly everywhere you go in the city, some new soulless condo is being erected, each endowed with gigantic advertisements containing some cliché marketing slop, probably AI-generated, like this one:
“When you have everything you’ve ever needed in life, the rest is the pursuit of what you desire.”
What does that mean?
It doesn’t have to mean anything; the important part is that it’s smeared in glossy text, sounds fancy, and appeals in the vaguest way possible to the limitless desire for luxury and comfort.
Mind you, this is in a Buddhist country, the central tenet of which is that desire is the root of all suffering.
Taking the multi-story mall, with miles’ worth of escalators shuttling lobotomized shoppers from Starbucks on the ground floor to Gucci on the second floor to Bed Bath and Beyond on the third, and so on ad infinitum, the middle-to-upper-class of Thailand has developed a rabid appetite for these constructs.
Seemingly every month, some new developer excitedly announces a new mega-mall.
Such was the case recently with a gigantic plot of land adjacent to the famous Lumpini Park.
The write-up in Khaosod English reads more like an advertisement than a news article, which makes me wonder how much Central Group paid the publication to launder its propaganda as journalism.
Via Khaosod English (emphasis added):
“The Silom-Rama IV district has reached peak vibrancy with the opening of “Central Park,” Central Group’s newest shopping center, which launched on September 4. The mall attracted over 70,000 visitors on its opening day alone, reflecting not only Central Group’s strength but also the tremendous potential of prime real estate in the Silom-Rama IV area….
Today, Silom has evolved into Bangkok’s “Super Core CBD” – a high purchasing power economic zone featuring over 40 office buildings and continuous development of mixed-use projects combining offices, retail, residential, and hotels. An estimated 700,000 people commute through the area on weekdays, with over 500,000 even on weekends.
According to CBRE Residential Transaction data from 2023, the investment potential of the Rama IV-Silom area is remarkable, with residential properties showing investment returns as high as 33.46% and compound annual growth rates of 13.68% – significantly higher than other Bangkok locations…
Dr. Nathakitthi Tangpoolsintana, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Central Pattana Public Company Limited, explains that Central Park will integrate Lumpini Park’s green spaces, similar to Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London. This includes synchronized activities in both Lumpini Park and the center’s own 7-rai sky garden, panoramic Bangkok skyline viewing points, a 750-meter jogging track, and spaces for art and cultural activities.”
Oscar Wilde perhaps said it best: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
And Bangkok business elites — chasing Western ideals of luxury, defined by wanton consumerism — are, if nothing else, consummate cynics of the highest order.
How long until Lumpini Park gets bulldozed and replaced with a Central Group abomination?
The answer probably depends on:
a.) how much “tea money” they’re willing to slip to governing authorities, and;
b.) whether the proposed commercial value would surpass the commercial value that the park brings in in terms of tourist revenue.
The imported materialism of the West in Southeast Asian metropolises — particularly Bangkok where I lived for many years, but the scourge is present in all major cities — began to weigh on me over time, such that I developed a gag reflex to the sight.
From my memoir, Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile:
“December 2019
Bangkok, Thailand:
I gagged on the city.
Absent the gift of vision, the olfactory ambiance was how I would have known for sure this was Bangkok — aka New Sodom and Gomorrah. The half-putrid, half-sweet stench of sweat and beer and greasy streetside stalls and air pollution and the permanent fog of heavy industry stifled my nostrils…
As the Buddha taught, standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants before him who drew similar connections, obsession with materialism and suffering go hand-in-hand.
Skin whitening company ads dominate the streetscapes. Lottery gambling in the proletariat tradition of 1984 is rampant among the working class, which constitutes the vast majority of the population. Trucks selling beauty cream concoctions crawl along the streets at 10 km/hr, screeching empty promises of a better life out of loudspeakers mounted on top of the cabin.
(Thai law doesn’t ban street traffic from blasting out advertising through loudspeakers, so its residents are subjected constantly to recorded voices of fast-talking salesmen hocking all manner of consumer goods, their disembodied voices emanating from meandering vehicles all day, every day.)…
“Society” and “marketplace” are now synonyms in Thailand, as well as elsewhere where the markets replaced God. Buying and selling are the new Holy Communion with the Great Beyond. Shopping malls get built where temples would’ve been in another age.
The overwhelming majority of Thai pedestrians either walk with their phones to their ears or with their eyes on their screens, blinded to their self-enslavement, unaware even that they are enslaved.”
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