On Theology

It escaped my notice that with a project such as Temples of Thailand, the question of theology naturally occurs, as is the question of my position to create such a document. For me, I find it difficult to find the correct nomenclature. I could present as Atheist, or Agnostic, yet neither are strictly true. My stance on religion is that it very much exists, and it very much shapes how people view the world despite a lack of it personally. As such the question is not “do I believe in a specific deity or dogma?” but a statement that despite my own views, I acknowledge many do.

As I touched on above, religion in many forms have shaped mankind through the millennia, and Buddhism as I have come into contact with it — a familial relationship with a country that 97% of nationals identify as — is rather unique in that I have found it to be malleable. I have no real interest in pursuing Theravadism, Animism or any other kind of dogma, but in pursuing what the core identity of a land that is shaped by its inherent relationship with the core principles of Buddhism.

In the age of Tik Tok hacks and AI, people have been trained to expect a clear cut question and a defined answer. Unless we are discussing mathematics, this is an impossibility. Needs, wants, societal norms, definitions of morality, they change consistently throughout the strata of human evolution. It is not my place to answer a single one, but I inherently chase those that do, in many ways, reflect my own ideals to varying degrees.

There is inherent bias here, I do not claim that there is not, as many Western institutions falsely do. However, what I do claim is to bring an neutral observation from one that is deeply embedded into the culture, whist not strictly a part of the culture. Which to expand on, is not a choice I can make. I can own a Thai passport, I can attest to value symmetry with Japan, but I cannot proclaim myself a part of their culture. The British would have the same argument against me, despite English as my presented nationality.

There is a major reason that whilst self-identity — and the exploration of — is lauded, questions such as these have become taboo. It is because self-identity inherently ends at the self. Cultural identity holds governments, corporations, institutions to account. A persons tax code does not change if they are hetrero, gay, trans or otherwise. Yet our lives are (for the large part) dictated by the country we were birthed in. If I were sexually confused, or of African descent, there is little doubt my work would be in The Tate by now, but it is a Sisyphean, nay, Promethean task to have institutions acknowledge and accept that there is more than a singular Western outlook on global affairs, and the human condition.

On the flip side, domestic institutions like to hide the “primitive” and prefer to celebrate modernity, until that “primitive” is lost to time. As for those on the ground-floor, it is very hard to argue that a day in an air-conditioned office or retail store is a step backwards for a day in the paddy fields under the baking sun. Yet on a macro scale, it clearly is. The entire ecology of Thailand has changed year on year, and will continue to do so. In the UK I spent much of my childhood in the Welsh Valleys, a place ecologically and economically striped bare by the coalmines that fed the Industrial Revolution, a period of time that we now look back on with disgust to the conditions. Decades have past and trees will no longer grow, the ground is no longer firm, and the peoples have still not recovered economically.

The Thai culture, and Thai landscape is inextricably bound by its connection to the national faith, and of no choice of my own am I bound to the land of my mother. I am often needing to remind the photographers of the 90’s such as Isett, Brown and such, that although I held no camera, I too was here back then. Even Girard, I must remind that if I need an account of the seventies I need only ask my Mum. Today we look on their images as if it is an alien world, yet I cannot un-pave the fields, I cannot resuscitate the subsistence society of years past. As such any attempt to was chasing ghosts. This is one of the many reasons why Soul of the Planet, Heart of the People had to make way for Discover, specifically Discover Temples of Thailand.

As anyone familiar with my work can attest, I draw naturally to the gravity of religion, be it Catholicism that shaped the Renaissance, the Greek pantheon that shaped the entirety of two dominant cultures, the Nordic Paganism that shares much with Eastern beliefs, or the Protestantism that fundamentally built the culture I identify most with. If I was to make one overaching statement on how I view religion it would be “In absentia, dei.”