Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
- SternAAlbifrons
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
For a thousand years the God-kings did not want Khmers to develop logic or think for themselves.
The KR did not want people who had the ability to critically think.
"Thank the stars things are all different now"
The KR did not want people who had the ability to critically think.
"Thank the stars things are all different now"
- Big Daikon
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
This is an interesting point. The system of logical thinking came largely out of ancient Greek philosophy and became one of the foundations of Western civilization.SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:35 am For a thousand years the God-kings did not want Khmers to develop logic or think for themselves.
I wonder how to insert logic into a non-western society.
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
I think most societies use logical thinking, D. ^^^
All the neighbouring countries around here do. Look at the chinese if want a mega example.
Even highly religious societies use logical, cause and effect, scientific thinking in their everyday lives. Generally.
I just think Cambodia is one of the few cultures that has stifled logical thinking almost to the point of extinguishment.
But the modern world is shattering that now.
Too much outside exposure, too much high-tech social interaction, too many glittering prizes for bright young kids to ignore. There are big drivers for figuring it all out, and quickly.
And these days they dont get their heads chopped off for stepping outside, or even looking outside, their rigidly fixed role in society. Well, not quite so often anyway.
Likely to be bit a patchy tho', for maybe another generation or two.
All the neighbouring countries around here do. Look at the chinese if want a mega example.
Even highly religious societies use logical, cause and effect, scientific thinking in their everyday lives. Generally.
I just think Cambodia is one of the few cultures that has stifled logical thinking almost to the point of extinguishment.
But the modern world is shattering that now.
Too much outside exposure, too much high-tech social interaction, too many glittering prizes for bright young kids to ignore. There are big drivers for figuring it all out, and quickly.
And these days they dont get their heads chopped off for stepping outside, or even looking outside, their rigidly fixed role in society. Well, not quite so often anyway.
Likely to be bit a patchy tho', for maybe another generation or two.
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
That has not been my experience living/teaching in Japan. (Not Cambodia, I realize.) Mostly rote memorization of data, teaching for the test and vertical classroom and office situations. Little analysis or critical thinking. It does seem to work for them, though.SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:09 pm I think most societies use logical thinking, D. ^^^
Even highly religious societies use logical, cause and effect, scientific thinking in their everyday lives. Generally.
Cambodia, Thailand, etc may get interesting in the next 30-50 years.Likely to be bit a patchy tho', for maybe another generation or two.
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
You cant farm like Thais and not be thinking rationally. And not learning, and not using science.
Or all the tech stuff they have picked up since.. when? 1945?
Or do trading so well. Or never be conquered for a long long time before that.
Not to mention china, and the middle east in ancient times. Japan makes Toyotas. Logic ain't the preserve of the west.
Not comparing anywhere with the West - we have have been training ourselves along these lines for 400 years.
My contention is that Cambodia is an outlier to anywhere else when it comes to non-rational mindset, right outside the box, and has been heading that way for a long long time.
How? a particularly twisted form of the God-King thing - absolute rule and communication from the top, only. No lateral communication - and anybody who sticks his head outside his predetermined box gets it immediately chopped off.
Guaranteed to stop you developing logic, initiative and a questioning mind.
1000 years of it.
I know there are many other similar monarchies and such, especially around this neighbourhood - but i reckon cambodia went off on the full cult loony trip.
That is why the frustration level of us westerers here about seemingly incomprehensible thinking/decisions/actions is way way higher here than anywhere else in the locale. Few people would dispute that Cambodia is abnormally dysfunctional - even for a post war country. It is more deeply rooted than 1975.
Or all the tech stuff they have picked up since.. when? 1945?
Or do trading so well. Or never be conquered for a long long time before that.
Not to mention china, and the middle east in ancient times. Japan makes Toyotas. Logic ain't the preserve of the west.
Not comparing anywhere with the West - we have have been training ourselves along these lines for 400 years.
My contention is that Cambodia is an outlier to anywhere else when it comes to non-rational mindset, right outside the box, and has been heading that way for a long long time.
How? a particularly twisted form of the God-King thing - absolute rule and communication from the top, only. No lateral communication - and anybody who sticks his head outside his predetermined box gets it immediately chopped off.
Guaranteed to stop you developing logic, initiative and a questioning mind.
1000 years of it.
I know there are many other similar monarchies and such, especially around this neighbourhood - but i reckon cambodia went off on the full cult loony trip.
That is why the frustration level of us westerers here about seemingly incomprehensible thinking/decisions/actions is way way higher here than anywhere else in the locale. Few people would dispute that Cambodia is abnormally dysfunctional - even for a post war country. It is more deeply rooted than 1975.
Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
Notice something interesting. When it is written that the Khmer Rouge targeted “intellectuals,” teachers and the educated no one objects. That is true. But point out that the movement was created and led by teachers, lawyers, professors, and intellectuals and suddenly these holders of PHD’s and degrees from French Universities are just “fiery young revolutionaries” or “the odd bloke”...... Or They couldn’t be intellectuals because they are Khmer!SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 7:47 am Johnno - you are right in that i probably understated the intellectual make-up of the KR leaders.
But personally, I still reckon you are overstating it.
Those quoted CV's of the KR leaders are very glossed up.
I don't really consider fiery young revolutionaries who go off to uni and come back into a variety of public sector jobs to be "intellectuals". Or the odd bloke who comes from an academic background.
By that definition any political activist who studies Che Guevara's handbook in the railway yard, or marxist theory at Berkeley, could be called an intellectual.
By and large, most of those on your list ^^^ could not be considered to come from Cambodia's authentic intellectual class.
There will alway be some input from genuine intellectuals. But here, they were not the ones most active in the eventual, fatal, Khmer rouge incarnation.
The revolution was shaped on political theory. The Central Committee members were political zealots - that is not the same thing as intellectualism.
(just my take)
I’m not suggesting that they were all geniuses. Whether they were or were not “on par” with Western Intellectuals is irrelevant. There are a great number of professors who are very well educated and teach at the most prestigious universities and I would also consider them complete fools....very well educated fools.
The fact of the matter is that the senior Khmer Rouge were made up of the intelligentsia of the country at that time.
Keep in mind when they ran off from their teaching positions into the jungle, the University of Phnom Penh was roughly 6 years old. Between 1953 and 1975 Cambodia’s medical school graduated 500 medical doctors, 120 pharmacists, 80 medical assistants, and 90 dentists.
There were not many educated people in Cambodia during that time to begin with. Saying that they were just fiery revolutionaries who came back to “public sector jobs” ignores the fact that most revolutionaries are not men of business who leave the private sector to make revolutions.
Most Revolutions begin their formenting in Universities not in factories.
The Khmer Rouge leaders were the very definition of the Cambodian “Intelligentsia” (Intellectuals or highly educated people as a group, especially when regarded as possessing culture and political Influence)
Comrade Duch of S-21 can still quote Balzac and Alfred De Vigny and it would not surprise me if he were able to beat the majority of the members of this forum on a Physics exam. I’d also bet that Ieng Thirith who was the minister of Social affairs could quote more Shakespeare than most members of this forum.
The history of Cambodia that has been presented in news articles has been disingenuous. The casual visitor to Cambodia or reader of a BBC article will often assume that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge were illiterate peasants targeting the Intellectuals. They were not. They were the intellectuals of their time, the professors and educators of the country.
A prime example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10684399 “Anyone thought to be an intellectual of any sort was killed.”
“Duch’s teacher at the National Institute of Pedagogy in Phnom Penh, Duch joined the revolution as part of what he identified as a group of intellectuals. Indeed, many of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, were intellectuals who had been teachers.” - The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer by Alexander Hinton
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
Kaing Kek leu, aka Duch, was the son of Khmer peasants. He was a "self-made man."
topic40291-10.html#p444540It might be disturbing to remind those “belles âmes” (as we say in French) of a few biographical details of Kaing Kek leu, aka Duch, the former executioner in chief of the Tuol Seng central Khmer Rouge detention and torture center, who just passed away in Phnom Penh at the age of seventy-seven.
Duch, the son of Khmer peasants, was endowed with outstanding qualities: he had an intense desire to learn, he was self-disciplined and had the passionate energy of a hard worker. Unlike several future prominent leaders of the revolution, he didn’t make it to the prestigious Paris universities, but he did manage to study at lycée Sisowath, the best French school in Cambodia.
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
I honestly wonder what your point is...Johno35 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 9:08 pmNotice something interesting. When it is written that the Khmer Rouge targeted “intellectuals,” teachers and the educated no one objects. That is true. But point out that the movement was created and led by teachers, lawyers, professors, and intellectuals and suddenly these holders of PHD’s and degrees from French Universities are just “fiery young revolutionaries” or “the odd bloke”...... Or They couldn’t be intellectuals because they are Khmer!SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 7:47 am Johnno - you are right in that i probably understated the intellectual make-up of the KR leaders.
But personally, I still reckon you are overstating it.
Those quoted CV's of the KR leaders are very glossed up.
I don't really consider fiery young revolutionaries who go off to uni and come back into a variety of public sector jobs to be "intellectuals". Or the odd bloke who comes from an academic background.
By that definition any political activist who studies Che Guevara's handbook in the railway yard, or marxist theory at Berkeley, could be called an intellectual.
By and large, most of those on your list ^^^ could not be considered to come from Cambodia's authentic intellectual class.
There will alway be some input from genuine intellectuals. But here, they were not the ones most active in the eventual, fatal, Khmer rouge incarnation.
The revolution was shaped on political theory. The Central Committee members were political zealots - that is not the same thing as intellectualism.
(just my take)
I’m not suggesting that they were all geniuses. Whether they were or were not “on par” with Western Intellectuals is irrelevant. There are a great number of professors who are very well educated and teach at the most prestigious universities and I would also consider them complete fools....very well educated fools.
The fact of the matter is that the senior Khmer Rouge were made up of the intelligentsia of the country at that time.
Keep in mind when they ran off from their teaching positions into the jungle, the University of Phnom Penh was roughly 6 years old. Between 1953 and 1975 Cambodia’s medical school graduated 500 medical doctors, 120 pharmacists, 80 medical assistants, and 90 dentists.
There were not many educated people in Cambodia during that time to begin with. Saying that they were just fiery revolutionaries who came back to “public sector jobs” ignores the fact that most revolutionaries are not men of business who leave the private sector to make revolutions.
Most Revolutions begin their formenting in Universities not in factories.
The Khmer Rouge leaders were the very definition of the Cambodian “Intelligentsia” (Intellectuals or highly educated people as a group, especially when regarded as possessing culture and political Influence)
Comrade Duch of S-21 can still quote Balzac and Alfred De Vigny and it would not surprise me if he were able to beat the majority of the members of this forum on a Physics exam. I’d also bet that Ieng Thirith who was the minister of Social affairs could quote more Shakespeare than most members of this forum.
The history of Cambodia that has been presented in news articles has been disingenuous. The casual visitor to Cambodia or reader of a BBC article will often assume that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge were illiterate peasants targeting the Intellectuals. They were not. They were the intellectuals of their time, the professors and educators of the country.
A prime example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10684399 “Anyone thought to be an intellectual of any sort was killed.”
“Duch’s teacher at the National Institute of Pedagogy in Phnom Penh, Duch joined the revolution as part of what he identified as a group of intellectuals. Indeed, many of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, were intellectuals who had been teachers.” - The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer by Alexander Hinton
People in power are mostly well-educated. Even in feudal/dictatorial societies, the upcoming generation is mostly sent to good schools and universities. (An exception could be Pol Pot himself, who got his stipendiate through family-connections to the King, and failed to get a degree.) Sihanouk often quoted Kafka, and Kim Jong-Un was educated in Switzerland. The same goes for the political elites in Western countries, a notable exception being the USA, where it seems that general popularity can draw votes, as seen in actors turned politicians like Reagan or Schwarzenegger .
Revolutionary movements mostly start in universities, be it the "Hippies" or the movement that happens in Thailand atm.
The KR were mostly made up of (relatively) educated people, yes, but they weren't the only ones. In your BBC-article, it even says they killed off the educated middle-class. That's what often happens to consolidate power. They also forbid religion, as they saw it as a threat to the belief-system they tried to introduce.
Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
Following your statement, how do you explain a highly sophisticated project like the "hydraulic city" Angkor?SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:35 am For a thousand years the God-kings did not want Khmers to develop logic or think for themselves.
The KR did not want people who had the ability to critically think.
"Thank the stars things are all different now"
- SternAAlbifrons
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Re: Khmer Rouge Killing Intellectuals
LOL
Much of this is probably hair splitting.
but great fun to play Sunday nite intellectuals anyway
What do ya reckon..
Will we change the world? or get our heads chopped off for tryin'??
Much of this is probably hair splitting.
but great fun to play Sunday nite intellectuals anyway
What do ya reckon..
Will we change the world? or get our heads chopped off for tryin'??
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