'To live is to learn, that's how we grow'

November 11, 2009
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D.
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS (Guam)

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

One day before he was shot and killed, King said in his "Mountaintop" speech: "We've got some difficult days ahead, ... Like anybody, I would like to live a long life, ... But I'm not concerned about that now, ... [God's] allowed me to go up to the mountain, ... And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight ... I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Earlier, King said, "If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live." King "walked the talk": "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."

He also said, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed."

Nothing is permanent in life except change, so, we can choose to be victims of change, or agents of change and transform our world. To live is to learn, and to apply what we learn to improve our circumstances and the lot of those around us. That's how we grow. A specialist counsels, rush not to conclude, it blocks the road to knowledge; keep asking questions and learn. Learning is perpetual.

There is a Web site, "Reflections of An Expatriate on Cambodia's Past, Present, and Future," by a former international civil servant, and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Dr. Naranhkiri Tith.

Khmer-born and educated in Europe and the United States, Tith integrates the historical, economic, social, cultural, and political, with supporting documents, to explain Cambodia's current tragedy.

He built the Web site, he says, as a "personal tribute" to all victims of the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen's "blind ambition and high treason," and Prince Sihanouk's "deceit, megalomania, and egomania." The Web site offers "A suggested roadmap to freedom for the Cambodian people."

Tith analyzes Cambodia's internal problems, and references the February 2008 report by Professor Yash Ghai, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, and Cambodia's external problems with her neighbors -- he sees the great danger posed by Vietnam to the east, that by Thailand to the west -- as factors contributing to Cambodia as "a failed state." He presents a roadmap, suggesting the use of non-violence to remove Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party from power: "Intractable, yes; impossible, no!"

Tith urges "a progressive and systematic overhaul" of the Khmer society, to "gradually" improve Cambodia's economic, institutional, legal, political, and social problems, "thus allowing the Cambodian people to survive and to prosper."

Tith left Cambodia for the U.S. in 1960-1961: "I felt that I was not allowed to be myself ... ." He laments how non-royal Khmers could not hope to "reach their full potential, intellectually or otherwise," as a commoner's achievement was "an attempt to compete" in a world French King Louis XIV dubbed, "L'Etat c'est Moi" or "I am the State."

Tith sees the Khmer monarchy's "pervasive and crushing role, ... combined with the conservative nature" of Cambodia's society -- including a "belief in prophesies and rigidity in social organization and behavior" -- as contributing "to the inertia and the inability to allow new ideas and capable leadership, and entrepreneurial spirit, to emerge." These characteristics, he says, "keep Cambodia perpetually underdeveloped."

In his Web site's "Special articles and essays on Cambodian behavioral and social characteristics," Tith writes, "Most Cambodians do not even know who they are, ... their identity," which has been "absolutely crushed" by the monarchy. Common Khmers claim their ancestors were "the builders of Angkor Wat," Tith says, yet, they "hardly know their great grandparents" -- while Chinese and Vietnamese know their ancestors "12 generations" back.

He examines the Khmer society's "flaws" and highlights the resulting "character and behavior" that impede success. An excerpt from Marie A. Martin's "Khmer Tradition and Customs: Rigid Respect for Social Hierarchy Leads to the Absence of the Right to Criticize," in her (1994) book, "Cambodia: a Shattered Society," is a must read.

I met Tith some thirty-six years ago, before the Khmer Republic under which I served crumbled under the genocidal Khmer Rouge's guns in 1975. "There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny," someone writes, "And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."

Fate can be mysterious and ironical. After my nine years (1980-1989) in the Khmer People's National Liberation movement, to oppose Hanoi's occupation of Cambodia, block Pol Pot's return to power, and rebuild a new Cambodia, I returned to the U.S., joined the Johns Hopkins University political science faculty in 1990, when Tith was a professor at SAIS a stone's throw away. Yet we never connected.

A few weeks ago I e-mailed him. We found ourselves on the same page in "this enormous task of defending the Cambodian people and society against all odds," as Tith puts it.

As the saying goes: "It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends," and to borrow King's words, in "times of challenge and controversy."

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.