It is called free will

This is one photo of my Monday journey to work when for good reason I took a different route at a different time.  It meant joining in with the daily rush hour.  In Bangkok, I discovered that it not only involved the obvious car tarffic but also the people traffic. 

It caused me to make a social comment on my FB page - How much pressure can people take in urban life before hitting breaking point?  This led to my facing my time old dilemma arising out of my experience of here.  Does here in its culture and social thinking remain particular to itself and remain as is, creating the same unwanted results over and over again?   Or simply, like anywhere else, is it open to change for the better for the mass of people? 

Here has strong cultural forces and social structures for maintaining what is in society, creating a status quo that remains firmly in place.  This status quo favours the few over the many, remaining in place in part because strangely enough the masses agree with what may even discriminate against them.  All quite different here but maybe not so different as do people anywhere question and pay the price for needed and good change?     

As I struggle with this central question, I sit with two answers.  My head tells me - it will stay as it is as this is Thailand and no one acts to change what is.  Then my heart tells me - it has to change as people are people and we are all human beings, striving for the better. 

What I come to realise is that on this question I choose the answer that I need to choose so as to be true to myself.  As a western, Christian thinker and believer, I hold that change will occur even here as we are all human caught up in the ultimate human quest for the better.  To deny this is to deny a central part of what I believe as any people are not simply determined by any one particular culture or social structure.  Culture is a powerful force.  Any culture is powerful in one's life but no one culture, no matter how rich, has all the truth.  Rather cultures speak to each other.  Change does not come easily for anyone but it does come eventually.  A guiding principle I have learnt in dealing with organizations to which I belong is that you either plan change or suffer change. 

Then I took a risk on my pressing question, giving the last word to my daily reading from the meditations of Oscar Romero.  What did I find? 
"Redemption has been carried out on the cross. ... It is not conformity because conformity is not joy.  Conformity is a pessimistic person, a determinisitc person that believes that everything is imposed on him from above and that he cannot take any action.  This is a false concept of the will of God."