From the Floating Lotus to Groot’s Wisdom
Engaging Contemporary Ecological Challenges with Southeast Asian Cultures
Abstract
The late ASEAN Secretary General, Surin Pitsuwan, had a yet to be realized dream of turning ASEAN from a relatively successful regional organization into a community. Given the heightened threats to human security coming from ecological problems, it is important to ponder the ways in which cultural treasures in Southeast Asia could help Southeast Asians, young and old, face these ecological threats as a community. To pursue this thesis, this paper is organized in five steps. First, it identifies the ecological threats in Southeast Asia in the forms of traditional elements, earth/soil, wind, fire, and water. Second, it examines the traditional epistemic grounds for knowledge and practices in dealing with nature. Third, it uses the ancient story of a wounded warrior discovering the Malay martial art of Silat to suggest solutions to these threats. Fourth, it reviews two successful cases of protecting nature in Southeast Asia, “yellow trees” in Thailand and “green mosques” in Indonesia. Finally, it turns to a successful Marvel movie for inspiration on how to achieve a new self-understanding to protect and foster human (and non-human) community.
References
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I understand that there are at least two theories of fundamental elements constituting the earth: Chinese and Indian. In Chinese Wuxia literature, there are five elements (五行) that serve as the foundation of the earth. They are: earth, water, wood, fire, and gold. On the other hand, Buddhism, influenced by Indian philosophy, proposes that there are four fundamental elements comprising a human body. They are earth (solid element in the body: skin or eyes), water (liquid element in the body: blood, sweat and tears), wind (body gases), and fire (body temperature, burning energy).
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Some discussion in this part is drawn from my “Breathing the Others, Seeing the Lives: A Reflection on Twenty-First Century Nonviolence,” in Joseph Camilleri and Deborah Guess (eds), Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace: Navigating the Great Transition (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 229–248.
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Ibid., 6–8 [IS THIS RIGHT?]
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Vin Diesel, the gravelly voiced American actor who vocalizes Groot’s three words, had fun doing this in so many languages.
