LOCALISM IN THAILAND, OR WHY THERE IS NO NEED TO PROTECT TRADITION

Gill Elena V., Krapchunov Daniil E.

The article examines traditionalism as a phenomenon of modern culture in the context of ontological incompleteness of the human being. Ontological incompleteness acts as a methodological tool used to describe a human being as ontologically disclosed structure. Against the background of the structure of man as a being open to the being and the world, traditionalism appears as an unproductive mechanism of closure within the boundaries of identity. In the modern world, there is a problem of identity crisis associated with globalization and the emergence of a dynamic identity. The crisis of human self-determination is accompanied by intensification of lack and causes changes in the structure of personality and identity, in strengthening the virtual vector of openness to the world and multiplying the types of ontic being. Traditionalism is the way of virtual disclosure, caused by the desire for rootedness, for a return to a protected habitat, which previously, in the agrarian era, was provided by tradition and religion. Using the example of localism as Thai ideology, the authors show how traditionalism uses the symbiosis of religious and national as a platform to justify the need to return the forms of the historical past, based on a single country and culture. Grounded on the field research in Thailand and other countries of Southeast Asia and India and the analysis of their results with the concept of ontological incompleteness, the article presents traditionalism as a manipulative conservative ideology that replaces the ontological with the ontic, as a reduction of reality and virtualization of tradition. The authors make conclusion about the destructiveness of traditionalism, the danger of its spread and its contradiction to the fundamental ontological openness of the human being.

Keywords:tradition, Buddhism, Thailand, ontological incompleteness, religion, traditionalism, spiritual practice