Patiwat Panurach

If there is one single intellectual - aesthetical discussion that I truely enjoy in my life, it was at my first encounter with my neior from the same Economics program, Patiwat Panurach. He was working as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. The discussion started around 6:30pm and ended around 2:00am because it's too late and I've to get home. The meeting was quite accidental in a sense that I was working on network economics and were going out to interview different company.

By chance, BCG has assigned Patiwat to come to the interview. He was studying at the very same program I am studying in Thammasat university. He was the 2nd class of my program while I am the 7th class. He has an incredible track record in a sense that he went straight to BCG right after graduate, making tons of money compare to other from the same program. He is a legend in our B.E. program. I've heard about him briefly and wasn't really care much. But the meeting with him yield some interesting impact to my life. We've discussed the issue of Network economics for just an hour then moved to the more interesting subjects.

First, it was that how economics become too theoretical and no longer useful at a higher level of education. He said economics didn't have the predictibility as in sciences and yet it tried very hard to become too much of precise sciences. He've turned to the more practical issue of management consulting and, of course, business administration. It was a debate because I'm very much, at that time, in the opinion that advanced economics is very useful even theoretically. He said something like the things I will ever use in life about economics is basic macro and microeconomics.

Beyond that yield very little insights to the real world. I think he was a bit too extreme although now I'm forming a very similar opinion as I progress into a highly complicated formalized (mathematicized) economics. He also brought my interest back into the field of free market. I was turning more and more into socialist idea because of the fact that market mechanism didn't seem to work very well. But he tried to answer that by it is the distortion in the free market that caused the problem. He argue beautifully how the whole government current sudsidization of education is what draging real Thai education and prevent the poors from school.

Of course, I could never be as pro free market as he does, but I've become very much try to approach free market incrementally and knowing the impossibility of reaching that point with its implications. I was still a defender of welfare state, although my trip to Europe in 2002 for studying at Lund truely wiped out most of my admiration of the welfare state idea. I could see how the idea of social justice, although very good in theory, become impossible to deal with properly in practice causing the lost of liberty of individuals and distort the market systems, especially on economic incentive of entrepreneurship and innovation.Again, I'm approaching his thought as I grow.

We've also discussed about social sciences in general and how it tried very hard to become a sciences without truely accept its impossibility of being logical positivism. Then, the long debate of the methodology and epistimology of economics and social sciences in general followed. I was very engaged as it is the first time ever I've founded a person that care passionately about what I'm interested in, especially the validity of the foundation of modern neoclassical economics. We've talked against the another extreme that treat social sciences as too holistic without accept the limitation of holistic approach which would lead them to know where, he accused Capra as being a second rate physicists who created a new age tradition among social scientist and academicians.

Then, we talked about the nature of business strategy a bit, how all activities in the business systems, at that time applied to my various student projects, should be carefully thought of and execute in order to ensure the strategic fit. The importance of being very precise in the goal and actionable thinking truely openned my eyes to the whole new field of strategy as I could see that what I had done were pretty much based on trail and error and never truely have strategic fit and measurable results. He helped cheer me up that what I was doing was very important but I must do it with full attention and with well-thought through strategy.

It was around 00:00 at that point, we drove to find some food while in the car he expressed his interest in the more human side of things, like how he was so impressed with the beauty of Kyoto during one of his consulting engagement. The last part of that conversation was at a resturant around 11 O' Clock, we've discussed about how symbolic poetry and depth psychology are critically interesting in our lives. We've discussed on Blake, his songs of innocence and of experience and his marriage of heaven and hell. How Blake is very much like modern comtemporary artist, how Blake is so much into the archetype of liberty and express the humanistic philosophy so powerfully through the symbols of his images and poetry in the 19th century! It strikes us how Blake could express the important role of imagination and to realize one's own imagination in the real world.

Then we progressed to John Keat and how romantic and emotionally charged his poetry was. There were much more things we've discussed in those great hours. I was very impressed with his personality and actually was very happy to find someone that I could talk to about most areas of my interests. After that we met many times and keep contact through emails. I've integrated many quality of his personality and thoughts, I've turned into a person that concerns very much with strategy, impact-oriented activities, practical, radical enough to take side in order to make possible the change.

His notes and books truely revolutionized how I think and work with respect to managing projects and logical thinking. I has become very much structured in all my thoughts, approaching things vey logically with respect to being impactful and useful. In consultancy buzz, I've integrated MECE into the way I approach almost everything, except love and my emotional sides. He practically become my virtual mentor that transformed me into a person who is starting to have an ability to translate thinking into action and vice versa. Also I've become very radical in arguing for what I believe and put effectiveness and efficiency into all activities I do. I've invoked the demon mephistopheles to operate systematically in my consciousness.

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