Matt Owens Rees

From years of observation—and conversations with fellow anthropologists steeped in Thai society—I’ve come to a curious conclusion: most Thais tend to think and act just one step ahead. Not two. Not three. Just one.

That’s not to say strategic thinking is absent. I’m sure there are Thai chess players who can plan a dozen moves ahead, anticipating every gambit and counter. But in everyday life, from bureaucracy to business to neighbourly interactions, the dominant pattern is short-term, reactive decision-making.

Interestingly, this mirrors a concept from mathematics known as a Markov Chain. It was formalised by Russian mathematician Andrey Markov (not Audrey, despite what autocorrect might suggest), and later popularised in practical applications by Harvard economist Wassily Leontief.

The idea is simple but powerful: in a Markov Chain, each decision or event depends only on the one that came immediately before it. Not the whole history. Just the last step.

Leontief illustrated this with a frog on a pond. Picture it: the frog sits on a lily pad, surveying its options. It jumps to the next pad based on where it is now—not where it started, or where it eventually wants to go. Once it lands, it reassesses and jumps again. Each choice is made in isolation, one leap at a time.

This is how Google ranks websites. It’s how businesses model customer loyalty. It’s even used to predict the spread of diseases like HIV and AIDS. But in Thailand, it’s not just a mathematical model—it’s a cultural rhythm.

You see it in how problems are solved: one issue addressed, then the next, often without a broader plan. You see it in conversations, where context is fluid and decisions are made in the moment. You see it in government policy, where long-term consequences are rarely part of the initial calculus.

If you’re mathematically inclined, you can model this behaviour with probability matrices and state vectors. But for most readers, the frog-on-a-lily-pad analogy is enough. It captures the essence: decisions made in sequence, each one shaped only by the last.

And that, I believe, is a key to understanding Thai society—not as irrational or simplistic, but as operating within a different logic. One that values harmony, face, and immediate context over long-term abstraction.