The Generosity of Locals

In high-income economies, the locals are generous in welcoming immigrants because they feel they have a lot to share as well as the immigrants will bring in new opportunities to trade things and ideas.

In very traditional communities, especially ones that have established themselves for centuries, they must have, after all those years, found their own perfect little worlds in their own perfect micro equilibrium economically and socially. If surrounding resources are plentiful and they are all willing to work hard, their communities will have grown. If not, their communities will be modest but nonetheless thriving.

By being willing to accept perfect strangers and new ideas, the locals must be in want of a new world which they must have imagined would be better. Certainly, there would be a core of elite who would be in control of the local resources and situation traditionally. Locals who accept new ideas must be those who are in want of establishing their own little niches in their respective local communities. From a stable and probably stagnant situation, a new and more dynamic situation will be created with the new influx and hence an unstable (not necessarily destablishing) situation. It is this disequilibrium which creates the new forces for change, as the immigrants and the hungry locals work together to do this that no one has ever done before.

Who is a local and who is a foreigner is a story that can only be told properly after a long evolution as time will somehow reduce the major differences and reduce everyone to the same basic features. In the immediate term, there is plenty of scope for discrimination and the ones who are likely to suffer are those who probably have very little power to fight that discrimination - the young and old offsprings of inter-racial marriages. These sufferers are a product of the locals and the immigrants and it is a shame that everybody has to suffer as a consequent of narrow mindedness. These are the silent minorities whom the extreme left and extreme right of the spectrum of colours will equally condemn as the non-pure. It is quite interesting to realise that, once discrimination rears its ugly head, it is unlikely that the capacity to discriminate will be discrete - it is likely to be part of the discriminator's indiscriminate self.

Hitler's discrimination against the migrants was that they were rich in the eyes of the local poor because of the mismanagement of the local economy (as a result of war) and claiming that the superior locals must regain their rightful place in their own fatherland, he set about obliterating the rich migrants. His discrimination policy suffered the usual problems of trying to make discrimination - it is easily to identify total immigrants, but what do you do with children whom one of their parents is a local as well as immigrants who have previously  being recognised by the state for gallant service to that state. When his schemes eventually failed, as he became convinced himself to have all the solutions to all the problems, he started blaming his inner circle whom he used to trust. His final madness was when he felt so despondent with his own people that he felt that they should all be put to death because he considered them to be useless (presumably to his madness).

A nation of everybody must be a nation of people with generosity in their hearts to accept people and their ways which are not similar to their own. Malaysia has prospered because of the generosity of the Malay people (and the orang asli) as well as the generosity of the natives of Sabah and Sarawak. Their willingness to accept foreigners and make them welcome and feel at home is a major asset of theirs whom Chinese and Indians and others could well learn for their own good. Of course, because of the great differences in background and circumstances, their different worldviews produce different economic results. The most logical conclusion must be the infusion of the positive elements of all cultures that will bring out the best of the communities that have now decided to live together in perfect harmony. It is perfectly natural as well to set about identify one's own strengths, but it must immediately be accompanied by the identification of the strengths of others as well and learn from them that the world will become a better place than the circumstance we find ourselves in.

If we look at ourselves in the perspective of the long history of the world, we are nothing but the present generation, each of us regardless of our background and profile. I think each generation should make its own decision of the life they wish to live and they should live a life that is different from the parents'. In this respect, the constant change of leaders as their generational days in the sun is over is good and necessary. The old leaders, especially those who have failed in imposing their mad ideas on us before, should gracefully retire from public life (i.e., absent from the media) and let the young leaders brew their new concoctions of ideas, however wrong they may be (and who knows). We have repeatedly seen this in history and the world today is no worse than the world yesterday (whatever people may complain).

The unfairness of discrimination is that as generations change and as each newer generation becomes more similar to each other especially within a community, the lack of social and economic and political mobility merely creates a problem for the future when a outlet is necessary to release the tension of discrimination. Malaysia has started on a good footing but when on to a wrong second foot. Hopefully, the third foot will be placed plainly and squarely on the same soil when we all in Malaysia eat and excrete.