One should not be surprised when one realised that there is such a thing as a third-rate mind and, of course, it is wonderful to observe how a third-rate mind works.
We have a eminent person or rather a person assuming a prominent position formerly and now thinks that he is of such a stature to pronounce on the way forward for the nation in a particular direction in a manner that is healthy and enlightening.
But we have been dismayed.
He quoted the Constitution saying that this is the official national entity - say, the hibiscus which incidentally is supposed to be our national flower, and that some pacific island love song which became popular in a neighbouring country is now the tune of our national anthem - then the interpretation, according to this individual, is that, for the sake of national unity, all houses should be planting only the hibiscus and playing only this pacific island love song.
All languages are vernacular and the only official one that I know is the official language of the world is called esperanto which is an artificially invented one, and which nobody likes.
To pick out one and say is the official language is fine - but it does not say it is the only one. We have this problem with the idea of the one religion, and the world has not stopped fighting over which one is the only one yet.
If we really want to foster unity, we should be talking about tolerance - the ability to accept the many and see all of them as one, as of the one, as of the spectrum of the original one.
Unity is about belonging, about feeling being at home or at one together with one another.
The feeling of unity over food is the variety we all share and we do not really care about the origin of the original recipe. Each of us will have our own dietary requirements, and there is really nothing wrong about being choosy over food. As one man's meat is another man's poison, there is freedom of choice, and freedom to put whatever we wish or wish not into our own mouth and our soul and our being.
Unity is not the power of one. That the characteristics of one group should predominate the whole is not unity. We have already seen how vehemently the group has defended the use of its language by "others" which is supposedly not in accord with how the language has been used in the way they imagine they have been using that language. It is therefore incredulous that there is this simultaneous justification that the language should be further abused whose mother tongue it is not supposed to be.
It is this incongruity in our thinking in many of the major aspects of our national life that is creating this Great National Dissatisfaction that is demanding that the whole situation should now really change for the better.
While the ordinary people are happily living together to the extent of centuries of social intercourse, intermarriages, and free exchange of ideas and fun, it is policy that is trying to steer the ship onto a course that is not in sync with the national undercurrent.
Man (and woman) will die but the nation shall live and become what it naturally is. In the meantime, let us be happy victims, with a voice.
8 comments:
Happy victims, Ethorists? Unlikely, unless we pretend to be victimized but in truth we relish it.
I would rather say, many Malaysians have been quiet and unwilling victims, having to abandon some pride as a human in the face of the bigotry and prejudices, which alway work both ways, as find a solution to the barriers by Ali Baba, or just do what is possible under the discriminative circumstances.
One would think that the PM and his team would have some cowsense in truly getting national reconciliation in the way, and put out some major fires such as Taib Mohd so as to calm the anger in the populace. However, they are doing the total reverse, which is fueling nationalistic and social anger towards the establishment. How these people get into a position of power, without the ability to sense the prevailing wind reflects that we are indeed a fascist state and really gearing into one.
The lack of understanding or unwillingly to understand how our economy truly works is another prime example of a government that is geared towards gathering riches for themselves than trying to help the populace. GST is a great idea, but a mechanism that will result in the poor getting banged up, and the rich getting richer, and those in the fringes of small to medium businesses getting hurt in the implementation. Just look around you, how many cash registers are there that truly have journals for audits, how many have cash reigsters alone, or any paper transaction that will be needed for a robust transactional record for GST to be implemented. There will be many cheats, and more kopi money for the auditors.
However you read it, his basic message is that all not of his type are still to be considered as immigrants even if they are born here, and therefore on that basis they should be grateful to people like him who happen to be in a minority party holding the reins of federal functions.
He has however not explained how people of other types but also born in the same country as him should be treated differently.
In fact, the same Constitution makes no less equivalent provision for peoples of other types to live and do in full accordance with their own cultures and practices. That paper is silent on any need that they adopt what is deemed 'official'.
He has also chosen to remain silent on those of his own type, majority by fact, who have not supported his party in the recent elections. Why was the same label of ingratitude not pinned on them? Is it because they have already been labelled greedy? And if it is because they are of his own type that he has said nothing on them, then he has just practiced racialism.
Since he knew very well his unfounded articulation would cause tension and division, that's racism as well.
So where is the basis for anyone to be grateful to his type, for that matter to be required to subscribe to policies underlying his assertions which would require them to collectively practice what is deemed "official"?
As someone presumably trained to deliver judgements, he would have seen the big hole in his own assertions. Yet he went ahead and said his stand.
Therefore either he did it with malevolent intent, or he was so incompetent that after listening to him, all those who had stood before his bench before cannot be blamed from now on for running to review whether there were other holes in argument in the judgements he had delivered when he was wearing a wig.
In either case, he did his peers poor justice, a word he himself should have been eminently acquainted with, having retired from the same public office which is supposed to defend that ideal above everything else, including race.
But he certainly did the citizens a good service in revealing the dark subterranean nature of the party under whose banner he was allowed to speak out unchallenged.
That unfortunately is the same party now letting loose its other dogs of war. AFTER one had ended.
Let all remember him for the rest of his life as a racist trying to rake racism using shallow and self-punctured arguments, and then cowardly coming out after to try some shifty damage control. He fooled no one. Except possibly himself.
Truly, the crux of it all, is that they don't care, never have cared, and never will care towards building a legacy for Malaysians to be proud of. Does he ever think of the shame that he will carry when he meets his dad? But then again, these people probably have no soul to start off with.
Only the extremely insecure and competency-challenged would try to enforce assimilation portrayed as unity integration.
It remains assimilation insofar the characteristics of one group are made officially predominant over all others.
That is cultural dictatorship in intent which will be particularly repulsive to all who can now see how repugnant it is when the official mantle has been hijacked by people such as the mentioned.
As another instance, vernacular education has also been debated decisively. That there are others still hankering to abolish it must mean they have not read the fine points debated to inevitable conclusion, or they have chosen to ignore them for reason they cannot themselves defend against those conclusions, or for reason they don't want to do so because they have other unspoken agendas on their plate. Therefore they are just being irrational and unreasonable.
Therefore, one can safely ask how can all, including their types, who live and work in a polyglot multiracial society ever trust that rational national policies can emanate from irrational racial minds?
So that without rational and plural policies, how can unity be achieved under the wings of such an administration whose politicians and their ilk are only bent on mono-racial assimilation of a multiracial population for purpose of securing future voter support so that they can be returned to encompass all economic rights that can be executed by federal function?
Let us however be charitable here and allow them that one latitude. One can next ask where are the reality and standard?
The national schools and public universities are mostly in one language; even the staff and canteens are mostly in one menu. That's half a million staff of a private-sector funded public sector with a singularly perturbing profile unbecoming of national unity of different components. Was there any integration? Or was it just natural assimilation by dint of race?
Next, the students of different groups in those place cohere by themselves. They don't uniformly talk in one common language. Some may rojak everything together. Except for a few who know, most are also given distorted views about their academic standards, what more real history.
So if there is already group and academic dissonance under official auspices, what talking them apparatchiks that vernacular schools cause national disunity, especially when those schools are by fact miniscule compared to the number of national schools funded through taxes also paid by the workhorse parents who send their charges to vernacular schools which are provided for under the same Constitution?
Since many parents of students of the same group as the apparatchiks have obviously not voted for the party, are they also one of the causes of national disunity?
This notion of official=national=one race=one political party is CRAP!
And all know it. Including its proponents. So they are (a) lying, (b) cheating, (c) distorting, (d) stealing, (e) all of the above.
Answer: (e)
Walla, you and I know that the lack of unity in our country happened after the UMNO right wings came out of the woodworks. Its propaganda was absorbed by the simple and poor people as handouts and advantages are piled upon them together with religious indoctrination about infidels and the unholy. The Tunku should have seen it coming after the reception his wife got from his people. Our problem was the constitution that some frag from Pakistan thought was proper to have a certain religion made as the official religion even though every where else the constitution indicated the country was supposed to be secular. Top that up with the speciality accorded, the rest of the non believers were doomed from the start. As you can see, the Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Groebbels of Malaysia have arrived.
If we are tolerant of one another despite differences in worldviews, abilities, cultures and language, then we achieve integration as prelude to achieving unity. After all, we are a plural society so let the melting pot brew a happy meal for all.
Which country has its citizens of all races eating italian spaghetti spiced with sambal belacan? (perut rumbles). Yet on the flip side, which country has a hotel management forced to delimit service lift users to a particular faith otherwise its restaurant will not get a particular certificate?
Being a Malaysian is not about adopting Malay characteristics in deference to the term 'official'. One can be ceremonial and symbolic about it but the limits of life must be determined by life itself.
The only reason why we have fallen behind other countries which have caught up with us is because we turned inwards to some parochial and pathological hung-up while they embraced life as it should be lived - improvise, innovate and intuit for inspiration.
After all, didn't He make us all as centres without circumferences? So what the heck is all this hand-wringing and bogeymen punching?
If one group, for instance, are successful and high achievers, it's because they work hard and smart, save for the future and invest in education that is relevant for growth and development. In their numbers are also many who have failed and fallen by the wayside and they fell for exactly the same reason of not putting priorities of success factors. Furthermore, none of the hardworking ones received any national support in the first place; in fact many were deliberately race-profiled for malignant exclusion. So why are they blamed and then made bogeymen? Unlike policymakers of a certain ilk, did they siphon, steal and suppress?
Human success factors reside in the same humancosm across this globe. And the only way to identify and track success versus failure in any vocation in life is to have a global mindset. Not one predicated on playing some zero-sum game of less for you will mean more for me because i was unfortunate to be born in some group in some backwaters that had to start by selling banana fritters. How about those selling crullers to pay their vernacular school fees?
The enemy of the state is not inside this country. It is the challenges ahead caused by years of blinkered racist policies practiced by greedy opportunists and power-brokers. It would have been a comedy if it is not such a tragedy that they are the ones now calling the shots labeling their own as greedy.
Even if one has no sentimental reason to foster harmony and unity, there are practical reasons. If peoples are divided by official racism, how can they buy and sell with one another to such an extent markets can grow naturally to keep costs and inflation down?
One cannot expect people to sit idly by and just take it when they are lambasted without fact and cause. They will react, and when they do, the perps will win from saying, "see i told you so". It is a vicious cycle that starts with victimizing one group which then leads to their reaction that in turn generates adverse reactions from the other group, especially when the latter have been made servile mentally and economically to the perps.
There is a rich world of ideas and insights out there.
Unfortunately, ninety percent can't read it, thirty percent have left, and forty percent don't give a hoot from their standard blinkered practice of not caring about anything except some fizzy-fuzzy thing about ethnocentric nationalism.
When that sums up to sixty percent more than possible, what harapan is left, no? Ok, done:
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And thanks for your comments, James.
My comments here in memory of the two dozen so-called immigrants by official definition who were hung defending the country by the japanese imperial army during the occupation. Amongst others.
Those who decant from the Masjid Jamek LRT station and turn left will see a building at the corner.
That's where they gave their lives. No memorial, no recognition. Just expendables, yes?
And some these days are still dismayed about committee racial compositions proposed for their approvals.
WTF (that's way-to-forward)
;(
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