Part two “Deep Canyon and Loose Soil"

As the nation witness the March 8th political tsunami in merriment or otherwise, I was far removed from either. While the maturation of Malaysian political climate manages to carve a gratifying smile on my face, it cannot wipe the frown of deep anxiety from my eyebrow; for I take no side in this mêlée.

The maturing of our political climate brings about good tidings, as the period following the tsunami exposes rot and decay that has long plague our country deep into its very foundation. But two years on in the Hulu Selangor by-election 2010, it is evident that our politics is still as ‘pariah’ as ever. Alcohol inclination, fake degrees and money politics couched in legal terminologies eclipsing real and productive policy debate, as if candidates are contesting to win ‘Malaysia parliamentary idol’ and moral worthiness determines the kudos. But as every scholar of law knows all too well, that the moral worthiness of our leaders is nothing but hollow moot, because absolute power corrupts absolutely, therefore a system that places no faith in the personalities of the wielders of power, be they honourable or otherwise is the only system that can endure. Maybe the time is ripe for us to depersonalise politics. But this is besides the point, I have other pressing concerns.

The reason for my anxiety however, even as my peers cheered to the day they never thought they would live to see, is because despite the tsunami, we have come no closer to solidifying the grounds in which our nation building project must rests on. We have made great strides in building our civilisation, but survey the landscape, the chasm remains, deep and irreconcilable as ever. We have built civilisations on loose soil.

The problems that plagued our governance will continue to haunt the very essence of this land as the answer to our problem is to incorporate the separate civilisations built on isolated plateaus into a vast network where separate cultures could intermingle and assimilate into a greater, more diverse whole. We need to build bridges instead.

And as stated in the preceding chapter, the two pillars for our bridge had already been ascertained:- A new collective national consciousness built on infusing diversity; and a legal structure founded upon the tenets of preserving it. But building bridges perched high above the chasms on loose soil spells disaster. First, the soil must be solidified. To achieve this end, we need to descent into the forbidden catacombs and bring to light legacy of our civilisation deemed too delicate for public dialogue. We must muster the courage to self reflect and self critique to come to terms with our flaws.

But a nationwide self evaluation effort is not only intellectually demanding, but the obstacles are aplenty, as the “we” today is a fragmented concept, and self reflection done in sectarian approach drawn along racial and religious lines will further the chasm between the many “us” in existence. It cannot be denied that this chasm has its root as a by product of western imperialist’s effort at asserting colonial ambitions, but it doesn’t change the fact that this chasm is now a reality, in fact more exaggerated and more destructive than ever; and I am a product of this chasm. Born, bred and fully adapted to its vicious ecology.

But subconsciously, ‘we’ do not want this bridge to be built because its construction signals the breaking down of the bubble of our existence, our comfort zone, our bastion of identity. Our yearning for the safety of our herd will further tear us apart, keeping our heads low in grazing for survival, ignoring the signs of storm brewing in the horizon. In an asymmetrically divided society, the choices left for minorities will be emancipation or forceful assimilation.

On the flip side, safety in numbers does provide a sense of security, albeit a false one, because the winds of change is imminent, and it brings with it the seeds of diversity that has taken root in continents far away, seeds that had weathered the vicissitudes of competition and survived. They will overwhelm our sheltered ecosystem that had rejected the competition of diversity. In our quest for purity of the isolate herds, we have essentially removed our edge of competitiveness.

But why have we become so blind, so complacent, so arrogant? We have our leaders to thank for this – the alpha males of the various packs. These creatures are not in want of intelligence, in fact, they are the first to sniff the breeze of change before we even rear our heads from grazing for survival. But they are determined to keep the plateau separated by the chasms because they have built an intricate social hierarchy based on the current ecology, and change threatens this balance in which their entire existence relies upon.

They have resorted to exaggerating our differences in maintaining the status quo. They have conveniently borrowed the overly simplistic social stratum of the Victorian colonial powers, to neatly divide us into the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, and the ‘lain-lains’. They nourish this division by polluting our airscape with ‘pariah’ slogans arousing primordial sentiments of fear and anger; corrupting our consciousness with primeval concepts like racial superiority/ownership, religious pre-eminence and absolute moral authority. Even fundamental concepts of a modern democratic state like the Social Contract Theory had been hijacked and vulgarised to suit these primitive models.

This overplayed tune has worked well for most part of our modern history as the sense of belonging to a macro socio-religious groupings provided an easy way out for our soul searching endeavours and provided a ready template of answers for differences innate in us that we find so difficult, or unwilling to comprehend. But such sentiments are doing us harm, and it has to stop.

It is of course not too late, but the construction must start now. Individuals in various herds are beginning to sense the impending danger, and have raised their heads above the comfortable mundane. They have understood that embracing diversity breeds competitiveness and only a healthy ecology can weather the coming storm.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change”