Letter from a Malaysian

Confession of a Malaysian

There is a child born in this country every 58 seconds.

There is a child drawing it’s first breath while we sit here and hunt, armed with our prejudices and stereotypes, while we take aim at those that profess faiths we do not share, while we run mental check lists on whether someone can be considered as a friend or a foe, sometimes on nothing more than the slant of the eyes or the shade of the skin. We pick our battles according to who the victims are, letting those that are unlike us be taken without a whisper of protest.

We have lost the ability to see real threats, because we have become accustomed to seeing threats in everyone that does not look or think like “us”.

We play into the hands of those that control us, like fools, and call ourselves heroes.

Our greatest threats are these.

We have not secured any form of self sufficiency in food. We forget that food production is not like flipping switches in a factory, mother nature has to play ball, and shortages can bring down governments faster than we can put them into power. There is a shortage now, we just haven’t felt the effects yet.

We have brainwashed ourselves into accepting the paper the government prints, the very government we consider as corrupt to the core, as near permanent stores of value. We blithely ignore this elephant in the room; I doubt if the elephant will afford us the same courtesy.

We have switched places with the politicians, and consider them as masters, and as untouchable. The Road to Serfdom indeed. Witness the furore at any attempt to augment the ranks of the elected representatives from the ranks of the intelligentsia. We deem it correct to rate ideology above ability.

We focus on domestic and sectarian battles, while ignoring the clear threat of a major war or two elsewhere. Please don’t go ‘huh?’ at this statement, gentle reader.

Our greatest threat is our collective ignorance, and our common blindness.

My confession is this, I place little hope in the actions of the majority to safeguard the future of this country, and of it’s children.

“This Malaysian (sic) government — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves……….All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions;….. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency…..It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.”

~adapted from Henry Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”

Malaysian.

http://malaysia-today.net/mtcolumns/letterssurat/33754-confession-of-a-malaysian-

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