In any family there are different degrees of identity, and stakeholding. Some people feel an inescapable obligation to participate in family rituals, and others may hole up in their bedrooms waiting for all the noise to die down.
I write this note simply to contribute a view. I rarely provide views with the expectation that other people will act upon them - that is the intention of politicians. The provision of individual points of view is important to any communal thought process. So as far as we are one great nation of different people, I provide my view simply as a member of the family that hasn't left the home, nor died, nor been expelled. Perhaps one day, I will not have the chance to write from this point of view. In my unpaid time, I am much more conservative in my social interactions, and will at most, for now, as I have in the past, attempt to be a public intellectual, that is, a public wanker.
There are various media for the provision of views about our great nation, of course - voting is the commonest. I do not partake in that process - and just to make sure that history notes my decision, I registered to vote before the 2008 Malaysia election, and then actively avoided the polls. I have never voted in Malaysia, though I may in the future. I willingly provide my absence, with full knowledge that my vote may be stolen without my explicit consent, as I am aware that is a natural phenomenon of our environment. I used to think that it would be fun to try and become prime minister - and I have thought about how the likeliest way to do that includes conversion to Islam because that's how local politics are wired. (I am religiously agnostic, whereas my NRIC says I am Christian because the people who decide what can (or cannot) go on an NRIC do not properly understand what a religion is. If I had to answer about my religion, I would probably answer something technical, like "math.") And then 1998 happened, and then I realised that I cared less about investing in changing my environment, than in learning how to live undisturbed within it. I was fourteen.
There's nothing really wrong with Malaysia from my point of view - I've lived in the USA for nearly five years, and I didn't find it worth staying a little longer there even if I could. I'm in Malaysia because I'm lazy - I have papers here. That's the defining characteristic of my presence in this country. I have designed my desires to be fruitful and content about the minimum wage that Malaysia guarantees, knowing that economic collapse may render such policies useless. As they say, only the paranoid survive, and for some of us, the best bet on survival is not to bet on the persistence of any infrastructure besides the ongoing state of our own flesh. I believe mental events are events encased in flesh, and I expect that age and decay or violations of my body will result in a changed state of mind. It is expected. When our minds change, we no longer survive - someone else has taken over. This is to say, I never expect to survive till tomorrow.
Let's consider what motivates different actors, to assume different roles in a family. On this earth, some of us love our families. Some of us love our hobbies. Some of us love our friends. Some of us love our colleagues. Some of us love human beings. Some of us love all animals. Some of us love all living things. None of these loves defines us as citizens of our country - none of these are the central component of our social contract. I love none of these things. I have no great love for any specific activity. I have no special love for food or drink, or friends, and I actively pursue an absence of attachment to family, clubs, and nationstates. If I had to think about why I'm still alive, I would say it's because I'm curious to find out what happens - I expect absolutely nothing to happen if I kill myself, so that's quite a boring proposition. So I stay alive to watch. In order to stay alive, I have to make a living, so I engage in commerce (though I am professionally barred from speaking about my work to media outlets). I find that the humans I am closest to are my lovers, and that while I regard them as ordinarily as I do anyone else, at least we know each other better because of our times spent together.
I could go on about the idiosyncrasies of my experience. I could tell you about how I regard people as the superset of machines and biological organisms. I could tell you about how my notion of civilisational progress has no dependency on the human genome. I could talk about how I was once at the same Starbucks as a notorious chap who was not yet the prime minister - and how I thought about killing him, but didn't think it would be worth the risk (if there were no consequences, I would have, but I didn't exactly want to live in hiding for the rest of my life), since the security detail was also in plain sight. Ah, social contracts, the things that make us agree to live in contenance with one another! Nevertheless, sometimes you find that these things matter less, and that putting people in cement barrels is the order of the day. But that is enough for now.
For the purpose of sharing with you this view, my fellow Malaysians (if you will accept me as such (you have to, I'm afraid, unless and until you revoke my citizenship)), I have elaborated a little bit about whom I am and how I interact with the world. Now it would be correct for you to understand that I am part of a tiny minority, of politically agnostic free-loaders, who are content with subservience to racial inequality, kleptocratic governance, and its resulting gross socio-economic inefficiencies at every level of the organisation. Those of us with this degree of psychical independence regardless of economic status, are few and far between. It would make no sense for political parties to court us. We hardly even speak the same language as the masses huddling in their local UMNO cell groups. Do we? (It could be construed that we think similarly, even if we do not verbalise our thoughts in the same language. Maybe that's a thesis for another day.)
Why then do we bother to speak?
Simply, I think, in these times of soapboxing, to remind everyone that we have a soapbox too. That there are others, numerous, and varied in kind, who do not even bother to remind others that they exist. We are the silent minorities. There are so many.
But if you're a politician, you have no choice but to reflect upon views such as these, and wonder what you're missing. All is well as long as you can control your environment. Thank you for acknowledging our views. These I humbly submit for consumption by the masses, even though in other aspects of my life I may not act with so much humility.
No comments :
Post a Comment