MAY 22 — This is the world we live in,

And these are the hands we're given,

Use them and let's start trying,

To make it a place worth living in -- Land of confusion, Genesis (rock band, not gospel — got to be careful these days in Malaysia)

At the end of the line, the question to trouble you — the average Malaysian — other than your own mortality is what you leave your children with when you are no more with the living. You fear for them, as parents who’ve raised them would naturally feel. You intend to protect them indefinitely.

Consider further, what you leave them with is tied heavily with where you leave them and what you leave them to. Comes to mind the old idiom about bringing a bag of coal to Newcastle, in today’s parlance for a Malaysian audience probably means bringing a backpack stuffed with electronics to Jalan Pasar in Kuala Lumpur’s Pudu. It won’t sell.

From your perspective, what they get from you, values, beliefs, a slice of your estate and an education, in your estimation should set them on a path of better.

However, how they’ll fare in the long run weighs only as much as how they cope with rapid globalisation and disappearing borders. You can leave them things and thoughts, but be mindful they will be inhabitants in a massively different reality — Princess Leia-type holograms and flying cars notwithstanding.  

Humanity is crashing into us daily, and finding a place in a changing landscape requires your children to be attuned to the norms of the world as it is, not as what our local leaders vocally define it to be.

There’s a genuine foreboding that a generation of Malaysians may live out their personal journeys disconnected from the larger world. That is the greater danger.

Which is why it is time to rubbish the claim that stability for our country is in defending engineered race equilibriums — which in truth are only perceived benefits from forced race equilibriums. For instance in Peninsula-speak, Malay high court judges, Chinese transport ministers, Indian scrap metal dealers or on another level, Iban representatives spread out to enough parties within the ruling coalition to dissipate the risk of them pursuing state leadership, are seen as critical in maintaining our national balance.

Fact is, as citizens of a nation of 30 million in a planet of seven billion, Malaysia is vulnerable when it upholds formulaic solutions to nation-building and the well-being of its people, because the external forces aided by technology is overwhelming.

So as parents, you have to ask yourself — are you leaving your children to the world or just Malaysia. Choose wisely, because the choice must be present in all your decisions thereafter. Irrespective of cultural baggage, religious proscription and historical limitations, bolder decisions are set to determine your children’s fate.

The unknown is the enemy

This is the growing zeal locally.

Those in power asking Malaysians to decide on things based on what they’ve always known, because that conservatism they have adopted so far has not capsized this ship and its content. To them there is absolutely nothing to want the young to champion mono-ethnic world views, it is when they don’t things go awry. 

It is sane to fear the increasing eclectic diversity mushrooming all over — from Anime lovers to Full Moon party organisers, the more is unknown it is imperative to avoid. It is highly encouraged to respect all longstanding feudal constructs even if they are rarely solidified with philosophical underpinning and bent on rejecting intellectualism — all dato’s are created equal, even if some are more equal than others.

Let’s sidestep the prime minister’s admonishment of human rights, an assessment of that would bounce too widely and wildly. Turn instead the attention to the man with the bow and arrow in Serdang. It has limited dimensions, but powerful dissonance.

An unnamed soldier casually and without misgivings nailed twice a Rottweiler in the middle of the capital’s suburb last week. He was according to him, and I do not doubt his sincerity, trying to protect his children. While fencing and a gate may preclude the canine entering his compound, a stray attack dog to this man presumably raised on the side where “that animal” is uncommon would be petrifying. I grew up seeing young boys chucking stones at dogs trapped in home compounds, and fleeing like they were being chased by sprinting zombies when chancing upon a pack of resting strays on the same street.

Let’s not kid ourselves. In this country, Muslims are generally fearful of dogs, it is an anomaly that does not repeat itself in other parts of the globe primarily populated with Muslims, say Pakistan or Egypt. While the dog is a not a celebrated animal in Islam, the disdain and extent of abuse many Malaysian Muslims are willing to direct at these animals appears alarming.

Why, would be a challenge for social scientists to decipher, but it is so.

More relevant, the behaviour exhibited is not in sync with how people worldwide see humane behaviour towards any animal. This is the disparity. The man shot the dog and sees nothing wrong in it. His children know he shot the dog. He does not need to start loving dogs, but can he accept that practising your archery on animals is too creepy, that other negative lessons may seep into his children’s minds?

Again, I know Rottweiler dogs are scary looking canines, but did the shooter go ahead because of his life-long prejudice against dogs? Would he have arrowed-down a python? Both can harm you, but I’d bet he’s be not averse to the forestry department personnel or firemen dealing with the situation.

His apprehension about dogs came to the fore, and the policemen did not coerce even an apology from him. I worry that that the police officers called in, would have had consternations going hard on a man who after all just shot a well-regarded attack dog. Now a cow, that’s whole different preposition.

The dead dog is regrettable, however the more pertinent lesson from the incident is, will Malaysians through its actors like government agencies and schools, include dogs also to the list of animals requiring humane treatment, big or small?

It is about culture, and Facebook shares that get your foreign friends inquiring why such cruelty is not met with an upset state and instead confronted by an indifferent state.

Directions

It is the attitude that is distasteful, and how it will be inherited by the young.

The dog can easily be an euphemism for free speech, liberalism, human rights (or as it is popular now, right-ism), pluralism and other “non-moderate-ism”. To treat it badly and wickedly, because it has been said to be a venomous creature, not just a mammal that should not wet you with its snout.

Again, such meanness is not “on” outside Malaysia, but do those in a position to confront and engage the cruelty willing, so that in time it too would not be “on” here?

Do you want your child to persist with more of a dominant view in Malaysia, or avail to the broader view others outside Malaysia have?

This is not a discussion about right or wrong, this is about whether we are running in the same direction as most of the world.

I say this because it is increasingly palpable that our leaders want us to not follow the global zeitgeist but to stick to the Malaysian way as they have seen it through for decades. The risk is our children may end up with a terminal siege mentality.

Which is what our decisions have to be about.  Will you prepare your children only for Malaysia with preparation for the world optional, or will you cede to the reality and prepare your children for the world that is materialising, and not worry about Malaysia being optional, because being ready for the world is the same as being ready for Malaysia?

For your children’s sake, I hope it is the latter.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.