JUNE 4 — “Never in my lifetime, never here.” My countrymen love to say that phrase, in all the languages available across the 14 states. I imagine them sighing in unison and blanketing the nation with a perpetual mist of defeatism. Fatalism never yielded a better friend, in disconsolate moments I withdraw to that conclusion.

But then on other days — less melancholic days — I remember my days on campus in Manila.

Of the years before the millennium and when laptops were much rarer, where we’d queue for spots at the college laboratories. The evenings were better, fewer students wanting terminals and therefore accessing the net. 

However, the challenges do not end after logging in because even at these ideal evening times, the Netscape Navigator — if you know what that is, guess you don’t go to Electronic Dance Music festivals anymore — spat out data in drips. 

At the bottom of the screen lay the counter, indicating the rate of download — the bits per second rates. A page takes ages to load, usually measured by the number of inane conversations I’ll have with Willie Yuque — my lab buddy and chief humourist, not — and a smile forms on your face when the page flashes ready. Colourful pictures made resplendent by accompanying text. Alchemy on plastic.   

Elation through patience as the bits come good, as long as you keep the faith.

Never, ever, forever

I can’t help but juxtapose that optimism with the fatalism that pervades too much Malaysian life. Yes, this is about the state, the government that seems never to be removed. Because too many accept a permanent government as a fact of life.

And I wish to share that — perhaps naïve and overtly sentimental — message that there is a need to believe, and probably in the worst times to have even more the audacity to believe.

Because those who want things to remain the same way, rely on the masses not believing in change.

They want you to repeat as many times as possible, “Never in my lifetime, never here.”

The real truth is, it is amazingly easy to discourage people.

Fathers and mothers walking through their personal journeys convinced that the present is overwhelming and them only participants — willing or unwilling. They end up passing the disappointment to their children. And therefore the state will alternate two key messages to the younger ones, “If it was good enough for your parents, why can’t it be good enough for you? Come on, give in” and “If your parents could not end us, what makes you think that you can? Come on, give up.”

To that I have a plain riposte: Faith in change is perplexing but ultimately always, always liberating irrespective of the outcome. Because the believing already renders us better than the us who fear too much to believe.

In Malaysia over the years the government relies on us on not believing in ourselves too much, because if we did we might begin to consider government as an extension of our wills rather than a master we inherit from parent to child in perpetuity.

Log on please

As a student of change I’ve always turned to history as the answers surely must be in the past. Touring in my mind from the yard in the Bastille to the larger square in Tiananmen, and seeking the narrative necessary for our own march to change.

Back to the bits that brought me light in dark university labs, I am struck by realisation that the answers are equally in the present, as it presents us the tools to procure the future.

While the tools glitter, a gap still remains. Malaysians are always made aware that reading rates in the country are low, even if literacy rates are high — meaning almost anyone can read if they have a Malaysian IC, but also meaning that almost anyone of them rather chew plastic garbage bag strips than lay their eyes willingly on text.

(Of course the irony is, those who do not read are actually not made aware that they are not reading since you have to read the news to know it!)

But more pertinently, this would also suggest far fewer write. Since writers are a minority of the reading population.

I’m convinced the rate of change in a society correlates to the amount of views and ideas constantly presented by its citizenry. Yes, another cliché, the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. If that does not inspire you then how about the statistic that generally pens cost less than swords.

I guess that is how the bits and pen butts meet in this conversation.

That people have to believe in change and amongst them, as many as possible, write about the change they seek in their world.

They are akin to men of the past who had to rely on basic means to communicate. Of men who march up hills to light fires and manipulate the smoke to tell others beyond their means to run in a day what has transpired. Beyond their seemingly limited boundaries of ideas and convictions, but surmounted by clever and willingness.

The pride it produces, to transcend.

With the technology available, from basic free blogs to Facebook posts, it is a shame that not enough Malaysians are speaking up.

I’m glad you are reading this, for what is a writer without his reader, but I beseech you to a higher task, to speak your mind — if not words, there’s video.  

The power to change is in you, and sometimes it manifests to you bit by bit, and that’s what you have to do, have a bit of faith. Technology is leaping through rings of fire for us, as Malaysians, it is time to be optimistic about our own future being in our own hands or keyboard fingers.

It’s really Boogie Wonderland that kids don’t have to wait for the bits to download in minutes, but they still need to click on something for it to appear. You can be that something. And in doing so making that change appear and manifest your own commitment to change.

Bit by bit.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.