JAN 7 — There are still no flying cars in the sky. How more disappointing can the second decade of the 21st century be?
Still, I think we are more or less having it good. Ten or 20 years ago, I could not even imagine the stuff that I use for leisure and work today. And it is not just about technology.
I am in Myanmar, a place where not too long ago only intrepid adventurers, conspiring diplomats and frontline journalists would go. I am none of those. I am a risk-averse person, calculating the risks and returns by employing my knowledge of economics.
The fact that I am willing to take a trip to Myanmar and spend several weeks here, I think, highlights how much the situation in the country has improved over the years, however much still needs to be done.
I would like to think that I am an optimist as far as human history is concerned. I think we are on an unstoppable upward trajectory in the long run. Call it the secular progression. Things will get better notwithstanding the wrinkles between the present and the future.
And the wrinkles that are our lives are only a fraction of the long arch of history. What are the ups and downs of a lifetime compared to thousands of years of history? We are puny in the advancing tide of civilisation and our puniness is the source of my optimism.
But we do have to carry on with our lives and the optimism can be too much of an abstraction that is only useful for mental masturbation or intellectual sparring to justify something, be it in the name of god, or in the name of humanity. Or in the name of capitalism, or all those other isms out there.
And so, sometimes I do feel the puniness challenge my optimism. Malaysian politics provides enough instances of where we collectively as a society are taking a step backwards, redefining progress as the return to the medieval times but with smart gadgets, with those devices seemingly designed to make up for our tribal, caveman-like mentality. Have all the advancements come only to make us more stupid, banal and sensitive to the most inconsequential of things?
An angry Facebook post, and here comes a police report. Send the poster to jail, not for corruption or theft, but only for being a keyboard warrior who is over-enthusiastic with the clicking of the mouse button.
Just recently we as a society were debating things that matter. It was about our welfare. Whichever side we were on, we were debating about taxation, about the health of our government, about crime rate, our safety and even about international trade agreements that Malaysians really do rarely are concerned about. These were signs of a maturing society that not too long ago was so preoccupied with race and religion.
The topic does not go away but at times, I do feel there has been real progress to make our politics more issue-based, more about something concrete and less about chasing phantoms. Just as you think you can feel the secular progression of civilisation, as if all that happened in the past conspires to bring you to this peak, the harmonious crescendo that you have been seeking after all the disorienting, revolting noise, it all comes a-tumbling down again.
It is about how the maybe almighty gods need protection by us puny humans. It is about a certain politician’s sex life. It is about the Shiahs out to cause a schism among Malaysian Muslims.
Despite all the fancy charts and presentation slides presented by analysts and investors, at home, not too much looks like it has transformed. Many things look irrational.
But I am still an optimist. I am still expecting to see a flying car within my lifetime. I still have great faith in humanity and us Malaysians specifically, however many dumbos there are among us, however high they sit above us.
Back in the wee hours of a day in March 2008 in Subang Jaya, I was celebrating with a bunch of strangers, witnessing something historic happening. A man in his 50s or maybe 60s came up to me and said that I was lucky. He had waited decades for this and I, pretty much just out of university, starry-eyed and idealistic (sometimes I wish I had never grown up), did not have to wait. “You are lucky,” he stressed.
Almost six years on, we no longer have than an effective one-party rule. A competitive democracy is being institutionalised every single day since that day and it is hard to see it dying any time soon. That has to be proof that there is a secular progression and that we, one way or another, sooner or later, will get it right.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
