APRIL 10 — Without virtue, it is difficult to bear gracefully the honours of fortune.—Aristotle
The Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis said that everyone, at any given moment, is either heading towards heaven or towards hell.
We can skip the religiosity but perhaps the struggle for the soul of Malaysia may turn on the battle between two notions: developmentalism and post-materiality.
This temptation of developmentalism can be seen in the ruling regime’s quest for Malaysian votes from the 1980s onwards. Reflected in every case of the government’s largesse during election time, developmentalism happens each time Malaysians are asked to “drop” questions about the soul of the polity in exchange for easy “answers” related to the national body which loves to eat, sleep and download more apps.
To begin questioning and working for a more justice-loving nation (at some sacrifice, perhaps, to the almighty GDP) is what academics term “post-materiality.”
Developmentalism is about my ability to ensure my bank account has more numbers than Pi; post-materiality tracks the number of human rights infringements and preaches that bank accounts aren’t everything.
Developmentalism appeals to my greed and pride; post-materialism spurs me to make appeals on behalf of those who may have too much poverty, thus not much time for greed and pride.
Developmentalism is about encouraging economic development so everyone can augment their material status; post-materiality is about looking beyond the material in order not to treat injustice as immaterial.
It’s really the clash between the variety of smartphones we can buy and, well, how much we value the homeless over one more version of the iPhone.
Developmentalism represents the trade-off the Barisan Nasional government made with the Malaysian middle-class in the late 20th century (“We make you rich; you leave the politics to us.”); post-materiality is the early 21st century awakening of all classes to the inhumanity of an arrangement whereby a few cronies become super-rich, many folks make enough money to waste too much, most folks go into debt and some folks remain impoverished.
Developmentalism is Donald Trump claiming that climate change is a ploy by China to sabotage the American economy; post-materiality is every Chinese, Malay and Indian calling for a cut in carbon emissions lest life on Earth itself be sabotaged beyond repair.
Developmentalism is to be enamoured with the philosophy of scarcity, or the belief that if I don’t work my ass off and give everybody around high blood-pressure, then I’m gonna be out on the streets tomorrow.
Post-materiality is that abundance should be what gets us up every morning, that virtue and what makes for human flourishing (and not what shows up on our ATM screens) is what should make the world go round.
No political change without personal change
All this is not to say that sometimes the two notions aren’t often confused or mixed. The same citizen who attended the candlelight vigil for Pastor Raymond Koh may also be the same shopper who secretly (or not so secretly) wishes she could spend like a Saudi prince.
The Kuala Lumpur executive who suspects there is something awful about how our country “condones” sex with under-aged girls can, on a regular basis, be hooked to Internet porn.
The Penang director who tweets against Third World exploitation by the first and tells his family it’s important to “go green” may, many times a week, ignore and revile the presence of Bangladeshi, Indonesian or Nepalese non-executives who wash his car, serve him coffee, cook his restaurant meals (they will also be the first culprits on his mind should his house be broken in).
If we over-eat, if we over-spend and if we overlook those who under-eat and can hardly spend, then we’re in a poor position to demand political transformations.
This could be the biggest lie in developmentalism: That the people can create social change by remaining personally unchanged.
The government wants us to believe that real action is the domain of the governing, not the governed. And especially since the economic booms, privatisations and deregulations of the 80s and 90s (with a few recessions notwithstanding), Malaysians (especially the middle-classes) have been encouraged to focus on making money and leave the realm of politics to the ruling regime.
Nurturing post-materiality
If post-materiality is to become a reality, what can be done?
There are quick-fix superficial ways and there are more painful substantial ways. The low-impact way would be to engage in Robin Sharma-ish meditations on “living in harmony” with the world, buying green products, dropping coins into the donation boxes near the cashier, and sharing Facebook links on alternative music with “life-changing” messages.
The tougher but more permanent approach would be to design, engineer and implement a re-orientation on a personal/communal level of what we claim we wish to see on a national level. It could mean deciding once and for all that certain companies or industries should be lobbied against and popularly banned (if we could allow this oxymoron for now). It could signal prolonged actionable conversations with parties we’ve never spoken to.
It certainly means making more moral/ethical demands of our elected representatives, especially those we suspect are behaving like nothing more than technicians (or PR consultants) for the constituency.
It also could mean taking some firm corporate steps towards new priorities or ways of thinking (e.g. “What would we look like if our profit motif was subordinated to social concerns?”) and burning the bridges afterwards (e.g. “No more contracts with XYZ Company until they publicly apologise and repair the wrong they’ve done”... does a certain German auto-maker come to mind?).
As some obscure Greek philosopher said, without virtue and goodness, all the wealth in the world makes that much less sense.
Post-materiality reminds the community of its “here-ness” in the world and therefore its place in it. I think it can be funky and cool. Needless to say, there’s nothing to stop post-materiality from being Malaysian as well.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
