Living With Injustice

Values, the implicit sense of what is right and wrong, is the quintessential glue that binds a community together. A community without strong shared values is a fragmented society prone to upheaval and disintegration. In this regard, it is more than out of curiosity to ask what is it in Malaysian values that permit so many contradictions in our sense of right and wrong: Malaysians are asked to live with injustice in our midst and the majority although discordant readily do so without question.

Lim Guan Eng, a Member of our Parliament remains incarcerated for speaking up on behalf of an victim of rape. The family of Anwar Ibrahim, another Member of our Parliament, is dragged through the mud of allegations of his sexual misconduct and impropriety and then told that it is not relevant to the amended charges now faced by him. The Attorney General sworn to uphold the laws of our country, reports that the police, sworn to enforce the laws of our counry are responsible for beating up Anwar Ibrahim but cannot yet punish anyone. The commission of enquiry set out to investigate the matter further does not engender confidence nor faith. The members of the police force, on separate occassions shoot dead a bank teller and a pregnant mother, but cannot link them to any crime. No one is as yet held accountable. A petrol kiosk attendant working for RM 600 a month with a family to feed travelling to work by motorbike past a toll plaza twelve times a day misses paying a few times and is reported to the police. Pleading guilty he is fined RM 3000. And the list goes on and on.

By what yardstick of values is the collective Malaysian consciousness measured that it cannot definitively discern right from wrong to do something about it? In many ways the extent of injustice that is institutionalised within a society indicates the extent of its decadence. But how is it that a society as young as Malaysia - all of forty-two years old - manage to exhibit such symptoms of decline and decay?

Village Values

Attending a Seminar on Japanese Management in 1982 I was told that the Japanese success as an industrial society and modern culture was rooted in the prevalence of "village" values. As an insular nation, isolated from the influences of its neighbours and perpetually threatened by natural disasters and external threats, Japanese society over the millenia developed a core set of village values not unlike those embodied in the practice of gotong royong. These were the characteristics: everybody was accepted in the village as an equal; irrespective of origin or background. The village was of paramount importance in terms of values. Everybody made sacrifices,in the face of threats for the good of the village. Values were survivalist designed to ensure that the village got on to the next day and the next day. After over a thousand years and more of conditioning these values had been reflected in the last forty years of Japanese management excellence and industrial competence.

While the "youth" of Japanese culture and society was preserved over the centuries, it is interesting to contrast this with the decadence of the two oldest civilisations on earth. Indian civilisation matured and aged over several millenia growing past very earlier its biological phases of survival and self-preservation into its intellectual, rationalisation and materialistic stages. Despite the modernity of recent times, its enduring legacy in the indian mind is the hieriarchical caste system of priests, warrior, merchant and labourer classes. The institutionalised injustice of the caste system is justified by the supranatural law of karma. So indian society became intricately struuctred and complicated and around this revolved all its attendant rituals.

Chinese civilisation is no better. After 400 centuries the chinese mind is best described in contrast to Japanese village values. Individualism, intellectualisation and rationalisation have caused value systems to reflect resources are consolidated by bloodline. Whole villages are of the same surname and clan. Outsiders to the village are ostracised and considered outsiders. Every successful individual able and capable will start his own clan. The importance of the clan was considered paramount. Immersed in self-importance, the clan members considered everyone else outside the clan, the dialect group, the region. Ultimately countries outside the Middle Kingdom was considered inferior or barbarian; without culture and the proper "values".The inherent injustice of justifying all in the name of the clan was justified by the inferiority of all the outsiders to the clan.

Religions as reformers

The Roman civilisation similarly rose and fell on the same cycle of satisfying the biological need to survive, establishment self-estemm and then succumbing to individualism and materialism. Whenever civilisations have progressed in their decay, reform movements inevitably arise against the "decadent" values that have been institutionalised. These early reform movements were most successful as religious based initiatives and expansions.

The egalitarian nature of buddhism appealed to those who found the caste hierarchy of indian civilisation rigid and unbending. Christian values appealed to those who were dissatisfied initially with the established priesthood of judaism and the decadence of the roman empire while islam spread far and wide as a spirited rejection of tribal idolatory and paganism. The new religions attempted to establish new value systems and to replace and rejuvenate societies which had fallen prey to old decadent values and where injustice had
grown heavily ingrained in everyday life.

Even within religions and within nations and empires built on religions, when decadence set in, again perpetuating injustice, reform movements were again established to reject the old order. Among the most celebrated was the Protestant movement started by Martin Luther who attempted to refresh the faith of Christainity by breaking away from the tenets of the Catholic Church. This fresh set of values propelled the villagers of Europe to seek freedom in the New World and created the much vaunted protestant work ethic which served as the driving force behind the anglosaxon world's drive for commercial and industrial success; to such an extent that distinctions still remain between the protestant orientation of the anglosaxon world and the catholic orientation of the catholic latin and hispanic world.

The rise of ideology

In recent centuries it has been ideology that attempted to reverse the decadence of old corrupt civilisations. The capitalist ideology of lassiez -faire markets as best espoused by Adam Smith's invisible hand was a reaction to the feudal days of empire, piracy and plunder for soverign, god and gold. The industrial revolution best manifested the competitive values of capitalism. Its decadent and negative aspects were the exploitation of labour and the excessive greed and speculation tendencies of capital. Karl Marx saw the capitalist system as inherently unstable and propounded the virtues of communism. The excesses of the capitalist classes ensured that communism found appeal and for seventy years of the 20th century a good fraction of mankind experienced a new injection of communist "values" designed to erase the decadence of capitalistic society. Yet the forty years of chinese rigid communism until the tienanmein massacre in 1989 have not managed to erase 400 centuries of "decadent" chinese civilisation with its values of clan and self. Furthermore the existence of the Chinese diaspora ensured that the decadent values remained intact; although tempered by the nation building experiences of the new countries the chinese immigrants found themselves in.

The Quest for Malaysian values

In Malaysia we have a relatively young nation composed of three major communities with markedly differing cultural values. Malay society is best described as possessing village values where the community predominates in importance. This is reflected in their activities and their politics. The youthful nature of Islam as a religion reinforces the sense of community and unity against old decadent values. In contrast, the indian community and the chinese communities have brought along with them their old decadent values of hierarchies and structures and heigthened sense of self, clan and race. The unity of the Malay community underpinned by its village values ensure political domination over the fragmented non-Malay communities divided by their old and decadent values.

The experience of immigration and the process of assimilation much like that experienced by the peranakan should have melted old decadent values to mould new young and fresh nation-building values. If not for Islam which deterred any significant inter-communal marriages on the part of the indians and chinese, the Malayan and Malaysian population would have been much more assimilated like in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Further communal compartmentalisation preserved the differences in cultural values for much of the four decades after independence.

Yet in the new generation of post NEP Malaysians we are beginning to see the faint, very faint stirrings of Malaysian values; loyalty first to the country, the Malaysian community rather than the respective communities. Forced to live together as neighbours Malaysians have begun to experience the Malaysian way of life, unique in its diversity and complexity. From these shared experiences will come forth the true Malaysian values of identity and community. This will happen when the sense of community experienced by the Malays are extended to include the Malaysians of the other communities. This will truly be the starting point, the birth of a new Malaysian society of shared cultural values free of compartmentalisation and fragmentation.

However before then there is much decadence to be considered. In the rush and the zest to rapidly develop the young Malaysian nation still fragile and fragmented, the leaders of the Malay community adopted the policies of pragmatism. Reflecting the village values of community above self, basic freedoms of the individual, of expression and of association were subordinated to the paramount goal of advancing the community as a whole.

There is a certain justification in sacrificing the interests of the individual for the benefit of the society as a whole. Hence on this was the new economic policy and malay special rights premised. And Malaysian society tolerated injustices perpetuated on the individual for as long as the social good was achieved.

The sacrifices made by individual Malaysians in favour of Malaysian society as a whole would have been worthwhile if the leaders of the Malay community had always borne the interests of the Malaysian people in mind. In their continuing justifications put forward for their policies and actions taken in the interest and for the advancement of the Malay community, they saw too many and too easy opportunities for self-enrichment to be easily passed up. In this they were aided by the decadence of the global financial community whom they now want to blame for their excesses.

The Age of the Acquisitor

Ravi Batra explained the Theory of Social Cycles advocated by P R Sarker as the four phases of growth that a society undergoes; The Age of the Labourer; the Age of the Warrior, the Age of the Intellectual and the Age of the Acquisitor. Each Age is marked by different predominating values and actually reflects the phases of a society's growth, rise and fall. The Age of the Labourer comes after the Acquisitor through his subjugation of all classes and sectors of society under his thumb. In the Age of the Labourer, the disparity between Labourer and Acquisitor is so wide, social tensions result. This is the Age where the worst of decadence has run its course and social injustice is at its worst. It is not surprising if social anarchy and upheavals are characteristic of this period.

Eventually, a strong ruler will emerge, militaristic in nature to impose law and order on society as a whole. New egalitarian values of society are put in place replacing the old decadent ones. There is more social justice and fairness as a whole although individual freedoms may be curtailed. A period of growth sets in because the society works together and "village" values predominate. This is the Age of the Warrior.

As the society prospers and reaches the pinnacle of its development, the intellectuals begin to exert their influence over the society until they take over the reins of government. Society rationalises almost everything in favour of the individual. Priests, political advisors and ideologues commanded more power than the warrior in this age.The arts and culture in general flourishes during this era.

When the society arrives at the Age of the Acquisitor, the materialist values of acquisition for its own sake predominate. The Age of the Acquisitor is marked by the sub-ordination of the warrior and the intellectual and of course the labourer to the interest of the acquisitor. The military, the police, the legislature, the executive serve the interests of the acquisitor. The learned in law, the learned in economics, the academia, the journalists are in the pay of the acquisitors and do everything to justifiy the actions of the acquisitors. There is an abundance of corporate mergers and acquisitions and the values of greed and materialism predominate. Unfortunately the disparity of income and of wealth is also at its height. It is not surprising that the during this age, the incidences of injustice is also at its height.

The global capitalist economy is currently in the stage of the Acquisitor and all the tell-tale symptoms of the Age are there at its worst. The global capitalist economy is at a decadent phase where the interests of all is subjugated to the interests of the acquisitor. In a liberalised and globalised financial environment, the competitive speculative mania infects acquisitors from developed and developing countries alike. In countries where the rights of individuals have been sacrificed, it is all too easy for the acquisitor to take over the entire country and manipulate circumstances and events to his advantage.
In the Malaysian scenario, while the present Prime Minister had had the chance and opportunity to ensure balanced policies in favour of the interests of the Malaysian society as a whole, it is pathetic that he allowed the values of the acquisitor following no doubt a worldwide trend to predominate in Malaysia.

In this regard, Malaysia, though a young country with the immense potential to grow based on the youthful values of a more egalitarian society, has now to deal with the consequences of being dragged down by the decadent values of material individualistic and selfish society. It is a shame that Malaysia so young as a nation had allowed the worst of decadence to prevail and with that all the injustices that we see perpetuated almost everyday. And history always repeats itself. A reform movement will always arise to sweep away the old decadent values.


Paksanno