Death of an Idealist (Part 1)
It’s been awhile since I last posted anything here. Sorry guys – working world almost took the debater out of me. Like I said, almost. Now that 2010 is leaving us soon, it’s only fair that we summed up what happened throughout the entire year. Or rather, what really changed within us with the passing of 2010. Hmmm, so what really happened?
Firstly, it’s my deepest regret to inform you the death of an Idealist, i.e. yours truly. No need to fear, yours truly is still alive, breathing and flirting unabashedly around – but what differs is the death of an idealistic notion within. After years of cancerous truth and painful misjudgment, an Idealist has thus been replaced by a more solid pragmatist.
The Idealistic Past: Paradox, Truth or Lies
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, the idealist side of me has long waned after many careful observation and understanding the different persuasion of various activism. Somehow, many of the so-called activists in this world are blinded of empathy, and have and almost psychotic need to make themselves understood by others. They remained extremely firm to their convictions, that they are blinded of any reasoning coming from the other side. But such is the world.
But again we must not generalize all activists as zealots and harlots (hmm..sounds like a good title for a book. I’ll take that!) Among them there are those who are righteous and are pragmatic in their approach. Unfortunately, these are the ones whom contemporaries would look down at and would only look up to later in the future.
The Pragmatists
These are the people who are able to seek truth, in the same time ensure that no form of extreme feelings and innuendos of any sort to cloud their judgment. They know where truth lies, what to do and how to do them correctly. Unfortunately, under heavy fire from extremists – these are usually the victims of hatred and accused of betrayal by their own people. There’s Ghandi who was killed by an extremist Hindu, Saladin who was disliked by some Emirs and accused of being too lenient towards the Christians, there’s King Roger of Sicily who was accused by a sizeable number of Christians in his time as in cohort with the Muslims and many other figures who were only looked up at when tolerance and acceptance are accepted as a way of life.
The Idealists/Extremists Borderline
I believe I do not have to deliberate on The Extremists which borderlines with Idealists, that usually crop up in extremeness. There’s Padre Ximenes, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. In one way or another, they do see that there’s a big crisis of some sort that they have to face. Padre Ximenes was shocked to the Spaniards preferring foreign exotic culture to their own, Stalin witnessed the oppression of the peasants, Hitler saw his country kicked around by foreign powers and Bin Laden understood the pain of the Arab/Muslim countries. What I can deduce is this; these are the wrong people with the intention to do the right thing with the wrong methods.
When Malaysians grumble about local politics, I wonder if they realize that all politics are the same. It’s always Perception over Matter. Not everything that is rotten about Malaysia is uniquely Malaysian – those kind of perception makes me nauseous.
Extremists of Mother-Tongue (or EMT) may blab all that they want about foreign (especially white/Caucasians) learning Bahasa Malaysia. They took it as a prime example of how our mother tongue is ‘gaining dominance’ in Euro-sphere. For crying out loud guys, there are more people who are able to speak ‘dead language’ as per Latin and Ancient Greek in the UK and US combined together! It’s not that I’m saying that I do not love my mother tongue, but what I am criticizing here is the foolishness of such logic. Call it a fallacy of logic! Let’s examine it; “some white people learn Bahasa Malaysia, thus Bahasa Malaysia is gaining dominance and currency in the world”. What total crap!
*to be continued*
