future, off tangent
By xpyred
If you’ve not read Elizabeth’s take on nostalgia, you should, over here. I can’t help but agree with what she’s said, since I’m often prey to nostalgia myself – put simply, I think, one lives in and for the past, and maybe one allows self-pity to overtake you; then one allows oneself to justify one’s self-pity by recourse to nostalgia, as if nostalgia hides some patina of objectivity beneath its sheen of bright memories.
I suppose it is human to wish for better times, and the past becomes a wiling surrogate for a present we might wish to deny. (I don’t think that implies that nostalgia is delusional; merely escapist.) On the flip-side, however, I wonder if there isn’t an equally dangerous confidence in the future. Particularly a future with an alternative government.
It’s not that I lack faith in the future; to lack faith in the future is to lack faith in possibilities. I’m just generally suspicious of whose version of the future I’m buying into. In practical terms, Malaysia as it stands might be ready for less corruption, for more justice, for better delivery systems – all the things that the opposition fights for.
But I wonder if it is ready for the dethroning of Islam in the hearts and minds of many non-urban Malays. I wonder if it is ready for an end to vernacular schools, or an end to special privileges as it stands today; I wonder if it is ready for the kind of politics that does not breed vassals and courtiers.
Are Malaysians ready for “occidental” ideas of justice and liberty, those same ideas which we imagine are universally self-evident, but which in truth may be less universally accepted or understood by the majority?
Isn’t it easy to imagine that Malaysians want change, when they might not be really clear on what sort of change they’re willing to sign up to?
I’m not sure. I must admit that when I think about the future, about a future in which the opposition today is tomorrow’s government, I’m a little ambivalent about what it will seek to achieve. Just as the government loves to set up false dichotomies and dissolve differences into monolithic blocs of dissent, the opposition has set itself up as a singular, monolithic alternative.
I’m sure it’s necessary, for all the practical reasons. But when it comes to the crunch, how will the opposition today negotiate alternative, competing visions of tomorrow when they come into power?
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