Infection
Within the last two weeks, half my cell-phonebook has been struck down by symptoms of either the common cold or influenza. The city seems gripped in an unhealthy miasma, with people sneezing or coughing in each other’s faces — a perpetual cycle of recovery and decline. Felled myself — aches, sniffles, and phlegm the colour and consistency of Play-doh — I decided to stay indoors; this allowed me time to do my laundry and woolgather. I was under the drowsy drone of a hot shower when I realised the following: infectious disease is a great metaphor for social change.
Even before I was sick, work assignments had brought me close to cultural agents trying to influence the population: Fahmi Fadzil’s broadcast of the wayang kulit form; the Instant Café Theatre-led “A Playwrights Exchange”, which had theatre practitioners debating the best way to bring social issues to an apathetic audience; and the currently-running Let Arts Move You project, which has artists bothering travellers on the KTM Komuter line.
Just before I fell ill, I had a conversation with a friend about Fahmi Reza’s excellent “Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka”, a film that (we both agreed) had great potential as a tool for such insidious movements like liberalism. But the problem was circulation — and, more importantly, enthusiasm in this circulation.
“How do we make it so that it is in the ‘downstream’ interest to spread the word?” my friend asked. “It is now limited to Fahmi’s energy, going around screening from place to place. And the Internet,” — which has a scaleable, but limited reach in Malaysia. Material copies have to be made.
“And these copies need to be given to people who find it in their own interest,” my friend said, “To ‘market’ those copies. We need to think of something of value for the receivers of whatever info / content, so that they’d continue to spread the word.” We discussed coming up with multi-level marketing sales kits (the research, the facts, how to say stuff), whether the social value of being at the forefront of a ‘movement’ would be sufficiently persuasive (probably not), even the PUTERA-AMCJA propaganda corps Fahmi’s film mentions.
“I know I’m harping on business models,” my friend said, “But it’s proven to be the most efficient and rapacious way of ‘infecting’ humans.” The challenge of any viral marketing campaign is to identify “connectors” (individuals with large social networks) and design a package of information appealing enough to these people that it’d be passed along; as I started sneezing, I made a short conceptual leap into the biological realm.
To the best of my narrow medical knowledge, real life pathogens (the inspiration for the virtual and advertorial varieties), disrupt the normal bodily functions of a host organism; the more infectious of these disrupt workings in such a way that the host becomes a vector, spreading viruses or bacteria to others. The closest example in my then-fevered reach was the common cold — which induces coughs and sneezes that fill the atmosphere with virus-laden aerosols.
If I had written this any earlier, I would have held that the best chance for us actually-give-a-shit types to disseminate our values would be to design a package of information analogous to the rhinovirus — now that I am on the mend, however, I see that this would be misguided. The problem with the common cold is that it is highly visible: one can recognise the symptoms and steer clear. Malaysians, as a people, are ideological hypochondriacs; move about with an obvious socio-political agenda and see your acquaintances shirk — if not out of fear, then in mere anticipation of their comfortable world-views being interrupted.
Worse, given time and doses of vitamin C, a host fights off such an infection. The equivalent is like asking for regime change: even if we managed to pull it off — given the current make-up of Malaysian society, and the public’s general suspicion with regards to the opposition’s competence, this is highly unlikely — the effects would not last. Our government is a symptom of a wider malaise — an oblivious and easily-cowed population — not its cause.
“We need to figure out if we’re looking for regime change,” my friend said, “Or if we’re want to educate the masses.” The latter would result in a more-or-less permanent modification to the body politic — more importantly, this change would be subtle and deep-rooted: a set of attitudes that only flare up in times of distress, but one whose presence, nevertheless, is never ignored.
Something like herpes simplex, actually: the virus, of either type, is widespread (if you’ve ever had a cold sore, you have herpes); its mode of transmission is persuasive (direct skin contact); its symptoms are invisible (most infected individuals don’t know they have the virus); it is incurable (vaccine-testing has been inconclusive). “What I’d like to see is something that would cause a lowly UMNO member to go: ‘Eh, betul lah,’ ” my friend said, “Without necessarily thinking that he / she should leave UMNO.”
I like my microbial analogy because it’s comforting. Micro-organisms are life’s simplest creatures, and also its most resilient — not because of individual strength, but because of domain-wide mutability. Evolutionary laws provide us with an important reminder: change, affected by times and conditions, is never for the better or worse — it is merely steered by what is most suitable for current climates / attitudes. This means that tailoring strategy is never immoral; it also means that older ideas never truly go defunct. Smallpox, eradicated in decades past, can still kill us. One day, perhaps, Malaysians will be a better people, ready for changes in governance, in outlook — even for changes to our existing social contract. We just have to keep at it. Tailoring an effective pathogen will involve lots of trial and error.
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