Agi Idup Agi Mengelabah, or A corrupting life is not worth living

To my Sarawak friends, I have always been fascinated by the phrase "Ai idup, agi ngelaban" but I have always though also an alter slogan "agi idup agi mengelabah" to signify how corrupt the world we are living in and how we will continue to live in a world of corruption.

Agi idup agi mengelabah ... as long as we are homo economicus (economic beings) living in a world constructed by those who have the means to shape our reality, we will not know our role as masters of our own destiny and makers of our own history. This is an existentialist moment in each one of us. Of alienation, despair, and oppresion. Of corruption that permeates into the everyday affairs of men.

Socrates's maxim. "An unexamine life is not worth living" is worth exploring here. Malaysians are entering a period of devastating exuberance, a depressing hope, a dystopic utopia, and a rhetorical realpolitik -- a world full of contradictions and widespread corrupt practices in which "might is right" and the law of the postmodern urban jungle rules.

Some ago I wrote about this. Here is an excerpt:

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Hai orang-orang yang beriman, makanlah di antara rezeki yang baik yang Kami berikan kepadamu dan bersyukurlah kepada Allah, jika benar hanya kepada-Nya kamu berserah (Al-Baqarah:172).

This comes from the website of the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA), whose slogan is Tingkatkan integriti, Hapuskan rasuah. I am tired of contradictions. And of slogans. The nation is tired of them too.

Who but the ACA can we turn to report corrupt people, corrupt practices? We have become a pathetic nation made helpless by the revelations we are reading daily. Things are falling apart.Yet we have a general election coming - one in which even the Election Commissions itself cannot claim to be independent. How many dozen ‘Royal Commissions’ of Inquiry have we asked to be set up since Independence to help us uncover truths - how many have materialised?

We no longer have any shame as a nation. Even worse, we still vote for vultures.

Corruption runs in the veins of the body politic - in business, politics, religion, education, culture, etc. Even in our mind. Even in our language. Consider the Approved Permit issue, the half-bridge to Singapore, and teh multitude of cases in the archive of the anti-corruption agency ... you name it...we do not know where these cases are going. History tells us that we will not see consequences, nor see anyone resigning voluntarily.

We do not have any shame.

Unlike the Japanese.Even our universities are seeing corrupt practices. We see students thrown out for speaking up, academicians axed for taking a stand, lecturers made to feel good about how moral and benevolent the government is, and how academic-cronyism is taking shape.Conferences in public universities are about discussing feel-good themes, presenting papers to make feel-good communalistic ideologies feel elevated, and going into academic detail of how to parrot government propaganda better.

How do we expect to produce critical thinkers among graduates when critical analyses about our society are seldom produced and presented. From our public universities to our think tanks, we see lethargy in the way we view society and politics.Our consciousness has been corrupted by the fear, fantasy and fetish we have structured into our mind though a funneling process of depthlessness of thought.

Only if we had the Malaysian version of the great Argentine medical-doctor turned social messiah, Che Guevara, as education minister, We would see true transformation of the education to fight corruption of the soul, mind, and flesh.