Deconstructing the Rukunegara
BELIEF IN GOD – This is outright dumb! Every culture has a different understanding of what constitutes the divine and the sacred. For some, the rivers, trees and mountains are sacred; for others, a particular book supposedly containing messages from the Supreme Being is considered sacred; for yet others, a human being with kind eyes, overflowing with charisma, is regarded as God.
MAGICK RIVER
Malaysia's Rukunegara or "national ideology" was proclaimed on 31 August 1970 and thereafter all schoolkids were compelled to memorize and pledge allegiance to it. I was already a father myself when that happened and so escaped the early indoctrination. In fact, I paid little heed to the Rukunegara, which I perceived as a low-grade set of bureaucratic commandments promulgated for the sole purpose of programming future generations of Malaysians into robotic, unquestioning acquiescence with the status quo.
On 22 January 2009 I stumbled upon the Merdeka Blog and was amused to learn that it was "founded on the principles of the Rukunegara." I guess the blog is operated by post-1969 Malaysians who perhaps spent the first 13 years of their life reciting by rote this piece of utter crap every day in school. I felt compelled to leave a long comment on the Merdeka Blog deconstructing the Rukunegara so these young people could see what an outright sham the notion of a "national ideology" actually is.
This is a slightly revised and expanded version of the comment I left…
My friends, perhaps you guys ought to find something more intelligent on which to base your guiding principles than the Rukunegara, which is actually quite a fascinating package of erroneous assumptions blended with flatfooted stupidity.
Allow me to deconstruct the Rukunegara and you will see why I feel you would be doing yourselves a big favor by outgrowing the severe limitations of accepting such a mental straitjacket.
