Imprinting

By batsman 

I was struck by a classic expression of imprinting in a comment in MT recently and am provoked to write about it. 

The commentator more or less expressed his views about the upbringing of children with regard to alcohol consumption. He claims that a Chinese family would beat the child up and teach it a lesson while the Malay family would blame the shopkeeper for making a profit at the expense of children. The implication is that the Malay way would only result in drug addicts and Mat Rempits when children grow up.

Like in every issue, imprinting is only a half truth. If it were a complete lie, it would be more easily overturned. So I have to beg to differ and tell the other part of it to “educate” you guys so that in case a Malay child is mollycoddled to the extent of being addicted to alcohol consumption when young and then getting caught and whipped when she grows up into an adult, you guys will not protest to heaven and earth that whipping is such a barbaric punishment for such an innocent transgression, since you supported the right of shopkeepers to sell alcohol to children in the first place. 

I believe the Chinese way would result in the child developing a kiasu and kiasi character, obediently crossing every “t” with regard to authority at the same time having an unshakable belief that they are right in everything, while the Malay way may well result in Mat Rempits, but it also results in master politicians who dominate both in the government and in the opposition. 

A rather funny result of the Chinese way in the field of politics is that it results in stoogy politicians who quarrel over who gave and who received RM 10 million which apparently does not seem to exist and yet seems to exist at the same time. Is this some sort of imprinted quantum physics? 

Even in the democratic right to protest, the 2 different results of imprinting become apparent. The Malays tend to favour protesting peacefully in the streets and risking police violence while the Chinese favour making comments under false names in columns such as this. 

Further, let’s look at the results of drug abuse as a result of imprinting. The Malays tend to favour sniffing glue or shooting heroin while the Chinese tend to pop ecstasy pills. 

My guess is that as a result of imprinting there will a few fools who will feel the great urge to rush in a comment about how ecstasy is better than heroin or vice versa. 

My point with regard to alcohol consumption by children is that if it causes so much grief to both communities, why not allow parents to decide whether the neighborhood store sells alcohol or not? After all, children are more geographically limited. An adult can drive to a store farther away to buy his fix of alcohol, but young children may not have this mobility. As they grow up, they will have more mobility, but hopefully by then they will have learnt about the evils of alcohol abuse. People have to decide whether humans (children) are more important or the right of shopkeepers to make a profit at their expense. 

I hope that as a result of imprinting, some fools will not feel the great urge to link my support for the cause of parents deciding whether the neighbourhood store sells alcohol or not with the demands of the 50 thugs in Shah Alam to keep their community free of Indian temples. I really hope these people will not link Indian places of worship with alcoholism. These are different issues altogether and involve different principles. 

In the case of the 50 thugs, if they cannot tolerate an Indian temple in their midst, can they really tolerate Indians and Chinese in Malaysia, which is a majority Malay neighborhood in most places? Can they even tolerate short visits by people of different skin colour or different religions and values in their neighbourhood or will they feel the great urge, which as a result of imprinting, cause them to beat up these visitors for no apparent reason than that they have different colour skins, just as they spit on and jump on a dead cow’s head? How totally evil and thuggish can some people get? 

Back to the issue of democratic protest, I really hope that as a result of imprinting, there will be no fools feeling a great urge to rush a comment about streets protests being better than using the internet as a tool of democratic expression or vice versa. In my view it would be good if more Chinese joined in peaceful street protests while more Malays should write more to ensure that there is not a dominant kiasu and kiasi flavour with regard to the Malaysian cyberspace. 

So far I have been just skimming the surface. Let me direct my fire now at environmentalists if for no better reason than that I feel thuggish today. I think environmentalists are de facto hypocrites. Environmentalism is a farce as long as capitalism is dominant. 

Capitalism will squeeze a profit from everything and everybody including nature. As long as capitalism is dominant, nature will be squeezed dry. Environmentalists at best only alleviate the damage done by commercialism and capitalism. In practice, environmentalism acts as a salve to sooth the worst effects of capitalist greed. 

Even eco-tourism is eco-unfriendly. If there was no money to be made in eco-tourism, there will be no money (except maybe grants and subsidies) for preserving nature. So eco-tourism just takes from nature and anything that just takes and does not give back will tend towards exploitation. Eco-tourism tends to exploit nature more than it gives back to nature. At most it preserves nature’s beauty for commercial purposes. 

This is where imprinting comes in. People cannot escape their imprinting. Imprinting, like erosion, has taken years of constant and continual grind to set its course. It is not easily overcome. Imprinted people always believe they are more than right and their cause is more than sacred. This goes for environmentalism as much as for religion or for secularism. So it is that the commentator I mentioned above is so confident of himself (herself?) that he expresses himself in cute Hokkien as if he is sooo clever and sooo right and that the Chinese way of bringing up children is sooo right while others are sooo wrong. 

Even those who argue for education as a way to fix alcohol abuse by children cannot escape the influence of imprinting. How much of their education syllabus or content will be influenced by imprinting and how much will the teachers be influenced by imprinting? How will contradictory imprinting in the homes, among peers and friends and in the schools react and interact? Education is an escape clause for those who will not deal with the problem head on. They leave the responsibility to the teachers and parents and hope the problem will be solved or at least go away. Will it? 

So in a way, the pro-education lobby is like the environmental lobby as long as they do not deal with the problem head-on. But what exactly is the problem? 

Even parents who try to stop neighbourhood shops from selling alcohol are really engaged in an act of desperation because the whole of society is framed in the image of capitalism. The shopkeepers of the world will ultimately have more right to make a profit at the expense of the health and wellbeing of humans as do the developers and timber loggers at the expense of the wellbeing of nature. 

I hope that by now, there will be no fools who will feel the great urge to rush a comment about how backward, medieval, anti-capitalist or anti-development I am. I hope people will have the brains to know that I am not anti-capitalist or anti-development, but just against the perverse domination of capitalism or greed. 

Here, I am tempted to make a leap of logic and introduce more consequences of imprinting from a far away place and a totally different subject. 

The Zionist PM Olmert has just been charged with corruption. I don’t know the politics of the Zionists that well, but it seems to me that their leaders have a very high percentage of rapists and crooks among them with one President charged with rape and yet another PM charged with corruption earlier. All this time, they bully and murder Palestinians and launch invasions of Lebanon with the excuse of protecting the security of Israel. 

My question is – how can crooks and rapists really protect the security of ordinary citizens? Could it be that they are using this security thingy as an excuse to rape, murder, stealing land and harvesting Palestinian body parts and organs for sale? 

Unfortunately, imprinting prevents some Malaysians from asking the same questions. It would be sacrilegious to question the allies and friends of the US, let alone leaders of the Chosen  People who are well on their way to behaving like the Master Race. 

Even more tragic, the inability to ask such questions mean that the same things can happen here with abuse of power, murder, detention without trial, corruption, etc. all conveniently covered up by the excuse of protecting national security or protecting Ketuanan Melayu. This is imprinting with the worst consequences imaginable for me. 

Not all is so rosy under the domination of capitalism. I venture to say that even if one constituency is granted favoured “anak emas” status if they vote for UMNO, it does not mean that things will be all roses and peaches for the constituents. Similarly if some people are granted Bumiputra status, evil can be kept at bay. Unfortunately imprinting does its work too well and some people still continue to believe in fairy tales without facing problems head-on. 

For a look at an American “anak emas” called Martha’s Vineyard which is patronized by the rich and powerful of America, read more and try to balance your own imprinting at

The dark side of Martha's Vineyard – Telegraph 

Happy reading. I would continue to write more about imprinting for your reading pleasure if not for the fact that I may have exceeded the 1500 word limit.