Darwin 3
People seem to think that just by regurgitating rote-learned obsolete ideas on internet forums Malaysians of all walks of life will suddenly see the light and come round to support reforms.
By batsman
For those who think my ideas are not cohesive, you might want to read other writers discussing Darwin – “Why everything you have been told about evolution is wrong”. In the meantime, what is written below is an even simpler version than the intermediate between Level 1 and Level 2. You may consider it as an attempt to disprove Fodor (co-author of “What Darwin Got Wrong”) who believes that certain complex ideas cannot be made simpler for simpletons to understand especially after the western mass media have seized hold of their brains (my emphasis).
Darwin was a great scientist and an extremely humble man. Why are his ideas about evolution so contentious – doubtless because it has lots to do with politics and humans affairs?
Darwin’s ideas simplified and manipulated serves capitalism extremely well. Capitalists in their fight against the feudal order could not promote atheism as a foil against religion which supported the feudal order in the beginning, so they became secularists as a compromise. In the same way, they could not describe their ideas as faith based, so the next best thing was to scientifically claim that the human being as a selfish individualist is an inborn, natural and unchanging character. This Darwin seemed to say (simplified as “survival of the fittest”), so Darwinism became the religion of the secularists especially the type of Darwinism that tends towards determinism.
(By the way, secularism was a late idea and an additional buttress to the philosophy of capitalism. The initial tactic of the capitalists was to fight religion with another religion of their own – more sympathetic to individual expressions of faith, hard work and thrift)
To the ordinary person, a human being has both selfish and altruistic sides, yet the selfish side is purely used as the economic basis (by extension, the social, political and philosophical basis as well) of human society. This is an ugly perversion of nature and it is costing us dear in terms of the exploitation of man and destruction of nature itself.
Not surprisingly any critique of Darwinism was taken as a direct attack on secularism (and by extension, capitalism) and treated as such. So secularists are often even more fanatical than religionists. This is the rank hypocrisy that we face when we have to deal with such persons, especially those whose rote learning culture has been taken advantage of by the western media to champion ideas pushed out by them and absorbed without critical thinking by these rote learning automatons. Some of these people even pretend they are hard of understanding as a last resort to avoid their obsolete ideas falling to the latest studies and ideas. It seems they have no qualms about appearing stupid in preference to opening up their minds. Such are the depths to which they sink.
How does this affect us in Malaysia?
It basically affects us in Malaysia by the way some people regurgitate rote-learned obsolete ideas as a tactic in the fight against corruption and abuse of power. These people seem to think that just by regurgitating rote-learned obsolete ideas on internet forums Malaysians of all walks of life will suddenly see the light and come round to support reforms.
Their Islamophobia re-lives the old obsolete capitalist fight against the feudal order (not to mention support of the interests of a current world superpower) and their obsessiveness in pushing aggressive competition is seen as persuasiveness in turning the tide against subsidy mentality. In their minds it is sufficient to re-enact the western fight of capitalism against feudalism on Malaysian soil in order to win the battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary Malaysians. There is no attempt to take Malaysian peculiarities into account just as there can be no critique of Darwinism. It is as if evolution is deterministic and human effort and critical thinking is a waste of time. What is needed is to simply repeat what went before so that those who simply regurgitate rote-learning can become the heroes of the reform movement.
In Malaysia, competitiveness is linked to racial competitiveness and religion is also linked to race. Everybody knows this and understands this, yet these basic peculiarities are not taken into account in the tactics and strategies of the political struggle of people who are fond of rote-learning. All UMNO has to do is to set the trap and the rote-learning “reformers” walk into it time and again without fail.
Evolution theory says that those who do not adapt and change to neutralize or surmount challenges will ultimately fail, so why are the funny champions of Darwin in Malaysia failing to change and evolve to neutralize or surmount what appears to be long term stressors and contradictions?
South Africans successfully fought racism using different tactics and strategies from Americans. People of different countries around the world fight racism in different ways because racism had different historical roots and expressed itself in different ways in different countries, so why is it so difficult to come up with an effective Malaysian way to fight racism other than wishing it go away or ignoring it altogether in the tactics and strategies of the political struggle? Not able to improve the Level 1 game to become a Level 2 player?
