Mayan calendar, Malaysian quagmire?

Back to the Malaysian quagmire. What is this “new politics” many have been talking about, whether understood or not? Old Mayan deadly concoction in a new bottle? Or a bottle of spirit brewed to perfection from the warm springs of the meadows of a new Malaysian hope?

A REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE

Dr Azly Rahman

“The centre cannot hold.” – WB Yeats.

At the eleventh hour of the Mayan prediction of an Armageddon, what has the world been experiencing? Tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes, Arab Spring, Gaza invasion and a world that still goes round and round in circles of misfortune – as if it is created to let Evil triumph over Good.

But then again, one can make any interpretation of what the Mayans were up to and, if indeed it is all a hoax.

Closer to home, what have Malaysians seen these last few decades – triumph of Evil versus Good as well? Rallies after rallies in colours of rainbow of multicoloured hues, a Malaysian Spring that some are calling a Hibiscus Revolution; increasing structural violence, as if orchestrated by some divine hands baptised in a fountain of Evil; a human being blown into smithereens over what many say is a dispute over the sale of a submarine; increasing authoritarianism of the state that is said to be robbing and bribing its people all at once; the rise of state-sanctioned fascist-ethnic groups; society praying to neon and material gods that the Greek sage Socrates would curse – all these, and more, point to the Mayan period of the Malaysian pathos. We are seeing an apocalypse of our own making.

As I was writing this I was also listening to Jim Morrison’s ‘The End‘, a 60s cult classic of a song aptly used in Francis Ford Coppola’s anti-war Vietnam era movie ‘Apocalypse Now‘ – a haunting Doors-composition indeed, which brought me to memories of the scenes of the movie.

Coincidentally, I had on my bookshelf Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness‘, a masterpiece of a novel about the nature of the human self when possessed by the need for greed, and the instinct to kill, and to reason through this via the belief in the morality of war, or the “moral force of it” some might say, and the inevitability of capitalism and the march of it.

Malaysians live in a world of dread and despair

I see rupture in Malaysian politics, of the one perhaps emblematic of a Kafkaesque world – of that character Gregor Samsa of ‘The Metamorphosis‘, in which dread and despair had become a comfortable numbness (as the rock group Pink Floyd would say); in which in the novel, a man suddenly turns into a vermin, a cockroach-looking insect and the powerful theme of existentialism sets in. How does the family deal with the metamorphosis?

Malaysians seem to have been living in a world of dread and despair, and are yet unaware of the changes and transformations that further alienate, marginalise, and even humiliate them – all because that world is created by those who own the means to manipulate the lives of others by building this facade of “progress”, in which circuses come to town often and bread (crumbs, these may be) are given on a daily basis… to make those enslaved happy – as happy as Albert Camus’ Sisyphus in a world in which, as the great Afrikanist Chinua Achebe would say, “Things (Have Fallen) Apart,” in which the centre can no longer hold. A matrix of politics commonly called “neo-feudalism cemented by Mahathirism”.

In a world of dread and in a place wherein the industrialised man – our post-modern man “Hank” of Henry Miller’s ‘The Hairy Ape‘, gets caged and ultimately frustrated when his labour is exploited, his spirit caged, and his body consumed by industrial fumes, the only way to get out of all these is to dream and to hope for a saviour to translate that dream of being free… into a revolution that will bring back human dignity.

‘A renewal of life-force ahead?’

That Mayan prediction is perhaps not about the end of hope and of everything (it is midnight in New York City as I write this…) but about the renewal of hope. Will the world see a better way of living, doing things, or even thinking about new and peaceful ways of solving conflicts?

It is for those living in this generation to teach those of the next on what their world ought to look like; beyond the dread and despair of the Kafkaesque metamorphosis or a world wherein things have fallen apart and beyond repair.

Back to the Malaysian quagmire. What is this “new politics” many have been talking about, whether understood or not? Old Mayan deadly concoction in a new bottle? Or a bottle of spirit brewed to perfection from the warm springs of the meadows of a new Malaysian hope?

I don’t know. Our Mayan calendar is ending. The priests are tired of predicting. But where is the Messiah?

**********************************