Down a crooked path

We, Malaysians, are living in interesting times.  Someone had cursed us long time ago – the Chinese would understand what I am talking about.  Anyway, I find it interesting that if nothing else, the last decade has increased our collective political consciousness a great deal.  Unfortunately, for most of the people I see, increase of political consciousness means simply knowing what you are told better.  We are still very bad at making up our own minds and being objective.  Most of our opposition supporters cannot tell the difference between being anti-establishment and being a seeker of truth.  Most of our pro-establishment supporters, on the other hand, cannot tell the difference between being patriotic and being brain-washed.

For some of us, things are even more confusing because we just happen to know certain people and we happen to have had certain experiences.  I recently saw a video that that has in fact been online for a while  It is the video of an old friend from my university days overseas, he was telling an imam how he, the friend, had gotten involved in having homosexual relations with a certain politician.  I have no doubt of the authenticity the video.  the moment he spoke, I know it was him – his voice is rather distinctive.  Herein lies the seeds of confusion. 

On the one hand, we have a politician who has repeatedly lied and doubled back on his words and deeds.  Its a waste of time for me to tell you what experiences have led me to totally rejecting this politician’s claim to being a champion of truth and righteousness and equality, if you are one of his supporters, you would already be too blinded by his lies to even entertain the notion that he is wrong. 

On the other hand, we have this friend of mine who had demonstrated very strong homosexual tendencies in our university days.  In addition, most of my other university friends will also agree that he has a problem with telling the truth.  A certain friend described him as pathological liar but perhaps I would not choose such strong words.

In yet the other corner, we have the imam in the video.  He later had his own altercation with the authorities and consequently left the establishment to join one of the opposition parties.  I wonder how he reconciles supporting the said politician now. 

Confusing indeed.  I think it is time for us to develop our own version of the General Semantic movement.  We need to recreate for ourselves the tools like that popularized by Korzybsky, Hayakawa and Rappaport near half a century ago in the US.  We first need to distance ourselves from the idea that some of our politicians are telling the whole truth.  I don’t believe any of them are. Not the whole truth. Part truths, half truth, yes certainly but not the whole unadulterated truth.