Our Culture Is Not For Sale

1.

As I drove on the highway today, I began to realize something. I realized that billboards are lining the highway almost all the way through. Most of these billboards are ugly, although they advertise beauty products. Some are offensive (with terrible innuendos). But what all of them did is to obstruct the scenic view of the countryside, distant trees, clouds and mountains. How awful! Aren't we disgusted with such gross commercialization of our public space? 

This is not a new problem for this country - regardless if anyone ever saw it as one. The intrusion of our public space by the private (sectors, companies, invested persons such as celebrities or politicians) by propping up advertisements almost everywhere now is only going further everyday. 

It wasn't enough that the train stations are full of posters, the train themselves are completely covered with advertisement - inside and out - and (sadly for some time already) we also hear passenger announcement for the arrival at almost every station accompanied by a jingle of an advertisement. 

Our radio stations too are choked with commercials for almost every song played. 

Some may say that those ads are there for a reason. They occupy space where there's potential that the public can see them and hear them. And their private sponsors often pay a hefty amount to occupy those spaces, or rather to keep other private entities from occupying those spaces. 

And of course, a lot of these public spaces - highway, passenger trains, radio - are privately owned anyway. So of course there isn't anything illegal about putting commercials at these places - or even putting so much of them. 

2.

But I believe as a society, we have the power to change this for the better. The intrusion of the private into our public space is only a small part of a larger crisis in our society - that of our lost national identity. The problem is that our society has never come to a satisfactory consensus of what makes us a nation in the year 2016.

And please spare us the group pose of multi-ethnic Malaysians in traditional clothing as a guise for our national identity in this day and age. Yes, our traditional clothing, dances, music and architecture are our cultural heritage, and we must preserve them by all means. But to portray the Malaysian society today as a group of dancers in traditional clothing is not enough. 

Then who are we? An image comes to mind. That of the Teh Tarik sipping, Roti Canai chewing, football and badminton junkie hanging out under the night sky at a local food stall. But is this the ideal image we would like to portray ourselves?

How about portraying our society with the most exemplary morals, best working and living environment, most ideal cities, roads, and countryside that best suit us in this day and age? 

3.

This is the definition of culture - of having a shared meaning in a symbol. Our 21st century cultural crisis is that we don't have any meaningful shared symbols. And it's a shame. Our multiculturalism should not prevent us from having a shared meaningful experience together. In fact we have more things in common experience that should become the anchors of our unity.

For example, our geography exposes us to plenty of sun, and drenches us with sweat from the heat and humidity of our tropical weather. We must acknowledge this, and encourage our people to find a cost effective and most environmental friendly way of keeping bodies cool. This of course may include a simple solution such as preserving the trees in our cities to act as shades.

Food is another favourite thing of ours - and commonly cited as an example of what all of us can be proud of. But let's go further, and find ways to improve the national diet. Are we aware that our current dietary habit is not healthy? Perhaps enough has been said about the "epidemics" of diabetes and obesity in our society. 

Instead of being satisfied with the tastiest dishes we can make, let us also find out what could be the healthiest of all. A healthier national diet is in fact a desperately needed innovation that would be a leap forward in the right direction for our well being.

4.

To conclude let us go back to our highways - a common experience we all share is to drive through these roads that cut through hills, cross rivers, and bring us from one city to another. Isn't it a great shame that all those scenic view of the countryside, tropical forest, and hills are obstructed by large billboards that sell beauty products? 

Is this what we've become? For the sake of selling the appearance of natural beauty, we've sacrificed the true beauty of our nature.

If we can shape our identity, let's shape it for the better.

Happy Merdeka 2016.

The Private Reader

I.

I read a book last year called "Inventing the Individual"(1). It was about the origins of Individualism
as a movement, or a way of thinking. The book approached this topic from a historical point of view, beginning from early civilization to medieval times. The question of "How did we break away from traditional family values and become individualistic" was explored in the book by studying history through the written works of people in the past and trying to understand where individualism came from.

According to that book, it didn't start with the Renaissance, at least not originally, as was usually thought. The seeds of individualism were planted even further back than the Renaissance, and that was during early Christianity. It was during the early Christian age, that people were told that all were born equal. Before this period, it was generally accepted that we were not equal - some born to a higher status and others to a lesser degree. In this sense, the book argued, the people began to strive for equality and individual rights.

I think what the author have not stressed enough, was the role of technology in creating the Individual, especially with the invention of the printing press. What was revolutionary about the Gutenberg technology in the mid 15th century, the printing press, was that it allowed the mass production books. Before this technology, books used to be hand-drafted and copied. The mass production of books made them cheaper, more readily available, and hence books had a wider audience among the population than ever before.

II.

The way that books affect our mode of thinking and how it indirectly influence our way of life was extensively explored by another author, Marshall McLuhan(2). He found that books made people more private. Before books became popular, McLuhan suggested that the people lived in an oral world - knowledge and other information were passed around through the oral mode, that is by being spoken aloud or recited. Books changed that by allowing private reading, in contrast to public recitation.

McLuhan went further. He discovered that books also changed the way we process information, as they encouraged more systematic thinking. Books, through the written language, forced people to read word by word, paragraph by paragraph, and go from chapter to chapter, the way they were originally written by their authors. This is in contrast to the spoken language, which is more dynamic, as speakers may naturally vary their presentation even when they were presenting the same idea.

McLuhan also found that books changed language and literature itself. The printed word demanded more accuracy in terms of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Compared to the spoken language which put less emphasis on these constraints, books made language itself more systematic. Authors would discover that books have the potential to replicate errors in great proportion - as terribly exemplified by the mistake in the Wicked Bible that read, "Thou shall commit adultery"(3).

III.

Where do we stand today? Naturally we feel that we are at the frontiers of progress in the history of mankind. As technology get increasingly sophisticated from the 20th into the 21st century - from radio to television, computers to smartphones, internet search engines to social media - one may be forgiven to believe that we have progressed further than our predecessors. But not all of us would agree on this.

An easy challenge to the delusion of our progress, is to study and compare the effects of books (as we have discussed above), and the effects of the modern technology like the television and the internet. This task was done at least twice before, firstly when McLuhan compared books to radio and television (4), and more recently when Nick Carr compared the effects of books and the internet (5). What they have both discovered paid more homage towards books, than the rest.

Although radio, television and the internet are faster, more readily adapted, easier to use and much more updated compared to books, they fall behind on other aspects. Books may be slower to read, more cumbersome to carry around and take longer time to write and publish. But books, as we discussed before, demand more accuracy, more systematic thinking, and allow for deeper understanding in a subject. While having references, books are complete in themselves - they are devoid of hyperlinks and advertisements that serve only to distract us from the main content.

IV.

We must not forget these virtues of reading, as we readily embrace the latest gadgetry and fashion. As we lose the habit of reading, we lose along with it our connection to the past. The history, folly and wisdom of our predecessors are forgotten. We would also lose the virtues of reading itself, that would have made us not only wiser and learned, but also aid our critical thinking and reasoning.

Some may claim that we have not lost the habit of reading - it is only that we are reading on a different medium nowadays. Granted that, I suggest that he picks up a book now and then. I would also add that he should choose a good book, one that was written in earnest from the heart of the author. Then he can judge the difference between reading on a screen and on a printed page.

History has come a long way in creating the Individual out of the general public, but we are today quickly dissolving into the masses again. Public opinion takes a stronger hold on us today, as news spread like wildfire on social media. Gossip, slander and biased views also travel further than ever before, only to corrupt our minds. So let us not dismiss the Gutenberg technology that once produced the private reader. Every book stands quietly independent in itself, and in this way every individual must follow suit.

...


References / Recommended Reading 

(1) Inventing the Individual (2014) by Larry Siedentop

(2) Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) by Marshall McLuhan

(3) The Wicked Bible (1631) published by Barker & Lucas

(4) Understanding Media (1964) by Marshall McLuhan

(5) The Shallows (2010) by Nick Carr

* Image: The Astronomer (1668) by Johannes Vermeer

Living In the Dark Ages

Enlightenment. A wonderful term to mean the use of our own understanding "without another's guidance", as Immanuel Kant put it two and a half centuries ago. But are we today enlightened? Or are we ourselves guilty of still depending on another's guidance in this day and age? I argue that we Easterners, especially my fellow countrymen, until today, are sadly, still not enlightened.

I think we simply lack the philosophy that would allow us to become enlightened. We are still drowned deep in the ocean of our dogmatic beliefs. We still believe for example, in supernatural powers, and it is no rare sight to see our people invoking supernatural causes to solve real world problems. No matter how highly sophisticated the technology that surrounds us (e.g smartphones, wifi, gps) we still believe that our troubles and ailments are caused by witchcraft or supernatural beings, and we cannot accept the possibility that we may be at fault for causing them. We somehow refuse to accept responsibility.

Now that's it! We just don't want to take any responsibility. And that's why we are still living in the dark ages. In fact, the characteristic feature of the Dark Ages, if we remember from history, was the witch-hunt. Back then, innocent women, charged with the accusation of using witchcraft to cause harm to their community, were burned at the stake. And all that happened because the people in the dark age society refused to accept any responsibility. They blamed witchcraft and the supernatural for what happened to them. More importantly, they did not use their own understanding, and instead drew hasty conclusions, guided by their dogmatic leaders. And so do we today.

Enlightenment is not the arrogant use of Reason to replace Beliefs. It takes a lot of effort and courage to use Reason. So we cannot say that the use of it is arrogant. Perhaps we say that, because we ourselves lack the effort or the courage to use our Reason. We prefer other people telling us what to do, when to do it and how to do it. That way, we cannot be blamed if something bad happens. We cannot bear the "dizziness of freedom", as Kierkegaard put it.

And so here we are today, trapped in the darkness of our false beliefs. We entrust certain people to guide us along the shortsighted exploration of our lives. We see history only through the lens of our guides and let them tell us the laws that are already set in stone. Of course, we still benefit from the outside world that lends us their scientific knowledge and technology. And we fool ourselves into thinking that our society have progressed because we possessed these technology. In fact we make it our aim, as a country, that one day one of us will win the Nobel Prize.

But we will never win the Nobel Prize if our aim is to win it for its own sake. It will never happen that way. But we cannot see this, because we let others tell us that winning the Nobel Prize should be our aim, when in fact, winning the Nobel Prize is only a by-product of becoming an enlightened society.