As I See It

A Modern Life Or A Modern Lie?

As I stare into the darkness of the night, my mind wanders towards the problems that we are facing today. As bleak as it seems, to me, we still have a chance to undo what we have done to ourselves. Youth of today seems to lose their faith in their own culture. Most of them tend to follow the western culture without knowing what it means. Let me tell you a story. As I consider myself out of the main stream people, I like to take the pains of traveling to my college everyday, even though it meant that I had to wake up at 5 am just to catch the bus going off to Penang. What I enjoy most is the scenery in the ferry that I took every morning. Now ,one day, I saw a group of male teenagers with earrings on their pierced ears. Not too far from them I saw an European male, also with pierced ears but handsomely dressed , watching with interest. The European joined them, and at first they seemed proud, as if the man had somehow endorsed their way of life as modern teenagers. Later I heard shouts of unspeakable curses coming out of the teenagers mouth. Apparently the European was a homosexual and he had asked them to be his girlfriends. They were on the verge of fighting when I interrupted, and truth was then revealed to me. The European, seeing their pierced ears had thought that they too were homosexuals. He then proceeded to tell me ( being the interpreter ) that the pierced ears in western countries are a symbol of homosexuality. Therefore he mistook our male teenagers as homosexuals. I managed to explain to the teenagers the truth and luckily there was no blood shed that day. As I sat down, I laughed as loud as I could deep inside ( try laughing out loud in front of those angry mob!). There they were, teenagers of our country, leaders of tomorrow, and yet, they just do things without even knowing the meaning of what they’re trying to express. But as I think about it, there’s nothing to laugh about. Instead, we have much to fear. Our teenagers are the pillars of tomorrow and if that pillar is not as strong as it should be, then, I fear that one day, we shall see the ruin of our beloved country. And that , believe me, is nothing to laugh about.

Medias often play an active role in shaping today’s generation. All day long we can see commercials displaying the dangers of drunk driving, AIDS and many more. But as I was watching the commercials (or should I say be forced to watch the commercials) I was dumbfounded. The Youth Prevention commercials shows a group of pretty girls unnoticed by a group of very presentable and handsome boys. They were definitely angered by the non-reaction of the boys. So what did they do?. They went to the stores, bought some provocative looking dresses, styled their hair like durians and then went down the same escalator, and now what happen?. The boys suddenly pays attention and simply can’t take off their eyes. Now tell me this, is dressing up provocatively ,styling your hair like durians and courting boys okay, as long as you don’t smoke?. Well to me, smoking does not harm you as much as babies in trash cans due to free sex and the western culture. What the hell was the advertiser thinking when they made those commercials?. This is not our way of life. Is this what we want ? Girls throwing away their veil of shame? Boys and girls mixing up and experiencing things that they should not ? Because as I see it, the commercial endorsed any way of life …as long as you don’t smoke.
Why is it that today’s youth abhorred what the older generation adored? Do they think that by veiling their hair, wearing kurungs and cheong sams , they will be considered as outdated? Truthfully, I think that girls who veiled themselves are much prettier and more presentable than those who dressed provocatively. Isn’t it odd that in this day and age, the information era, where we don’t have to leave our home to learn about the world, we still find that we are short in dressing materials?. As I see it the more modern we are the shorter the skirts. If this is the indicator of progress, then I would not like to think 50 years ahead for fear that I would be blinded by the sights of women showing off their assets to the male. Would there one day be a nude beach in Malaysia? It could ,if we just shut our eyes and mind. Never mind… as long as they’re not smoking, it’s okay.

I disagree if someone said that we are now independent. I think that the people who are living during the British occupation are more independent than us. Should our forefathers be able to see what we are doing to ourselves right now, they would have said “ Gee, we shouldn’t fought that hard before”. Sure we are free to govern our country, but is this the price that we have to pay? Our forefathers not only fought for the independence of our country, but also the independence for our culture. Physical independence is nothing without mental independence. Though we are free physically, mentally we are colonized by the western culture. I remembered a joke that I’d read once in Readers Digest. An Indian priest in America said,” When the white man missionaries came, they had the religion and we had the land. Then the missionaries said, “let us close our eyes and pray to God “.When we open our eyes, we had the religion and they had the land”.It was the same with us. Before this, we can brag and be proud of our culture, though deprived of technologies. Now we can brag about our cars, our tall buildings ,our modern facilities and our modern life, but sadly we cannot brag about our culture anymore. Why?, simply because we have none practicable anymore. When we close our eyes to embrace independence, we shut our mind, and when we opened our mind, we find that we gained our independence but lost our dignity and identity.

Malays are the dominant race in Malaysia, we were known for our fierce struggle for our independence. Names such as Hang Tuah, Dato’ Bahaman and Mat Kilau”s are famous for their bravery and sacrifice. They sacrificed themselves to protect their country, religion and race. But can we say the same about ourselves? As I see it, nowadays we are prepared to sacrifice anything to be just like the westerners. If I were a Quantum Physics genius, I would build a time machine and go back in time. I would seek out the brave ones and tell them “It’s not worth it to sacrifice yourself, they are just going to be much worse than they are right now. Although you were colonized, at least you were free in mind .The future generations would just waste your effort. They knew more about the trials and tribulations of the last man standing in Alamo than yours. So just relax, and take a rest, knowing that what you tried your hardest to fought will eventually happen in the next 50 years. ”Sure, I’ll be hated, perhaps threatened to be killed for saying this, but I just call it AS I SEE IT.
“To be unable to see with your eyes are worse enough but to be unable to see with your mind is the worst”

From the desktop of: AIM 3/03/03 10pm to 11 pm.