I am not going to talk about the legality behind Hannah Yeoh’s husband’s company getting two state projects from the Selangor government. What’s the point? If you do, Hannah Yeoh and her fan club will probably just shoot you down by saying there is nothing wrong with her husband getting the project because he got it legally and on merit. But if you tell them that in that case, Mahathir’s children also must have gotten their billions legally and on merit, not through kleptocracy as they often allege, they will tell you that you are not making sense because you are comparing apples to oranges.
You can make a blind person see, but you cannot make those who deliberately turn a blind eye see, even if there is nothing wrong with their eyes.
Rather than go down the rabbit hole with them, I thought I would talk about how the definition of being good has changed so drastically in our society.
In the old days, it used to be that being good was all about service and sacrifice.
Once upon a time, if you wanted to be good and you were a doctor, instead of taking the RM 100 that you rightfully earned by doing your job, you might just take 50 or nothing at all from a patient that you feel is deserving of your goodwill. If you were a teacher, instead of just teaching on the weekdays, you might allocate some time on your weekend to teach an extra class out of goodwill for your students. That RM 50 that you sacrificed or that extra class on the weekend that you provided out of your own resources and time would then count as your service and sacrifice. People used to feel that they had to perform such service and sacrifice, if not regularly than for as often as they can, because it is only through performing such a service and sacrifice, that they would be able to know that they are a good person.
You wouldn’t get anything worldly from performing such a service or sacrifice, even if some people recognized and appreciated your efforts. The chief benefit of performing such service and sacrifice was something that you would only experience in your soul. By performing such a service or a sacrifice, you would be able to feel like you are a good person on the inside, and this self-knowledge that you are a good person, even if nobody else knew it, used to be something that people treasured immeasurably. You can even say that once upon a time ago, many of us used to treasure it as something more valuable than all the gold in the world.
Today, however, being good is more about an image. Being good today is basically nothing more than an act - it is about you speaking softly, smiling beautifully, saying the right words, and acting out some noble gestures for the gallery, just to show everyone what a good person you are.
After you show everyone what a good person you are, you can expect that the universe will reward you by making you a minister and giving your husband a fat government contract.
When you are rewarded by the universe in this way, you will expect everybody to be happy for you because if they are not happy that such a good person like you is being rewarded justly by the universe, it must be because you are racist and evil.
In this New Malaysia way of being good, the question of service or sacrifice never arises at all. To be good, you are not expected to part with your time, resources, energy, or attention in order to serve anything outside of yourself. Even if you part with your time, resources, energy, and attention, you part with it in the way that a bank gives out a loan – Whatever you give today, you will expect it to be returned to you manifold later on.
In today’s manner of being good, you don’t practice letting go of what you have in the world to uplift your soul.
Instead, like an actor, you just present the image of someone who is good, and in return for your vanity, you and your husband will be rewarded with everything you wish for in the world.
Looking at the antics of characters like Hannah Yeoh in New Malaysia is actually making me respect thieves and thugs on the street.
At least when these street cutthroats and gangsters commit their crimes, they are honest enough about it to let you know what they are doing is a crime, and you don’t have to treat them like saints.
These new sorts of thieves, however, not only pretend they are not who they are, but after they steal from you, they will still expect you to honor and esteem them, as if it is their image and not their intention and actions, that truly represent who they are.
TheRealNehruism
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, The Star, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
TheRealNehruism is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact Newswav.
