You know, when I read Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin saying that it is alright if PAS does not want to help Bersatu campaign in Johor, but Bersatu is still willing to help PAS if PAS asks for its assistance, I was reminded of an old Chinese saying: “Wealth does not pass three generations.”
It is alright. I am not asking who wants to help. If anyone wants to help, then help.
"This is although, in principle, there is supposed to be mutual assistance among PN members.
“However, if there are partners who do not want to help, then we accept it. So far, we have been working hard based on our own strengths, policies and practices, and I am confident voters will know how to make their decision,” he said after accompanying the PN candidate for Bukit Kepong,
According to the Chinese, virtue naturally declines over three generations.
The first generation, possessing virtue, builds something of value.
The second generation, inheriting the virtues of the first, expands what was built into something even greater.
The third generation, however, having grown up in the comfort and luxury created by the previous two generations, gradually loses those virtues and squanders everything that was painstakingly built before them.
It is, I suppose, another way of expressing the familiar saying:
"Hard times create strong people. Strong people create easy times. Easy times create weak people. Weak people create hard times."
I truly think that Malaysia, some seventy to eighty years after independence, now belongs to that third generation.
Listening to Muhyiddin speak about virtue—or about being willing to do good to PAS despite believing PAS has treated Bersatu badly—reminds me of how virtue actually breaks down.
Virtue does not disappear overnight.
It breaks down when people stop seeing it as a comprehensive way of life that governs all their actions, intentions and relationships, and instead begin practising it only selectively, whenever it is convenient.
A genuinely virtuous generation does not think in terms of being honest with one person while deceiving another, or being compassionate in one situation while acting corruptly in another.
Their virtue is a thread that runs through every aspect of their lives.
I am not saying that a virtuous generation never commits wrongs.
It certainly does.
But when it commits a wrong, it at least recognises that it has done something wrong.
A generation that has lost its virtue is different.
The first sign of its decay is that it behaves virtuously on some occasions, while acting dishonestly, excessively and corruptly on others—yet still sincerely believes itself to be virtuous because it occasionally performs acts of kindness.
Virtue has ceased to be the foundation of its character.
It has become merely an occasional performance.
When such people commit acts of corruption or injustice, they often do not even realise they have done anything wrong.
Instead, they reassure themselves that they are still good people.
They convince themselves they are virtuous because they returned RM10 after stealing RM1,000—after all, they were thoughtful enough to leave you enough money to take a Grab home.
Or they tell themselves they are noble because they are willing to help you campaign during an election, after spending years sitting on your back and making your life as difficult as possible.
History suggests that every civilisation which has endured for centuries eventually found some way of overcoming this "Chinese curse."
It found a way to remove—or reform—a corrupt and morally exhausted third generation before it could destroy everything that previous generations had built.
Those that failed to do so disappeared from history.
Many societies place great emphasis on respecting their elders.
There is wisdom in that.
But when respect becomes so absolute that a society can no longer challenge elders who have become corrupt, decadent or incompetent, then respect itself becomes the instrument of decline.
Perhaps that is the real lesson behind the Chinese saying.
Civilisations are not destroyed simply because they become wealthy.
They are destroyed when they mistake occasional acts of kindness for virtue itself, and lose the moral courage to remove those who have ceased to deserve the authority they inherited.
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