The main reason I despise the ethics and value system of the older generation is because so much of it is built on lies.
In politics, for example, you will always find older politicians saying blatantly dishonest things like:
> “I am not looking for post or position. I just want to serve the people.”
We all know this is a blatant lie.
Either the politician is knowingly lying to us, or they are lying to themselves — which is simply another form of delusion, because the basis of delusions is the habit of deceiving oneself.
Yet society still expects politicians to say such things because, in our deranged moral culture that we inherited from the older generation, this kind of obvious falsehood is treated as a virtue and praised as “humility” or “selflessness.”
How something so patently untrue came to be regarded as humility is beyond me.
To me, this is part of the corruption of the older generation: they have hijacked virtues like humility and selflessness and turned them into vehicles for dishonesty and self-deception.
The older generation is full of this kind of moral depravity.
Take, for example, Mahathir Mohamad’s concept of gratitude.
When Mahathir expects gratitude from others, what he really expects is a form of debt bondage. That is why he expects gratitude from everyone while showing gratitude to almost no one himself.
This resentment I feel toward the depraved morality of the older generation resurfaced recently when I read that Khairy Jamaluddin had dialed back on his earlier desire to become Prime Minister, saying that he no longer measures the worth of his life in those terms.
Now, perhaps he genuinely means it.
But I hope he did not just say it because he regretted openly admitting his ambition in the first place.
Maybe he feels that openly saying he wanted to become Prime Minister made people see him as presumptuous, arrogant, or power-hungry, and now he feels compelled to retreat from that honesty in order to repair his image.
I hope that is not the case.
Because if it is, it only perpetuates the corrupt moral system of the older generation — a system that turns virtues into vices and vices into virtues.
Wisdom, fundamentally, means choosing what is higher in value over what is lower in value.
And if you must choose between:
* telling the truth even if it makes you appear presumptuous,
or
* lying in order to appear humble,
then the wiser choice is to tell the truth.
Even if it makes you look arrogant.
Because it is only by choosing truth in substance over humility in appearances that one day you may become both truthful and genuinely humble.
But if you choose to lie merely to appear humble or selfless, then eventually you will become not only dishonest, but arrogant and self-serving as well.
That is why politicians who constantly claim:
> “I never wanted power or position. I only entered politics to serve the people,”
almost inevitably become obsessed with power and position, while serving no one but themselves.
If we are tired of these sort of politicians, then we should change ourselves and expecting or rewarding politicians who tell such obvious lies.
Instead, we should normalize politicians saying things like:
“Yes, I want to become Prime Minister someday if I deserve it.”
Does that not sound far more patently truthful and sincere?
After all:
* Which politician does not dream of becoming Prime Minister?
* Which businessman does not want to become wealthy?
* Which contestant does not want to win?
* Which actor does not want fame?
* Which intellectual does not want influence?
Rather than practising a deranged moral system where people are expected to deny desires that are self-evidently real, under the pretense that dishonesty is somehow humility, we should reform our ethics and encourage people to speak truthfully instead, even if the appearance of the truth makes us uncomfortable.
Only then might we someday understand what genuine humility and selflessness actually means.
Nothing good ever begins with a lie.
Almost everything corrupt does.
And if we are uncomfortable hearing the truth, then instead of demanding that others lie to make us comfortable, we should sit with that discomfort until we become mature enough to appreciate honesty.
If hearing Khairy Jamaluddin openly say he wants to become Prime Minister makes us think he is arrogant or presumptuous, then perhaps it is not he who needs to change.
Perhaps it is us.
Perhaps it us, because unless we transform ourselves to become a people that will always choose the truth, no matter how bitter, discomforting or ugly it is, rather than prefer a lie, just because it is sweet, comforting and beautiful, no matter how many times we change the government, we will still be stuck with politicians who are beautiful in appearance, but ugly in substance.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) 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!
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