Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently called on Malaysians of all races not to let certain leaders cause us to hate one another.
"Some leaders want us to hate one another … Malays against Chinese, Chinese against Indians, Indians against Malays. We must rise above this.
"Today, Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans and others are united and working together as one strong force."
He said this at a dinner organised by Pertubuhan Lima Generasi (PLG) Malaysia in Seremban.
The obvious question is: who are these leaders that Anwar is sure is peddling hatred in our country?
That, Anwar does not say.
He is the Prime Minister of the country. He claims to know of leaders who are encouraging Malaysians to hate one another, yet he declines to name them.
Odd, is it not?
Despite refusing to identify them, however, Anwar appears confident that we will simply take his word for it. He assumes that we will believe such leaders exist, that he himself is not one of them, and that he can be trusted to protect us from these unnamed forces of hatred.
Sigh.
Still, I am not particularly surprised by what he says.
His remarks remind me of something that I have always found fascinating about Malaysians.
Ask any Malaysian whether racism exists in Malaysia and the answer will almost certainly be yes.
Ask them whether they themselves are racist and the answer will almost certainly be no.
Ask them whether their parents are racist and the answer will be no.
Ask them whether their siblings are racist and the answer will be no.
Ask them whether their spouse, children, relatives or close friends are racist and, once again, the answer will be no.
Yet somehow, despite the fact that neither they nor anyone they know particularly well is racist, they remain completely convinced that Malaysia is overflowing with racism.
How is this possible?
The answer is always the same.
It is others who are racist.
Never themselves.
Never the people they know.
Never the communities they belong to.
It is always somebody else.
You can ask people from any race and the answer rarely changes. Everyone believes in equality. Everyone opposes discrimination. Everyone claims to be fair-minded and just.
The racists, apparently, are always somewhere else.
The people responsible for the country's divisions are always other people.
People they do not really know.
People they do not spend much time with.
People they have never truly understood.
Yet somehow these distant strangers who are not really a part of their lives are the ones that they know with absolute certainty to be the source of all country'sproblems.
I have always found this amusing.
It is like everyone seems convinced that they are standing outside the problem, observing it from a position of innocence.
Very few ever consider the possibility that they themselves might be contributing to it.
I think this reflects one of the fundamental differences between a good person and a bad one.
Both good and bad people have done good things.
Both good and bad people have done bad things.
The difference lies in what occupies their conscience.
No matter how much good a good person has done, it is often their failures that trouble them.
Tell a good person that they are a good person and they will immediately remember the wrongs they have committed, the opportunities they wasted, the kindness they failed to show, or the responsibilities they neglected.
They may have done a hundred good things, yet it is the one thing they failed to do that continues to weigh on them.
As a result, they rarely see themselves as being as good as others think they are.
The opposite is true of a bad person.
No matter how many wrongs they have committed, they cling to the handful of good things they have done as proof of their virtue.
Tell them that they should become a better person and they often react with confusion.
What do you mean become better?
Have they not already done enough?
Have they not already proven themselves?
In their minds, the problem is never themselves.
The problem is always other people.
Other people are selfish.
Other people are corrupt.
Other people are racist.
Other people are ignorant.
Other people are the reason the world is broken.
Ask a good person about the faults of others and they usually do not have much to say.
Ask them about their own faults and they can speak at length.
The reverse is often true of a bad person.
Ask them to examine themselves and they find little wrong.
Ask them to examine others and they discover endless faults.
This is perhaps why I differ from many of my fellow Malaysians.
I do not believe there is anything particularly strange about the state of our country.
Whatever about it that works and whatever it is that is broken, I understand it - it makes sense to me - I don't see any mismatch between who we are and the reality we inhabit.
For the level of virtue and vice that we collectively practise, our experience of Malaysia is more or less reflective of it.
I do not see us as exceptionally noble people trapped inside an exceptionally unjust system.
I do not see us as innocent victims surrounded by corruption, prejudice and dishonesty that we do not deserve.
Many Malaysians seem to think that way.
Including, it seems, our Prime Minister.
They see themselves as fundamentally good people who deserve a much better country than the one they have or one who has a destiny to "save our country."
I am not convinced.
I think we are all getting exactly what we deserve.
Not because reality is cruel.
Not because reality is unfair.
But our reality affects us more accurately than we care to admit.
When we find ourselves surrounded by difficult people, perhaps it is worth asking whether we ourselves are as easy to live with as we imagine.
When we find ourselves trapped in a flawed society, perhaps it is worth asking whether we ourselves contribute to its flaws.
When we look around and see corruption, prejudice, selfishness and dishonesty everywhere, perhaps it is worth asking why these things continue to flourish among us.
After all, societies do not emerge from nowhere.
They are built by people.
It is the heart that makes our world - if we don't like our world, rather than find fault with our world and set about to fix, perhaps we should look into our heart and fix it, and if not, resign ourselves to accept the world we live in, as befitting the heart we have.
If society is flawed, it is always the case that the people who built it are flawed as well.
Perhaps we are not as good as we imagine.
Perhaps we deserve more of what has happened to us than we care to admit..
And if we cannot see that possibility, the fault may not lie with reality.
The fault may lie within ourselves.
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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