Orbits

Fifty years from now, I would be very surprised if the world remains anywhere near the same as it does today.

Someone was saying that things are about to get very bad in this country. That someone was speaking at a show for stand-up comedians, and he was quite serious. He said that laughter and humor is important, because we need such things to carry us through the bad times that are about to come. We need to be able to laugh it all off and not let it get us down too much, because it will get bad...very bad. This was not just some guy off the streets; it was someone very well respected in the media industry. His words, well, had to be taken pretty seriously.

In a way, it is not something that unexpected. Anyone who pays attention to these things will be able to tell that a lot of things have changed; a lot of things are still changing, and not necessarily for the better. Everyday there is more and more talk about racial discrimination, marginalization of people, economic problems,corruption... and the only response by those is power to all this is to warn people to not speak about it; as if by keeping silent, the problems will go away. They are worried that someone might say things that will incite the different racial groups, hence they came up with the silly little Sedition Act, supposedly to curb an such acts of civil misconduct. In reality, that Act has been more successful at curbing people's fundamental rights to the point of even stopping well-intentioned individuals from highlighting important issues such as abuse in detention camps. The Act, meant to prevent people from saying racially sensitive things, is nothing more than a weapon for the authorities to gag anyone who speaks against them who does not happen to have political connections or is filthy rich. No wonder someone accused us as turning into a police state.

Some might argue that this is nothing new. True enough; the Sedition Act has been around for more than a decade, almost two now. The repercussions, however, are cumulative, and the effects of constant media restrictions and censorship has never been more apparent. The American's are so paranoid over Big Brother; Malaysian's think it is a natural state of being. That is the saddest part, the fact that we are so accepting of our dronal, silent, existence. We are content to be blind and ignorant; in fact, our entire lifestyle reflects this. There are not too many places, I am sure, where the people of a society are so ignorant of the glaring problems within their own country. No one gives a rat's ass until the problem comes knocking on their doors. I have an excellent example; I was at a job interview yesterday, and the two managers from the company who were conducting the interviews looked at my resume and asked me if Amnesty International was some kind of College. Progress indeed...

This must sound like a broken record at times; yet this is exactly what the few of us in this country who actually care are stuck doing. It is difficult to solve all the problems, probably impossible. There will always be problems and issues that societies have to learn to handle. The problem that this society has, however, is something akin to the green algae that grows on the surface of ponds. The Oxygen and light sapping algae that causes a process known as eutrophication is a problem in many parts of the world because it pretty much stunts the growth of life in these ponds and lakes. This happens because the algae covers the surface, cutting off light which is so important for life underwater. Hence, it pretty much starves and suffocates life inside these ponds, incapacitating it of any sort of ecological progress.

Ignorance is the algae of this society; of any society in similar circumstances. Our ignorance stunts our development, it inhibits our progress. Progress, despite what we might think, is not measured by technology and infrastructure. It is measured by our personal growth, our maturity and compassion as licing beings. That is the true form of progress, something that lies within rather than outside. True progress will occur when we stop thinking of ourselves and start putting others before ourselves. Unfortunately, our ignorance of the problems we have is preventing us from going anywhere, of doing anything. We are pretty much stuck in this state of being for a long time, or at least until another huge wave comes to visit our beautiful but fast-vanishing shores and wipes us all out...