Of megalomaniacs and mega towers

Of megalomaniacs and mega towers

by Azly Rahman

 

 

Here is an excerpt from the Facebook campaign, now numbering to almost 160,000 members, rejecting the Menara Warisan proposal:

“Rakyat Malaysia mengatakan TAK NAK kepada Menara Warisan 100-tingkat yang memakan kos RM5,000,000,000 yang dicadangkan oleh PM Najib Razak dalam Bajet 2011. … Malaysians saying no to the RM5-billion 100-storey Mega Tower proposed by PM Najib in the 2011 budget. Malaysia needs better education, better health care, better public transportation, safer neighbourhood, cleaner water, but not taller building. We don't need another white elephant! …

"Malaysia perlukan pendidikan, perubatan dan pengangkutan awam yang lebih baik, jiran-tetangga yang lebih selamat, air yang lebih bersih, dan bukannya bangunan yang lebih tinggi. … Kita tidak perlukan seekor lagi gajah putih yang membazirkan wang rakyat jelata. … Wahai, saudara-saudari warga Malaysia sekalian, biar kita bersatu tak mengira kaum, agama, budaya, bahasa, pendirian politik, geografi atau kelas. Biar kita bersatu dan membela nasib endiri. Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!”
I am beginning to sense that the issue will contribute to the downfall of the current regime of Barisan Nasional in the next general election. It is as if the last BN hurrah to showcase megalomania and illusions of grandeur will be a rallying point for the masses/rakyat fatigued by he struggle to survive the daily grind while robber barons rob, dine, and wine.

The issue however is, developmental priority and what lies behind the proposal and what the proposed tower signifies. It is a question of political-economy and semiotics of developmentalism.

Even the name “Warisan” begs the question of authentic history of Malaysia and reminds me of the propaganda song “Warisan” (Anak kecil main api …) used by the indoctrination outfit Biro Tata Negara to create unthinking and unquestioning and mentally-domesticated citizens out of the civil servants especially.

Mega tower and idiotic pride

I wrote this as my Facebook status when I read about the proposal:

Tall towers do not symbolise progress. If the Malaysian government insists on otherwise, stick two toothpicks on top of the Petronas Twin Towers to make the building tallest in Malaysia, taller than the previous twin towers. Malaysia can then be known as the Toothpick Capital of the world – ar

Or - a cheaper path towards grandiose-ness is, as a Facebook friend of mine suggested, is to build two high rise towers on top of Mount Kinabalu.
The ruling regime is suffering from a complex called idiotic pride; trumpeting grandioseness on the outside but trampling democracy inside. I see the image of the oppressors smiling at the camera globally while an army boot is on the head of a screaming citizen on the ground, locally.

This is the image of how the nation is responding to the five-billion ringgit question: The Warisan Tower, proposed as yet another megalomanic project to boost a national ego unprepared for a regime change.

Instead of fixing the education system, attending to abject poverty in East Malaysia, poverty everywhere in general, addressing environmental degradation, improving race relations, fixing the judiciary, battling crime by instilling ethics in law enforcement, giving educational financial aid to deserving Malaysians of ALL races, the focus of the developmental agenda is on more towers, palaces, useless real estate projects, and translating meaningless developmental policies derived from a poorly-understood idea of development.

This goes to the ultra-modernisation of our national defense system itself. We didn't even need to 'modernise the armed forces' - the enemy is inside the country, amongst the corrupt politicians and robber barons, not outside of us amongst the internally-problematic Asean nations themselves.

In the history of human civilisations, the erecting of tall structures has in it the question of the winners and losers in history and of megalomanic rulers.
Glorifying tyrants, sacrificing the masses
From the ancient architectures of symbolic power such as the pyramids of Gizeh, the temples of the Incas and the Mayans, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China, the Collosus of Rhodes, and many more - all these are about glorifying tyrants and sacrificing the masses. Millions died unknown in history whilst names such as Ramses, Shah Jehan, Shih Huang-Ti, and Nebuchadnezzar are remembered for their fame or infamy.

In the history of postmodern civilisations, the erecting of the tallest structures has become a race for idiotic pride and madness. The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State building, the Sears Tower, and the Petronas Twin Towers, Xujjahui in China, International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong, Shanghai World Financial Centre, Taipei 101, Burj Khalifa, and the proposed Lotte World II - all these are symbols of idiotic pride of the both the capitalist and socialist worlds.

Down below these towers lie a population characterised by marked disparity between the haves and the have-nots, and of those living in decaying urban slums.

No, we do not need to trumpet our megalomanic tendencies. We need to look at our immediate needs and prioritise as a nation that is losing its sense of direction guided by a regime that is intoxicated with power derived from the orchestration of the archaic strategy of divide and rule using race as a tool.

No, we cannot afford another tower of raw power.
DR AZLY RAHMAN, who was born in Singapore and grew up in Johor Bahru, holds a Columbia University (New York) doctoral degree in International Education Development and Masters degrees in the fields of Education, International Affairs, Peace Studies, and Communication. He has taught more than 40 courses in six different departments and has written more than 300 analyses on Malaysia. His teaching experience spans both in Malaysia and in the United States and in a wide range of teaching context; from elementary to graduate education. He currently resides in the United States.

Lecture to Malaysian students in the USA: Why Malaysia is a messed up country

Trishakti and Malaysian politics

Trishakti and Malaysian politics
by Azly Rahman

Come General Election # 13 in Malaysia, who's going to lead the cybernetic revolution of the Third Force, Third Wave, guided by the Third Eye? The Messiah we need to get us out of the Matrix ...

Third Force, Third Wave, Third Eye = Tri-Shakhti ... a force that should shape new politics away from the current ideological impasse ...
Bloggers, commentators in social media must come together and ignite this new intellectual revolution in educating the masses. TRISHAKTI ... third force, third wave third eye ... A force that will color Malaysian politics blind. A force that will be a vigilante to the abusers of power. No one can stop it. The internet is anarchy -- ride its wave.

The Kuhnian Revolution in science postulates that when there are too many questions unanswered as a consequence of the end of history for the prevailing worldview, the paradigm is meeting the near-collapse of its existence. This is said in ...Kuhn's classic work The Structures of Scientific Revolution. (Thomas Kuhn was a Harvard historian of science)

Malaysia is facing such a crisis - the near collapse of the Barisan Nasional Paradigm. There are too many questions unanswered and too many structures crumbling - judiciary, education, law enforcement, economics, culture, etc. The third wave is here - postmodernity. The first wave, traditional societies gave way to modernization.

In Malaysia, both waves have failed; as consequence of failed policies of modernization taken over by privatization, Look East, and Malaysian Inc. as policies. Vision 2020 is a meaningless slogan created by the ideology of Mahathirism. Capitalism developed without ethics fueled by greed and convenienced by race-based politics.

The third wave is here. The March 2008 tsunami was warning of its inevitability.

But the Third wave needs a Third Force and a Third Eye; Third Force cannot be stopped, Third Eyes cannot be blinded.

TRISHAKTI is here. We need a leader -- an intellectual leader. Current leaders do not understand this force. They are in it and drown by it, like fish in the water.

I will push this idea to the masses and see it dance in the Malaysian cyberspace. TRISHAKTI resides in the cave. Plato's cave


Neo-Maya, Neo-Malaya .. by Azly Rahman

Neo-Maya, Neo-Malaya
by Azly Rahman
October 17, 2010


And thus sprach Zarathustra,
                   prophet of long ago who spoke of good and evil
of this world as battleground
of the sacred and the profane
of the triumph of Man
of the triumph of Superman

Ahh, what worth is there
     in believing in religion, in philosophy, in the arts
                                      when these are silenced by the State
                      unto which the necessary evil reigns
when the mantra of civilization and progress hath made Man insane


Bring down the walls
      tear down the bricks,
      one by one, and all

Peace be unto the nation
                that builds towers that touch the sky
Unto which Man shall return
               as he hath plundered by the billions
Peace be to the new Temple of the Mayas
of this country now called neo-Malaya
     of towers of power built upon the glory
             of people' blood, sweat, tears, and fear
Glory Glory Hallelujah ...
Amin amin Ya Rabbil Alam ‘in
InsyaAllah things will be fine,
   as they say
              Many prayed while the tyrants wine and dine

Build towers as tall as power allows it to be
So that the leaders can spit on the rakyat
                                     from up in heaven yonder
And the rakyat may happily see that as blessings
And ask for more -- in a world wherein modernity means assisted dying

In politics and business lie the evidence
                  of the glorification of the beastiality of Man
                  couched in language of arrogant knowledge
                  that philosophy and poetics cannot triumph,
 in a world of historical complexity
wherein beasts, plunderers, and hell-raisers triumph
over philosopher-rulers and prophets of hope and deliverance.

Towers of power Man so desires
To enlarge the Inner Rings of Fire
         and burn the soul entire
Whilst this too shall pass
As fast as capitalism's speed in forming caste and class
Whilst this too shall pass -- hell-raisers and bloodsuckers
       will feast in merriment –
       till the state coffers run dry leaving the nation aghast

Ah...  progress .. progress .. progress  we must as our leaders say
Progress we say as we steal from the poor
                  and keep true patriots at bay
Let us tell the people we are one nation under god
One Malaysia indivisible and all
As we plunder -- before the general election smash us
                                      Crooks and cronies and all
                                              worse than the broken pieces of Humpty Dumpty's fall

O' people down below
Excuse us while we kiss the clouds
            and embrace the limitless sky in our three-piece suits
            and our split-tongued sermons
Excuse me if I have to spit down below from the towers of power
                  and ignore your sorrows
for you are poor because you are lazy
we are wealthy because we are the chosen ones
                   our children born with silver spoons guaranteed

O’ chosen ones -- manage this land of plenty
And in God we trust
For all is but a grand design foretold
In this land that grooms dynasties living in lust
                 graced with thrones of gold

GPS for GE-13

The problem with Malaysia is that the regime has been obsessed with the one-dimensionality of the ideology of development, out of the lack of critical sensibility and other perspectives in development, who profit from the developmental agenda, who has adopted the model of unsustainable capitalism throughout the decades.

A REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE

Azly Rahman 

Come Malaysia's general election No 13, how lucky will we be to have the entire nation bold enough to experiment with radical changes, a mega-trend, a paradigm shift, and the will to even replace the blue ocean in which sharks and piranhas battle against each other in a seemingly calm sea of change?

So - are Malaysians ready with a global positioning system that will leave behind that ancient regime calloused with the will to use religion, ethnicity, and race to cling on to power fast waning? As the Malaysian election approaches, people are talking about 'the new politics', 'sustainable capitalism', 'new economic model', 'radical multiculturalism', 'politics of moderation'.

What are these? Are they merely another set of rhetoric, or are they signifiers to a new world of Malaysian political-economic realism? After fifty years of a Rostowian and Friedmanian developmentalist agenda - that we adopt and have a difficult time understanding, and yet we imitate - we are faced with a brand new old question: where do we go from here?

The most enduring model of national development is one that returns power to the people; development of the people, by the people, for the people, that is participatory, transformative, inclusive of the alienated, marginalised, powerless, and peoples of diverse cultures, prioritises needs over greed and wants; one that will help develop the citizens into thinking, feeling, and visioning beings - as happy citizens of a just republic.

Maybe we need a radically new architecture of the Malaysian mind, of deconstructionism of politics entirely, of de-schooling society, demilitarisation of youth, diversification of public administration, redefinition of needs versus wants, destruction of the old order, rewriting of history, re-imagining of economics, reconstructing social philosophy, reinterpreting religion, etc.

What we have been seeing is a top-down developmental agenda sugar-coated with rhetoric of progress that is meaningless essentially, as development projects are created to satisfy the insatiable greed of robber barons who come in different colors and from different ethnic groups. That's what we have as a gift of Independence. We are given bread and circuses to make us happy.

Damaged on the inside

The problem with Malaysia is that the regime has been obsessed with the one-dimensionality of the ideology of development, out of the lack of critical sensibility and other perspectives in development, who profit from the developmental agenda, who has adopted the model of unsustainable capitalism throughout the decades.

A regime that designs an educational system based on a narrow understanding of the philosophies of education and the idea of schooling as social reproduction, that lets culture-industry dominate and decimate the cultures of the indigenous people, that allows hypocrisy to reign the implementation of the rule of law, that silences dissenting views that speak for the poor and the marginalised, that pay lip service to the issue of 'brain drain', and many more. We have a system damaged on the inside.

While in many advanced countries politics is public service and the rich get into politics to help the poor, in Malaysia the poor get into politics to get rich and make the poor poorer, becoming a public disservice. This is the culture of pathetic politics.

We are in a 'technopoly', a polity or an imagined community governed by the determinism of technology and ideology.

Growing up in Johor in the sixties, I used to follow my mother to wash clothes at a one-pipe kampong washing area. I helped my grandmother keep the embers glowing when she cooked, used a charcoal-fuelled iron, kept warm with kerosene lamps, watched black-and-white TV, saw the first computer in 1974.

Now I am reading classified documents on wikileaks while on Facebook too. How right was Marx with regard to technological determinism and the surrender of human autonomy to technology!

We live in a cybernetic world and trying to understand ourselves as existentialists while those who own the means of production own and control. The control revolution in Malaysia favoured the old regime, that now controls materials, mind, machinery, and the media. Luddites are required to dismantle the system; a Rambo-styled rakyat who will show its rage against the machine.

Party without an ideology

Malaysia presents an example of an autocratic-technocratic system of control in which the social relations of production are altered through political control. All this talk about progress is quite meaningless without the understanding of the base and superstructure of society and the political economy of controlling interests.

The issue is about ideology and institutions that support it. It is about a race-based ideology that is no longer in sync with changing times, as if the cognitive capacity of the nation will never progress and surpass the ideology of the Malay Agenda.

The overplayed doctrine of Malay dictatorship/hegemony/false sense of superiority (Ketuanan Melayu), an arrogant sounding developmentalist agenda pillared upon arrogant and truncated theories of development that brush off new findings on the ownership of the NEP, continue to dominate the mind of campaign strategists.

The biggest issue before this election is the ideological shift. Because Umno as the dominant party actually does not have an ideology, except sentimentality and authority to deploy the ideological state apparatuses, and because the dissatisfaction of the masses/rakyat is growing in leaps and bounds and is tsunami-ing the streets, we have got a national problem.

What will the election bring us? It is you and I who will decide.

Did Marx the historian not say that we must become makers of our own history?

Or - if we are to become a superstitious nation who believes in numerology, we must also believe in a mandate of heaven, where it rains change predictably.

Malaysians, get your GPS out for GE-13. You don't have anything to lose except a wrong semiotic turn in your ongoing history of materiality.