You can gain all the knowledge of the universe and still be devoid of even a sliver of the wisdom needed to use it.
Wisdom, like knowledge, is innate to life, it is always a matter of building upon and using what you gain.
You can build something from nothing.
The universe did it.
Our bodies turn a mineral devoid of life, into life.
We turn a simple rock, into the wall of our house, giving that “useless nothing", both purpose and worth.
Intelligence is knowing which ways you can cut that rock.
Wisdom is using the knowledge you've gained from cutting the rock to use it in an application.
Wisdom is a choice. I choose to learn everyday from everyone I meet, and in every way possible. The news, books, magazines, television, internet, etc.
Whether or not you learn wisdom is up to you.
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SITI Kasim was compelled to address the missing crescent moon gaffe in the Jalur Gemilang by Sin Chew Daily after the UMNO Veterans’ Club and PERKASA called for the revocation of academician and political commentator Prof Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi’s citizenship over his unpatriotic remarks while siding those who insult national symbols.
Describing the entire episode as merely “a mistake blown out of proportion”, the human rights activist and lawyer sees the mainstream Chinese publication as being an easy prey amid racial and religious tension orchestrated by advocates of Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy).
‘Imagine if a similar bunder is committed by a Malay publication linked to cronies of the detractors, would the matter be this explosive?” she asked in her latestYouTuberant.
“That the moon crescent coincidentally represents the status of Islam as Malaysia’s official religion has presented them with the right opportunity to play the race and religious sensitivity card.
“I can’t fathom how the missing crescent moon can be linked to an anti-Islam movement … I wonder what type of Islamic faith do they practise for Islam is not merely a symbol but a basis for moral beliefs and behaviours or a guide towards righteous action.”
All in all, Siti Kasin observed that it was a matter of perfect timing to condemn the Chinese on grounds that the gaffe happened in a Chinese publication when animosity agonist the Chinese is high coupled with the state visit by Chinese president Xi Jinping (which was perceived to be a DAP initiative).
“This is just an honest mistake capitalised by politicians with even former education minister Maszlee Malik joining the fray to demand retribution (heads to roll and subjecting the publication to legal action),” lamented the Orang Asli advocate.
“Hello Maszlee, UMNO Veterans’ Club and PERKASA. Have you ever voiced concern over ustaz at religious or tahfiz schools rap*ig or sodom*sing pupils under their care?
“Have you ever opposed corruption involving millions or billions of ringgit committed by Malay leaders? Or have you ever made a fuss when thousands of police reports against errant preachers like Zamri Vinoth who insult other faiths at will?”
Aside from their double standard calls, Siti Kasim also ticked off the Msdani government for pandering to the demands of the rightist groups.
“By right, our authorities shouldn’t have detained the chief editor and deputy chief sub-editor … Just issue a warning letter or impose a first-time offence fine for nobody in their right frame of mind would purposely want to erase the crescent moon from the Malaysian flag,” she justified.
“Supposedly if this is done on purpose or is a repeatedly occurrence, then a stiffer punishment can be meted out … Surely our system doesn’t use commonsense as the Sin Chew Daily management has apologised in three languages.
“The bottom line is that it’s just an unintended mistake contrary to the various conspiracy theories of hidden or subtle motives raised by detractors.”
At the end of the day, Siti Kasim could not better agree with former de facto law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim who questioned why the government is so swift to act against the two editorial personnel if Sin Chew Daily.
“This is just for one blunder but what about Zamri Vinoth’s thousands of police reports lodges against him over the years … Why is it that the cops just sit on the reports without doing anything?
When the offender is a non-Muslim, the action is seemingly so swift when many a time, there is no action if the offenders are Muslim preachers.
The Madani government needs to teach its allies not to make a mountain out of a molehill but just to accept the apology and move on instead of allowing the Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) gang to fully exploit the situation to safeguard their power and influence.
To the Malays, I urge them not to blindly fall for the whims and fancies of those with political interest. – Focus Malaysia
BANGKOK: Seven earthquakes were recorded in Mae Hong Son and along the Myanmar border on Monday (April 21) morning, according to the Thai Meteorological Department’s Earthquake Observation Division.
Between midnight and 7am, six of the quakes had their epicentres in Myanmar, while one occurred in Pai District, Mae Hong Son. The strongest tremor, measuring 4.3 in magnitude, struck Myanmar at 4.17am.
The earthquakes recorded during this period are as follows:
4.49am: A 1.7-magnitude tremor was detected with its epicentre in Myanmar, approximately two kilometres beneath the surface and around 47km southwest of Mueang district, Mae Hong Son province.
4.17am: A 4.3-magnitude tremor was recorded with its epicentre in Myanmar, about 10kms deep, located approximately 159km northwest of Khun Yuam district, Mae Hong Son province.
2.11am: A 3.2-magnitude tremor occurred with its epicentre in Myanmar, approximately 10km below the surface and about 360 kilometres northwest of Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son province.
2.07am: A 2.7-magnitude tremor was detected in Thailand, with the epicentre in Mae Na Toeng subdistrict, Pai district, Mae Hong Son province, approximately five kilometres beneath the surface.
2.02am: A 2.7-magnitude tremor occurred in Myanmar, around six kilometres deep, approximately 81km northwest of Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son province.
1.20am: A 2.3-magnitude tremor was reported in Myanmar, about 10km beneath the surface and around 54km northwest of Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son province.
0.38am: A 2.1-magnitude tremor was detected in Myanmar, approximately 10km deep and around 67km northwest of Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son province. - The Nation/ANN
“There are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent three-day visit comes at a time of extraordinary geopolitical upheaval in the world, bringing to mind an old Malay proverb.
“Gajah sama gajah berjuang, pelanduk mati ditengah-tengah” (when elephants fight, the mousedeer die in the middle).
Yes, Xi’s visit was planned well in advance of the “tariff war”, but make no mistake, sooner or later, our US$500 billion economy will be caught up in a brutal and bruising trade war between the United States’ US$29 trillion economy and China’s US$18 trillion economy.
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How do we walk the tightrope? How will we pull off the balancing act? How will we maintain our permanent interests? An understanding of Chinese history, politics, and culture could prove immensely useful in these difficult times, but our academia and our mainstream media have said little so far. Why?
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspecting an honour guard at Istana Negara on April 16
Perhaps our academia is content with knowing China through the narrow lens of Malaysian history and politics, ignoring the fact that seven million Chinese Malaysians are only a subset of a much larger whole. As a Singaporean politician put it succinctly about the Mainlanders: “We are their relatives but not family.”
Or is our academia silent because there are no China experts in their ranks, having vacated this difficult field to our racist politicians and preachers who say the darndest things about the “other”, the Chinese included, while our mainstream media remains cautious lest they be seen as an unpatriotic fifth column.
This may partially explain why recent cases where the crescent moon was missing on several Jalur Gemilang are a bigger issue to a section of our society than Xi’s visit.
Chinalays bare our failures
Come on! Let’s get real. There are only two types of gaffes: a politician accidentally telling the truth, and then there is human error. And now, there are even errors induced by the use of artificial intelligence. I am old enough to tell you I have seen enough upside-down flags to make me wonder whether I was seeing things.
But I suspect the real reason why China’s meteoric rise as an economic powerhouse and Xi’s visit has not been accorded the scholarly attention it deserves is a simple one: it will lay bare our faultlines and the failure of many of our government policies, including our own mini-version of former Chinese communist supremo Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward”. Just ask former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad for more details!
Let’s be honest, mired in patronage and corruption, our Vision 2020 became an abject failure. Once an Asian tiger, we are now prone to purring and preening like a kitten.
We are not just stuck in the middle-income trap; we are hellbent on spreading the tentacles of the Mahathirian kenduri state by first destroying our education system and then the competitiveness of our economy.
In contrast, starting from a low base, the Chinese are now global leaders in many fields in a mere 40 years through relentless toil, sacrifice, effort and discipline. They put their noses to the proverbial grindstone, learning from the rest of the world even as they struggled to put food on the table.
Yes, the rest of the world had its own agenda in setting up shop in China, but that’s another story.
China’s rise is not luck
I can hear the detractors say China’s success is due to the World Trade Organization, copying on an industrial scale, being a one-party propagandist state (as though we were not one for 22 years) and unfair trade practices, and that their products are subpar even as they have become the world’s largest exporter.
Yes, there is some truth in all of this, but we haven’t even gotten into their cultural and civilisational values.
Like taking personal responsibility for one’s actions. As the Chinese say, “He who blames others has a long way to go; He who blames himself is halfway there; He who blames no one has arrived”. Or that “real gold is not afraid of fire”.
We can go on and on, but the point is this: life is a competition, whether we like it or not, for we humans have inherited the trait of looking over our shoulders.
And competition creates wealth. But because we live in a modern world, this competition must be healthy, not deadly. We must have laws to ensure a level playing field and to make sure no one is exploited. They must be enforced without fear or favour.
Which is why Deng Xiaoping was humble enough to come a-knocking to our shores in 1978.
Quietly set aside was the brutal guerrilla war waged by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) from 1948 to 1960 and beyond. The MCP was founded in 1931 at the behest of the Comintern and with the support of the Chinese Communist Party.
It was also at about this time that renowned historian Arnold Toynbee famously wrote that Malaya was destined to become “a Chinese province by peaceful penetration”.
Deng then visited Singapore, where the “Old Master”, Lee Kuan Yew, showed him the ropes. He also did not hesitate to tell Deng that Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and the disposal of the autogenocidal Pol Pot regime notwithstanding, Asean was deeply suspicious of China’s support for communist insurgencies.
The late Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew
Two years later, Deng quietly shelved his support for them after a quick invasion of Vietnam to “teach little brother a lesson”.
Breakingwith millennia of tradition
Deng, acutely aware that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had let the people down, decided to make a massive U-turn. The CCP will set them on the road to capitalism! This is easily the grandest contradiction in all of communism as an ideology.
His call that “To get rich is glorious” resonated with the Chinese people. He didn’t have to tell them to work hard and take risks. These things came naturally to them, a people who had suffered much and had more games of chance than any other race on earth.
All this was a far cry from 1793 when the British Macartney Mission arrived in Emperor Qian Long’s court in Peking with the aim of ensuring “acceptance of a treaty of friendship and alliance” by impressing the Chinese with the “wisdom and justice of the King of Great Britain”, “the wealth and power of (our) country”, and “the genius and power of her people”.
Included in this embassy were botanists, a philologist, a physician, mechanists, artists, and musicians, all “highly educated products of the Age of Reason” and carefully chosen, including sophisticated scientific instruments.
In short, the Brits knew that the Chinese had missed out on the Industrial Revolution and were still an agrarian society with some innovation thrown in here and there.
The Industrial Revolution
Emperor Qian Long responded to this arrogant offer in an edict: “Swaying the wide world, I have but one aim in view, namely to maintain a perfect governance and to fulfil the duties of the state: strange and costly objects do not interest me… As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects, strange or ingenious, and I have no use for your country’s manufactures”.
His response reflected the structure of Chinese society for millennia. On top of the pile was the emperor enjoying the mandate of heaven; next came the scholars and officials; and then the farmers, followed by the artisans and craftsmen. At the bottom were the traders and merchants who were regarded as tricky and unethical.
How things have changed! Now we also know why the durian farmers of Raub are the true Musang kings.
The years passed, and the mass of China remained isolated until Deng opened it up to the world. And like so often in the past, the West made the mistake of assessing the capabilities of the Chinese when they were at a low point.
It took a fair-minded person like Bertrand Russell, who lectured in China for nine months in 1921, to correctly assess that though they had missed out on industrialisation, Chinese civilisation has many virtues, including harmony, benevolence, and innovativeness.
After not taking up the first offer to trade in 1793, China under Deng was now carrying out the historical process of transforming her ancient civilisation into a modern industrial state with unprecedented vigour and energy. She modernised in double quick time to the astonishment of the world.
Thirty years on, China’s present feud with the US over trade and tariffs signals its preparedness to take a lead role in world affairs.
The battle ahead is not between capitalism and communism. China, the new capitalist power, has outshone the old ones at their game. More than ever, China believes its vision for an orderly world and a harmonious society is the correct one.
After seeing photos of students in Putrajaya bidding Xi farewell, I cannot resist quoting the English translation of the opening lines from “Taking Leave of Cambridge Again”, written in 1928 by the modern Chinese poet Xu Zhimo:
Softly, I am leaving, Just as softly as I came; I softly wave goodbye To the clouds in the western sky.
-Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
