The real power of change in a nation

MANY people want change to better their lives. Some pray to God for change. Some hope that their children will change things for them. Many more hope other people will change so that change can occur. There are also those who believe that if they vote a new political party into government, change for the better will come.

I sincerely and truly don’t believe in any one of these methods to realise change. Why? Because the only element missing, which is the only element that matters and counts, is ourselves, the one who wants change.

The only person who can truly effect change in a friend, family, lover, company or nation is simply the person who wanted change in the first place! Itu saja! Eureka! No rocket science needed.

After 20 years of teaching, learning and writing about, as well as observing and reflecting on the state of this nation, I have come to the undeniable conclusion that it is only we, us, ourselves that can make permanent, lasting and meaningful change in this country for the sake of our children and their children after that.

As the 15th General Election (GE15) draws nearer, the question that I am often asked by many people in academia and the media, by friends and family, is which party should rule and who should be the prime minister? My answer is, to say the least, shocking to all who ask.

I answer that change can never come to this nation because the wrong spiritual values and historical narratives are governing not just the single-race-dominant civil service machinery, not just our school teachers, not just our professors and academics, but also all our young children ready or not to cast their votes.

My argument is that in GE14 in 2018, a change of political parties happened, but ultimately, change in us as Malaysians not only did not come, it could not even exist. Mere weeks after the dust settled back then, WhatsApp chat groups were ablaze with toxic racial and religious narratives and perspectives that eventually brought the new government down in a mere 22 months.

If you doubt my “academic” analysis, just reflect on how the “basikal lajak” incident has split the country into racial and religious factions gleefully fuelled by unscrupulous politicians, enthusiastic media and ignorant and “uneducated” citizens.

No, sorry, man. This nation is currently too sick to change.

Whose fault is it, many will ask, and I just smile and say “Kita-lah, we ourselves!” There is no one in this world to blame for the predicament that we are in now, and the one we have put our children in, but us. Not the politicians, not the civil servants and not the education system. Just us. Period.

We need a reality check and I am here to offer my views and perspectives to administer one.

Firstly, we need new spiritual values that will forge a bond of brotherhood in nationhood. Secondly, we need a historical narrative that binds us in the past and joins us further in the present and the future. Itu saja. That’s all.

We do not need RM1 trillion ringgit to change. We do not need 35 ministries and departments to change. We most certainly do not need the mobilisation of the army to make a complete and permanent change in this country. We just need these two things, new spiritual values and a new story for ourselves. No government of the day, whether PH, PN, BN or whatever letters you can think of, will produce these two ingredients of change. It has always been within us to change. We must be the change we want to see in others and in our nation.

Don’t concern yourselves with the Anwars, the Ismails, the Zahids, the Mahathirs, the Rafizis or the Syeds in our midst, these people are at war among themselves. Of course, we must make a decision to vote for whom we must, but even if the outcome of GE15 is miraculously in our favour, do not hope or think that snow will fall in this country. It won’t, it never will. Unless a comet hits the earth and we find ourselves furthest from a new equator!

Nope. I am convinced that all the Anwars, the Rafizis and the Syeds will never make change happen because the forces stacked against them are mountainous and insurmountable. What are they? Those toxic religious values and the wrong narratives of history entrenched within 1.5 million civil servants and 15 million adult Malaysians.

We don’t share any common values or historical narratives. Furthermore, we do not know what spiritual values can bind us in brotherhood nor do we have any clue at all about a new story of nationhood among our own cultures and faiths. We are like an adult with a grown up physical body but a mind of a three-year-old. Despite the 100 universities and 3,000 professors, we are an ignorant people lost in our own stories and values we think others should have.

I have just one single message: Real, permanent and meaningful change can only come from all of us striving to change ourselves to realise what I call the “spiritual values of nationhood” and “our nation-people story”.

I will try my best in my next column to outline what these two are, and subsequent columns will suggest how our own religious-community institutions, our own private education entities and private citizens can make the only difference that matters.

Do not place hope in politicians, political parties or the civil service to offer us change on a platter. We must create the direction for change, the conditions for change, and decide the matters that need to be changed by ourselves.

Our faith in ourselves is the only saviour that this country will ever have and need. So Malaysians, roll up your sleeves and put on your work clothes, there is real work to be done because no amount of bitchin’ about things will shift the mountain.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.