A brilliant observation over here at diretribe’s blog: without going too much into self-reciprocal moments in ideas that confirm themselves, the Inquisitor’s observations about Placardists - the passionate opposition-to as a confirmation of the status quo bears looking into in our Malaysian context today.
The essential question: when does opposition not fall into that trap of an “either/or”? When does reaction-to become the affirmation of the views of the other?
Let’s insinuate: to oppose is to confirm. In the gritty reality of our situation: I oppose the fuel price hikes and confirm the views of more studious economists who view my opposition as infantile.
Or another: I oppose, and thus maintain the divide the binds us all: UMNO vs. DAP. UMNO vs. PAS. UMNO vs. Malaysia: three dichotomies that, if we haven’t realized this already, describe our oppositions.
Subversion means: possessing the other’s ideas, and making them your own. The nude squat incident: DAP calls for the implementation of the IPCMC, the Police denies the need, DAP writhes in its own juices. The alternative: agree that there is no need for the IPCMC then champion citizen policing. Subvert the whole concept of an institutionalized police.
Now imagine if all our responses were of this type and tenor. Just imagine it!!
Comments (2)
The worrying thing about ‘opposition’ is that it is not an unchanging and static phenomenon.
Every generation that fails to oppose evil effectively taints the oppositional vision of those that come after. This is when that which was once construed as evil is not perceived as such anymore. This is when humans adapt via what i would call a compensatory culture that is gradually created in order to cope with the evils, and its consequences, that the oppositional sector had allowed for too long to taint the waters that society imbibes.
Placardism, for instance, is the non-(blatantly)apathetic component of compensatory culture that does not bother as much about evil as its non-placarding ancestor might have. This is when Placarding gradually, and over generations, become ends in themselves - thus, my term, ‘Placardists’, which is supposed to meaningfully describe the new scourge of civilisation. All they look for is victory some of the times as opposed to all of the time - even where this translates to hundreds of thousands and millions of lives.
I suppose, for example,, one might view ‘terrorism’ as a consequence of evils that might otherwise not have existed if it was not for ‘placardism’.
It’s something important to think about. From where I’m standing, the past few months in Malaysian politics has been disorientating, precisely because of what you’ve alluded to: we seem caught up in opposing, and then we go home satisfied that we’ve done our parts in opposing - it’s a very self-serving exercise because real change (if we suspend, for the moment, questions of what “real change” mean) is stymied by a very real inaction.
And yet, even opposing - and taking to the streets as some of done in Kuala Lumpur - is action that operates precisely within the ambit of that catch-phrase, “democracy”. The freedom to speak one’s mind, where it’s allowed, is merely lip service provided by the elites who, from on high, mediate dissent by allowing its expression, and merely that.
A little off-tangent: Strangely enough - and exciting, actually - is the fact that Malaysia’s faced down it’s own pharmakon in the guise of a cartoon published by the New Straits Times. I’ve first blogged about it here and then tried a re-think here.
At the time, and I still feel the disturbing dissociations inherent in the current slew of debates, I couldn’t put my finger on the problem until your post reminded by of oppositional either/or’s within which we define our opinions for or against.
That one cartoon was the seed that the dissembled arguments for “freedom of expression” and, at the same time, blurred the identity of the national mouthpiece as national mouthpiece and as it’s more traditional, and more appropriate role as a champion of free expression unfettered by the government.
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