I think dystopian futures are also a reflection of current fears.
– Lauren Oliver, American author
The right is condemning the left, and vice-versa in North America; the anarchists are condemning the separatists, supremacists and extremists; the revolutionaries are condemning the do-nothings; the politicians are blaming each other while fattening their bank accounts; philosophers are frowning on the tenets and strictures of the ancients; economists are blaming the politicians; religion is blaming the devil; and corporations are laughing all the way to the bank as they finance the right, the left, the separatists, anarchists, extremists, politicians, economists, bankers, the religious fanatics, and all other inhuman institutions.
A dystopian society is an imaginary and terrifying world in which aristocratic and totalitarian power forces control citizens’ way of life. A dystopian society can happen when power, money and dominance shift to the elite handful of people in the form of a ruling government, and corporate titans with their fingers on the control levers 24/7. Like the devil that doesn’t take a vacation.
This is a dystopian dilemma where the chances of the worst getting worse is a safe bet. This is the world all peoples choose to live in by ands through the ballot box because dictators are a dying breed. Some even resign, and then ask whether a dictator would resign!
And recently, a male rapist in the UK decided he wanted to be a woman so that he would be sent to a female prison. ‘Transing’ is becoming a fashionable societal norm. Gradually, sexual orientation is a human rights issue that should not be subject to debate or discussion because some were ‘born that way.’ Discriminating against them is a no-no. The left is on a rampage, say political commentators and societal watchdogs, as if they can turn the clock back.
What is happening is not new. It’s just taken on significantly stronger expressions of mental retardation. The way we are behaving, as a people, makes me wonder whether we ever ask ourselves as individuals before it’s too late: who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? Like the ‘do-I live-to-eat-or-eat-to-live’ dilemma.
Our potholes in the highways, byways, backroads, main thoroughfares and side-streets are becoming ominous craters portending the return of eco-friendly bullock-carts of bygone Malayan halcyon days when suspension systems, shock absorbers, road tax, insurance and maintenance were in the dystopian future.
The Orwellian cerebral celebration that ‘we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men’ tells all that intelligent men, and women, are not in positions of power and authority as decision makers, agenda setters, movers and shakers. We have left that to the pure rhetoric of seasoned orators and purveyors of fake mantras with karmic fervour bent on carving a permanent career in politics.
Corruption is still unresolved. The death penalty for bribe-givers and bribe-takers may be in the utopian future, never to materialise in the dystopian present. But the death penalty is exclusively for illegal firearms possession, murder and heavy duty drug trafficking. The scourge of corruption is a relational and generational curse.
No. 10 has always been against corruption of any kind. That’s what landed him in deep hooey in 1998 during the Reformasi movement. He took it all in his stride, did his stint, made a mockery of blackeye justice, and returned triumphant. He is our only hope to deinstitutionalise corruption in Malaysia MFH (my first home).
And the leader of the free world is unable to stay upwardly mobile as he slips and stumbles anywhere and everywhere. Allegedly suffering from cognitive dissonance, he labours on unfazed. And, so do our heroes in Parliament giving vent to the tightness of nurses’ uniforms that affect healthy minds and encourage eager eyes!
The downward spiralling education system, deringgitising, inflation, unemployment and rising food costs obviously and evidently don’t matter. Again, the Orwellian warning that ‘in a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act’ makes me stand taller and wiser, and angrier.
The voters can prevent a dystopian dilemma if only we truly and genuinely cared not just as keyboard warriors venting the rights and wrongs of society as a whole, but challenging the system that is galvanized to the prospect of an inevitable dystopian future where the rule of law, truth, justice, human rights, human decency and human dignity become punctuation marks and pluperfect subjunctives.
‘Tell freedom I said hello’, has become the new norm in attitude adjustment. The ballot box does not make us think outside the box. It’s got us all boxed into a corner. They put you in a circular room and then threaten you with bodily harm if you can’t sit quietly in a corner!
Government is not geared to cure society’s ills. It’s up to the governed to make sense of the mechanics of governance. We, the people, must heed the advice of a bygone era British prime minister: “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader”?
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
