DON’T BURY YOUR HEADS IN THE SAND

DON’T BURY YOUR HEADS IN THE SAND

When knowledgeable people bury their heads in the sand, it certainly shows. Why do learned persons, scholars and even motivators treat public injustice lightly and turn their bright eyes away from doing something about it.

Motivators tend to like to be condescending, looking down, a habit of constantly telling people what to do. They work well by preaching and instructing their audiences to listen. They themselves seem not to listen to those people in front of them. Such was the unfortunate episode of a particular altercation at one of our northern universities, which went viral sometime ago. Remember the infamous litany…listen, listen, listen.  Faced by massive criticism, she “magnanimously” forgave everyone for her antics, instead of apologizing.

In the other case, another motivator again unfortuitously, made insensitive remarks about public grievances concerning rising prices and costs of living. Again, there appears another habit of talking down to others, suggesting such far fetched assuaging measures, offering advice on positivism.  It turned out to be quite disastrous in simply assuming protests and grievances as purely negative signs. She went on as the person before her to forgive her critics without any retraction on her part. How out of touch she was with feelings on the ground. It was an abject lesson in what not to say.

Actually Malaysians have always been relatively quite positive, patient and gentle in receiving bad news such as having their own elected governments trying to squeeze their pockets. They do not go out to run riot, rob, steal and pillage, nor commit suicide. They voice out their protests, they come out to assemble, they come together for a common cause. They unite as Malaysians as they should and that’s positive.

Of course, the rakyat murmur, grumble, they like to let out their feelings in the spirit of freedom and democracy. It is their right to demand that people be treated fairly. The rakyat are dignified citizens of a proud nation who do not relish to be simply made to suffer in any way by ill thought and damaging policies. They are quite rational in their demands and enlightened enough to know their rights and not to be easily trampled on.

Corporate elites, ministers and pathetic politicians sound so alike in their callousness and careless statements of downplaying concern and brushing off anxieties of the people. Once again, they like to tell people to do ludicrous and preposterous things to alleviate the economic woes befalling them.

They do not like to delve into discussing and correcting excesses of the monopolies, the cartels, the lop sided deals shrouded in secrecy, the Shylock-like cronies battering our economy, plugging the leakages and the wastages.

Ministers, aloof elitists, pliant scholars and insensitive motivators have lost something precious in their sense of purpose, their awareness and consciousness of others, of common people in general. They seem to have lost habits of the heart.