December 4, 2012
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Together you stand, Divided you fall
By Umapagan Ampikaipakan |interesting.times@mac.com
JORGE Luis Borges once wrote which there was no end to a illusions of patriotism. In an essay he called Our Poor Individualism, published in 1946, Borges began with a following lesson: "In a initial century of a era, Plutarch mocked those who spoken which a Athenian moon is improved than a Corinthian moon; Milton, in a 17th, celebrated which God is in a robe of divulgence Himself initial to His Englishmen; Fichte, during a beginning of a 19th, spoken which to have character as well as to be German have been patently a single as well as a same thing."
Religion as well as nationalism have been mostly unsuited with freedom. They have been both concepts compelled by definition. They need steadfast conviction. They do not concede for any arrange of relapse conjunction in visualisation nor in belief. They duty upon an insincere superiority, upon a romantic faith which their approach isn't only a right way, though additionally a usually way. They have been all a time facing down a fright of rising new influences which threaten to undermine their credit as well as their role in society.
It is what it is. And to expect anything else would be naive. Doctrine, after all, final a certain doggedness. It requires inflexibility. It makes no room for compromise. It only would not work if it did. Not practically. Not definitionally.
Now, there is no extricating sacrament from a politics. The vast majority of us have been deeply religious. It is a approach of life. It is something so confirmed in to a everyday, in to a culture, as well as even in to a language. It is so most a partial of who you have been as well as how you brand ourselves which any governing body would be linge! ring to not address it. The separation of mosque (of church, of temple) as well as state is simply not possible. Why? Because it only isn't what a majority of a citizenry want.
Over a past few weeks, you seem to have experienced a arrange of stalemate with regards to
a discourse upon sacrament as well as its role in a society. From (Parti Keadilan Rakyat Vice-President-right) Nurul Izzah Anwar's matter upon leisure of religion, to those Kelantan bylaws restricting what hairdressers can as well as cannot do, to a constant evocation of God in a politics, there has been no shortage of fodder for a conversation.
The unhappy state of a affairs, however, is which you have been you do small to engage in this conversation. There has been copiousness of gibberish as well as far too most noise. And most of it has been about what can as well as cannot be pronounced rsther than than an tangible discuss about what was said. There have been reprimands as well as recriminations though small to no communication. The hapless consequence of which is which it seems to pull us serve in to a respective racial as well as eremite silos. Malay, Chinese, Indian. Muslim, Christian, Hindu. Rendering us separate. Individual. Disparate rsther than than distinct. Divergent rsther than than diverse.
Our individuality has always been a source of strength. Our recent individualism, upon a alternative hand, is cause for concern. You demeanour after your God as well as I'll demeanour after mine. Don't bother yourself with my problems, only be concerned about your own.
There seems to be a flourishing isolationism among us. This misplaced idea which you can someway duty as a republic if you only mind a own business as well as not involve ourselves in which of a neighbours. But that's only not how multitude works.
Living together means learning how to live together. Any decent multitude! conting ency beget a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a undeniably required clarity of belonging. My neighbour's problems have been my own. There is no escaping it. And trying to only risks a communalism which is altogether dangerous.
We need to speak as well as you need to speak often. There needs to be a colourful review about a obligations to ourselves as well as to a single another, about a links which you need to create to support any other.
In a wise analogy, clergyman Henry Ward Beecher drew his divine inspiration from a timberland when he said "God designed men to grow as trees grow in open pastures, full-boughed all around; though men in multitude grow similar to trees in forests, high as well as spindling, a lower ones overshadowed by a higher, with usually a small branching, as well as which during a top. They borrow of any alternative a power to stand; as well as if a timberland be cleared, as well as a single be left alone, a initial breeze which comes uproots it".
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