Monday, March 24, 2008

Kadayana Monitor

Written by Kadayan Monitor

Part II


Independent in thinking or thinking independently

Internet has conquered us! You know how it feels. Let imagine in another hundred years. It must be more sophisticated than this. This is the kind of thing that I wish I could never die (ha...ha…someone will say I am against God! anyone wants to make it controversial?) but I’m sure no one in our age group would ever survive in another hundred years even if you live in Okinawa or Ovodda or Loma Linda won’t help.

Many claims about the oldest man survived over 100 years but so far I found only one recorded to have survived 128 years, a woman named Elizabeth-Ma Pampa, who lived until 1997 somewhere in Caribbean.

Those strange names of places I mentioned above may puzzle you, I’m just trying to indicate, these are the places where one would find people live longer, yet on average it is still in USA where 73.6 years for males and 79.4 for females whilst Africa has 67.2 (males or females no mention?)

What are these have got to do with Kadayan Universe? Well I am just paranoid, should you and I live longer we would see the development of communication technology many folds sophisticated than what we are now seeing.

Surely too that people at large would not think the way most of us now do. Whether it means life is less stressful or more vulnerable to with masses of information, I just couldn't imagine. But my guess is life isn't just about plain sailing. God wouldn't like one to lay idle.

It’s the development of information technology in our country that concerns me, the disparity between Peninsula Malaysia and Borneo Malaysia. Here I can say, it’s slow going and the going is slow by world’s standard i.e., compare with the developed countries. I am comparing with the countries your probably know, not that usually way our political leaders prone to say comparing Malaysia with Burma, Laos, Nepal, Timbuktu alike in front of the chairperson in RTM talk show probably, Johan Jaffar, Chandra Muzaffar or Lee Lam Thye, and etc.

If Zainuddin Maidin is still a Minister of Information he surely has something to say, his answers are so rapid and done long even before you finished questioning him.

In Sabah should facilities available equivalent to our counterpart in Peninsula I am sure the result of 12th Malaysian General Election could be different.

Information helps shaped one's mind; on the large scale is the society. In our context are the rural people or the kampong people need their mind uplifted.

Access to information is really vital to our rural people, with it, they should be able to widen their perceptions, and they would be able to see real life is real. People don't have to think similarly, people don't have to agree to each other, yet they could live happily as neighbours. One doesn't have to vote for UMNO if one finds that particular UMNO member is bossy. No one would be sent to prison for that, I guarantee it! If one is contemplating of going to heaven PAS may not necessarily provides the best guidance.

What I want to say is about the concept of thinking independently. I shall focus on what we understand by the term; meanwhile, I would just give an example, say how independent in thinking derived. Can we not say just like our earlier leaders were saying? We wanted our country to be independent. It means, we, the citizens of the country want to determine what we want, where we want to go, when we want and how we want to go about. In short, we decide what to do with our land, not the British or others!

Likewise, we can also apply this doctrine at personal level, say, how to look after your body. Shall I eat if I am hungry, shall I drink if I am thirsty, I shall work hard to achieve success, so on and so forth.

All these can only be done if one is not dependent, otherwise someone will decide for you, in return you just follow, akin to robot, or if you’d like classical example, its parrot- the bird.


To be continued…


Comments


penang - Net and Mindset |2008-03-26 09:05:43
Don't think that just because one can get access to the Net one will have independent thinking or think independently.

To be able to think independently, one has to has that attitude - it's something that cannot be learned.

The effect of the Net is minimal, because to someone who really can think independently (and not only think independently, but also think critically) the Net is but an apparatus to gather MORE INFO.

For people who can't think independently, the Net is also a place to gain more knowledge, but the effect on that person may be different from that of the person who can think independently.

As I survey the Net scene (not only blogs, but also mailing list, usenet, website, et cetera) I find that most Malaysian related items are of low quality. They are rumors here and there (no doubt some rumors turn out to be true) but they don't offer chances for people to think.

It seems that most Malaysians aren't capable of independent thoughts, and when they are on the Net all they do is just the same as their way of thought - they try to STUFF THEIR WAY OF THINKING onto their readers.

Instead of offering open-ended question type of "hey, think about it" bait, they give out truck loads of "this is the way it should be" to their readers.

That is why I don't feel that we as a people have much chance to win the world race.

Until the time we can change our mindset, that we can out-think the world, the Net for us is just yet another tool to gather more info.

I've been on the Net before it is known as "the Net". I've been doing this close to 25 years, and what I can tell you is that what we, the Malaysians, have offered to the Net is even less than what I got from FidoNet and ArpaNet some twenty-over years ago.

So what if we can live over 100 years old? With our current mindset, even if we can live over 1000 years old we still can't compete with the world out there !

This is all I gotta say.

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