Another weekend passed and another weekend of anti-lockdown, and basically anti-everything protests in Sydney and Melbourne. For some they said it was the lockdown fatigue but in reality, it is just a bunch of self-appointed self-declared righteous ‘freedom fighters’ fighting for nobody but their own attention.
Before this whole crazy charade parade yesterday, I had a chat with a friend the other day. We are both passionate about our society and yet we are both disappointed by it.
That does not just include the public health order issues about the COVID pandemic now in its Delta dance, but also about what has been happening around the world. Politics, which once was deemed a necessary evil to bring out the best of the society, seemed to have become just the evil of our society.
I told my friend I was deeply saddened by the selfishness and inhumane ways that some people, including both people in positions of power and some regular people, treating other people. My friend replied saying humans are never about being humane to each other, so why troubled yourself about humanity itself? Because humanity was never about humanity.
Looking back at history I should know. I warned about certain things in the past, bad things, that could come to pass when certain behaviours continued, and all unfortunately have become our objective reality. All those once important values for our society to become better for all became values being manipulated or adulterated to force other people to comply to individuals’ ways of life. They are no longer about the better of others and me, but simply me.
We treasure our freedom, we treasure the fact that democracy provided us that freedom, as compared to some white terror nations that people need to live in fear to just voice their opinions. Or people in war torn countries terrorised by terrorists that the basic freedom to stay alive is in jeopardy. But have we been enjoying this freedom to a point that freedom means only our own freedom, and this concept of ‘my freedom’ has grown to a point that it means it has to be executed at the expense of other people’s true or basic freedom? If so, aren’t we no difference to those countries that sell white terror or autocracy for efficient governing, because that’s the only way keep their own rights to rule?
Individualism is a by-product of our democracy. If we do not have individual thinking, we will not have the ability to exercise the collective right for democracy. But over the last few decades, individualism had branched into myriad forms of personal rights, informed or not. These individual rights are no longer about what is right or what is wrong, but what I want and what I don’t want. Parents and teachers were told not to condemn kids when they did wrong or did not perform the most basic tasks they are supposed to because, that will hurt their pride and who they are as individuals. As this generation of kids grow up, some of them became individuals who are used to having themselves at the centre of the universe. To get what they want, they don’t feel the need to work hard because in their eyes, when they grew up, there is nothing called wrong, as long as they wanted it.
As the size of these grown-up kids reached a critical mass, they became a formidable force of uninformed ripe to be harvested as tools for politicians who rule by popular jingles and slogans; or cult leaders who are ready to reap a profit out of their own twisted ideologies. This does not mean that these people are uneducated. Rather, regardless of their education, getting what they wanted by whatever means they see fit was the truth and the only truth. That is because the idea of right or wrong does not matter, but the idea of what they want and what they see fit are what matter. If the lies or conspiracy theories suit their purpose and sounded like music to their ears, they will fight for it, for that’s the only thing they care about and are passionate about.
We all need to fight for a good cause, hence our democracy allows us to protest when the government does not live up to our standards. Hence, we questioned our leaders when they no longer exhibit values or level of performance that we considered acceptable. Therefore, we vote them out and replace them with someone else when it is the time to give them the report cards. However, these need to be done in an informed manner. By informed, it does not include conspiracy theories that took information out of context to cloud the truth, lies that were fabricated to entice people, or concerted efforts of racial, gender and other misinformation to oppress other people’s right. However, this is what we are seeing around the major democracies in this world, and Australia is no exception.
Some may ask, ‘is there still a way to fix this?’ In my humble opinion, the current batch is a lost cause. They won’t and will never accept anything that does not fit their personal agenda, because it is all about them, not what our society needs. Case in point, the anti-lockdown, anti-vaxxing and anti-whatever they want protests over the weekend. The only way to save our democracies from further disintegration is to put more effort in to social and cognitive education at the same time. So, our upcoming generations know what is actually right and wrong, in an informed manner; and also understanding their relationship with our society – what’s personal freedom in relation to the greater good of our society. Without these, our society will probably continue to lower its social values. When people’s cognitive ability improved but social EQ declined, that will mark the collapse of our once prided democratic society. As society does not matter, but personal gains do.
I might sound pessimistic to some. But judging from what I saw in the last 9 weeks in Sydney, I can’t help but sounding so. I wanted to be optimistic, or even pragmatically optimistic, but events as such compelled me to feel otherwise.
