October 18, 2018

National identity - do we need it?

A nation does not become a nation without its people having a passion for nationhood. The founding fathers of any nation had that spice for nationhood inscribed in them by the historical precedents they lived in. Every nation had an oppressive history from which its people wanted to be free. This freedom came at a cost of bloodshed and lives lost in most cases for the colonizer wouldn't give up their prize cow without a fight in most cases for they owned their prize cow for centuries. They invested in it in selfishness or not in its social institutions and its economics. But when times changed and the world clamored for this change whose time had come, the tipping point makes for these communal transitions; to nations big and small that is vested in democratic garments of sovereignty and human dignity and equal rights for all its peoples. The new nations while they had inherited centuries of foreign ways, they nevertheless tired to maintain their national identity in symbols such as statues of their martyrs, national flags and national anthems and celebrating their history in the birthdays and events that marked milestones in their political and cultural past. They celebrated everything local and tried to shape the new nation with images of their uniqueness. Some big enough to be visible and built and even military power to show their eagerness to protect this hard earned freedom. Consequently large amounts of national wealth was spent on these even at the opportunity costs of feeding the hungry or providing shelter to the marginalized. National dignity was important and that came from the show of power. This was a downside some may say but this was how they saw the priorities. This was the new nation states of the 20th century.

In the present day separated by three or four or even more generations from those passionate martyrs and social entrepreneurs, the present youth have no inkling of those past struggles. For most. this day is a leapfrog moment that leaves the history of those three or four or more generations behind in hazy or no memory and with only the ways of the colonizers to play with as they find place in the new national democracies. They only know and feel for the ways of the colonizers from where they got educated and whose ways they still attempt to emulate in this cultural and technological state of neo-colonization.

If we seek to maintain our nations as possessions to revere and protect, we need to reconstruct the images of nationalism into a holism that is paradigmatically different from the diversity that signified our nations of the past. The egalitarianism of culture creed and language and religion is being shredded and woven again into a wholeness that is signified by similarity, not diversity. That is perhaps what the neo-colonizer propaganda calls for. It thus remains for us to ask the question whether we want that in our heart of hearts or seek to maintain our true identity not as a mere waft of nostalgia but a five-sense daily reality. Don't answer this in a hurry, and especially while enthralled and inebriated by the fun and the glitter of the TV screens and its soap operas, the fake personality world of the facebook, instagram and twitter. These social media platforms push us into this mixed up mould which makes us totally like them and where nothing of us remains. Alternatively, could we ask why don't they become us? Do we ask that question ever? Or are we just following the pied piper to a faceless future and our cultural doom. If we want to change, why not attempt to chart another model of development and modernization? Do we have a mould that cannot be broken? Is it God-sent or man-made? If we have to courage to rebuild, a re-fabrication will require new minds; not minds such as those that fabricated the past. This what i would call Maldives to attempt. New minds and youthful energy is not in short supply, but we need moral inspiration and the courage to move this way. If we have that edge, we have the chance of a new moment yet again, to breathe and think and reflect. 

Lets not bet again for another chance. How many chances should one get. Already we are too blessed and Providence pokes us again. Let's not lose this chance to lift ourselves out of the greedy and selfish isolationist attitudes that seem to have gripped us for the past 10 years as a nation. Let us reframe our future in knowing what it means to be Maldivian. Let’s again attempt to become that corner of this world people label as the most peaceful of God’s sprinklings on earth.

October 12, 2018

Building a moral society

From our infant childhood, making people like us is the model that groomed us into adult life.
This is the essence of being good in a moral way. We don't have to be seemingly good to those
who are bad or criminal or deceitful but the real meaning of good stems from being acceptable
to those with moral values. So the basis of being good is morality. Being a good citizen is also
about being good and acceptable to the people that populate that community. That we don't
behave in a way we disrupt aggressively the ways that society has chosen to live by. True, big
changes happen from iconoclastic events, but we all know that these when engineered in selfish
and too bold an aggressiveness may totally backfire whereas when nurtured  assertively, can
work beautifully to transform society. Perhaps this is what the famous adage means “an idea
whose time has come”. This coming is not merely a temporal but a mental one too. We are
always, even subconsciously, matching our ideas with the ways of society so that we can
expound it in ways that society accepts these with only little defensiveness. Even saying
something as simple as proposing a different view at a gathering is fraught with such mental
play. We are strapped into this mental mould of fear or a yearning for approval.

For Maldives the restaurant sanitation culture legislations of the 1980s were appropriate for
a push for a healthy change because of the cholera epidemic in Maldives in 1978 that struck
us from the blue. Or the mechanisation of the fishing boats in the 1980s when it was
imperative for economic reasons, to move from the sail to the engine. We can bring to mind
many such moments. Yes we can also create our moments by building towards these in a
planned way without waiting for a natural progression of events to happen or for a devastating
strike from the blue.

Building society is an art. We learn the methods from formal schooling at colleges and
universities; but the real schooling that makes us wise and useful human being is what we
reap from the school of life; learning from our own and other’s experiences by being in a
state of open mind to listen or accept others views and reflecting on it for its truths or follies,
whatever these maybe. This awareness is what orchestrates knowledge and action into social transformation. And this is what every budding leader should know. Knowledge, character
and wisdom must come together in a shared oneness. True leaders who transform society
bring with them these pristine human qualities.

There is a mental element to this too. Good character comes from conforming and acceding
and respectful deference with the realization that this behaviour stems from strength of
character rather than from an innate weakness of the self. And that is just what it is even
though society in its wild form sees aggressiveness as strength.

May Allah SWA Bless Maldives!!

October 4, 2018

To believe

Everyone in this world seeks to believe in something. It is a primeval urge to discover the purpose of our being. Subconsciously or consciously we yearn to know who we are or where we came from and why we are here. Strangely without even realizing this to be so, this seems to be the first questions we ask even as we first meet a stranger. What is your name? Where are you from? Why should it matter where he or she is from? Why can't we just begin talking? No, it is to see if that person had something in common with us and in so doing for us to search for what will make for a good conversation. I wouldn't want to pick up a conversation on rocket science when i happen to meet a person who is a day laborer in a grocery store. Don't get me wrong. I'm not discriminating. Yes indeed that person may have an interest in rocket science. But that would be one in a thousand, and that much probability considerations i will have to give room for if am to not be sounding arrogant or foolish. And so it is that we ask where are you from, and what do you do, and when or why did you come to this place? All these are questions we ask as a reference to our desire to know these same queries of ourselves. This means we have an innate desire to know these concerns about ourselves. Deeper then is the desire to find and believe something about ourselves. We ask questions to verify and validate our assumptions. Do we fit into this way of thinking? All our lives we keep on seeking the truth about ourselves. Some find it and take that path which seems to be the one laid out for us and others retaliate even as they are on the borderline of finding it. Perhaps these are the questions we continue to ask for validation until we are satisfied. Some are easily satisfied and others go on questioning ad nauseum and still not find that comfort of acceptance. Some go through their whole life time not finding it. Some accept on blind faith and some on an inkling of rationality and yet others with some inner acceptance that the notion they came upon from this search is somehow acceptable. This tells us that the myriad path to finding the object of our belief is varied indeed. Evanescent for some and wholly real for others. Yet the reality remains of the undeniable fact that we all seek this desire to believe in something.

It is this belief that energises us ultimately to find the joy in life for as the seekers of the past put it - Joy is manifest when one finds his purpose and puts it in the service of mankind. That finding or assuredness is what gives us the feeling of being guided and our hands held always. This is the confidence we all seek to actualize our life dreams. It's no surprise then that we all seek to find the self confidence to do our things in life to its best. We go to school, do apprenticeships, read books on how to do things, watch youtube from Ted talks to Yan can cook,and so on; all about seeking the confidence to do something that we want to do. To learn from others of past wisdom and awareness to get a head start in the collecting of goods that will be meaningful to us on our journey to wherever we are going.

That power is in the Universe. Surely this profound creation can't have just sprouted up as a cosmic accident. All these wonders in our universe working in perfect unison to make for the life we lead on this planet earth can't be on its own, given that we full well know that conflict is the way of our world and no two people can work together for an extended period of time without getting on each others nerves even as every cell and organ in our body works 99.99 percent of the time in complete unison; and that the 0.01 percent of discord that can happen is more often than not from our own foolish doing - as we seek our so called pleasure from the ways that upset the cosmic balance. The seasons that change with cosmic precision or the blade of grass that grows with all its microscopic metabolic organelles within it working in perfect order and precision to give us that beautiful lawn where we spend many a joyous moment. The multitudes of plants and animals that weave the web of life to make for our mind-boggling ecosystem and our livable environment just happens? Surely, all these can't be accidents or the continuing result of one? The cause must be that destination we so fervently seek and want to be one with. That lap of comfort that we seek from the time we left the lap of our mother to yet again be in that lap of our creator.

That is why i believe. And perhaps many more do so in this same vein. I can only conjecture. I am not unique and neither are you either. We are all one - having emerged from that oneness and to be returned to that oneness. What is to struggle against the churning waves but to drown. To be seeking a uniqueness that is not ours is perhaps the source of arrogance and thus conflict. That is what my belief says we must seek to control or put way behind on the furthermost of our back burners. Only then can we, as equal beings, seek to have peace on earth.