Wednesday, February 18, 2009

NEP and Darwinism

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Darwinism. The recent publicity about Charles Darwin reminded me of something.
Some of my friends used to complain and argue with me on the crooked policies of this government. I said, why bother, they're killing themselves.
My friends went,"huh? How is that?".
Ok, let's go back to the topic.
NEP was formulated as a policy to help redistribute the wealth of the nation, especially since the majority of the poor were Malays. This policy was formulated after the incident of May 13, which was also an UMNO product.
The problem with the system was the policy itself. You cannot help people if they do not help themselves. This policy lent even more credence to the myth of the "lazy Malay".
In a serious kind of way.
You see, no matter what, man is also an animal. Of a different sort.
When Herbert Spencer talked about "survival of the fittest" (Charles Darwin didn't coin this term, in case you didn't know), he was talking about how species would adapt themselves to survive in the environment they were in.
How UMNO destroyed the Malays through NEP was that they kept telling the Malays, even today, that don't worry, we will always fight and PROVIDE for you.
But they didn't. They only provided the illusion that they were helping the Malays.
In most cases, the only ones that did get rich were the UMNO cronies who used the NEP to demand 30% equity of something they didn't deserve in the first place.
In fact, every time there's a crisis (1974, 1986, 1998), you will see UMNO businessmen dying. Because they did not learn to survive. They thought their party would see them through without them needing to do anything.
The ripple effects were actually much worse. Throughout the general Malay population, the next generation after May 13 became too dependent on the government.
My father used to do social work in Family Planning. He was once threatened with ISA because they thought he was trying to tell the Malays not to reproduce.
Actually, what he was trying to disseminate in the kampungs was that, if you want your children to be succesful, YOU yourself must plan properly. If you have too many children but the same size of resources, each additional child will get less share of your attention and resources.
So, UMNO "spoiled" the Malays.
And made them less "adaptive" to the rapidly changing, globalising environment.
If there's any single factor to blame for the decline of the Malays, it's UMNO.
They used the excuse of May 13 to come up with the self-enriching policy of NEP.
I don't know if they'll ever learn to survive properly, but to all those who oppose NEP, you should understand that it's a suicide policy. So why bother if you're really peeved about it?
Forget it.
Let UMNO commit harakiri.
You should focus on how you yourself will survive the next 2 years.

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