Civilization, culture, and power
Too often, we pay immense attention to the main character in the story we read or movie we watched and completely ignore its sidekicks. In the Bible, it was mentioned that God established the covenant with Isaac, and from his clan, the Messiah will come. Thus, we often see only Isaac but overlooked Ishmael, whom God promised to bless. We thought Ishmael was just another insignificant character that no one would remember and not worthy of studying upon. The world, including Arabs themselves who are the direct descendants of Ishmael, thought the same for hundreds of years. No one questioned where are the blessings God promised as mentioned in the book of Genesis. In fact, for hundreds of years, Arabs thought they were cursed as there are only sand and air in the desert and nothing else.
It was until 632 AD that a man named Muhammad came and changed everything. Because of this man, Arabs transformed into the civilization state or the caliphates, with the earliest known as the Rashidun caliphate, succeeded by the Umayyad caliphate and later the Abbasid caliphate. While the caliphates gradually fractured and fell, other Muslim dynasties rose; some of these dynasties grew into Islamic empires. Some of the most notable was the Safavid dynasty, Ottoman Empire, and Mughal Empire. As a result, the Islam Empire rules the Middle East and part of Europe for more than a thousand years. Even the Mongols who invaded and ended the Islam Golden age in 1258, later being influenced by the Arabs cultures and converted to Islam.
With the fall of the Mongols empire in 1368, a new power was rising; the Ottoman Turks had dominated the region until the early 20th century, after World war 1 in 1922. The rise of the West made the world thinks that God's blessings unto Ishmael have come to an end, but the supposition was dissolved in 1938 when petroleum oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. With the discovery of plentiful fuel found in the barren desert, the blessing of God unto the descendants of Ishmael proceeds.
We can certainly depend on natural resources to thrive, but in the long run, it was the country's economic strategy that would sustain the growth. A country bestowed with plenty of resources may not prosper unless the rulers know and are determined to utilize them to the fullest. The Middle Eastern and Mongols had scarce resources to prosper, but they stood among many great powers in history. All they depend on was the state's cumulative knowledge, which taught them how to win a war, get profit from trading, how to recover from serious illnesses, and etcetera.
Today, we witnessed a similar situation in China. China, a little different from the Middle East, is bestowed with plentiful resources. However, to secure and manage the large landmass and sustaining the large population have always been a challenge to the rulers. Despite being frequently struck by many natural disasters such as famine, earthquakes, and floods, combined with the West's oppression and sanctions, e.g., from obtaining diverse materials for research and development, the Chinese GDP per capita rose by 1000 USD in the middle of Covid pandemic, surpassed Malaysia by 200 USD per capita in 2021. This is a tremendous leap, though maybe partly due to the great recession of the world economy due to the pandemic curfew and border restriction. Despite criticism from the world, China is more than equipped to survive without other countries today. With around 5000 years of civilization and cumulative knowledge and experiences and one-fifth of the world population living in the land, China has many talents and sufficient arable land to provide for its own. In other words, China today is self-sustainable, just like what it used to be in history. Conversely, it was until the pandemic hit and China closed its border then the world realized how dependent they are on the Chinese market.
Singapore is another country that survived solely based on well management strategy. As a result, the country rises to the top from a third-world country in 1980 to one of the richest and most developed countries in the world today. The country thrived on its advanced technological infrastructure, availability of skilled labor, favorable immigration laws, and the efficient way new businesses can be set up there. However, low levels of education or skills, lack of employment opportunities, low wages, large family size, and lack of basic amenities are among the factors causing urban poverty in its neighbor, a country with landmasses a hundred times larger than Singapore, Malaysia.
The population of Singapore is made of Chinese, Indian, and Malays, whom the country laws provide fair opportunities for each of the citizens to compete with each other without preconditions or quotas. In a setting like Singapore with the clash of three civilizations, the platform allows each competitor to put on the cumulative pieces of knowledge for practice and for further application. Most people there have mastered more than two languages, and the amalgamation of culture and essential survival skills from each ethnicity have produced a better-rounded survivor in the market. Dr. Mahathir would have prevented racial riots due to large disparities of incomes between races in Malaysia, but he had also brought Malaysian on an irreversible journey of recession. Quotas and special rights may have reduced income disparities between races, but they have also prevented the protected group to fight their best war. Eventually, they become slack and often surrender their fates unto the government policies, finally increasingly incompetent. The non-protected group, when noticed of their competitor's gravely conditions, would let their guard down and eventually become less aggressive than their counterparts in Singapore.
This negative feedback mentioned above is unamenable due to the nature of Constitutional Laws and rulers' mindsets. The situation above, if allowed to go on for a few decades, Malaysia will soon fall behind and become one of the poorest countries in Asia. Nevertheless, there are few things that we can ponder on and started to plan for practice as an individual:
1) Start to equip ourselves with necessary survival skills and knowledge
2) Learn from the cumulative knowledge of other civilization
3) Stop feeling comfortable with our country standard but pursue a higher world-class income
4) Migration
Migration should be the last to consider as it is not sustainable to move too often. As we migrate to seek a better home due to the current advantages, we will have to also embrace the setback in the new home, which could be intolerable sometimes. However, we are living in a rapidly changing world today, which requires rapid adaptation and spontaneous readjustment frequently. As some of our grandparents moved to certain countries to seek a better life, we should have the same courage to move out there if it is necessary. Sometimes, we tend to play victim, to self-sympathize but refused to do anything to change the current pitfall. We preferred to stay in our comfort zone though it can be hellish because we were afraid to change, afraid of hitting uncertainties. However, the same uncertainties have brought us to where we are.
Till then!
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