Self-fulfilling prophecies

Self-fulfilling prophecies


I had gone to pick up my daughter from her maths tutor. He lives just a two-minute walk away but such is the state of security in our town that it is not safe for a young girl to walk back home unaccompanied at night. Her tutor, a young Sikh in his late 40s, told me of his concerns for the future education of his toddler in Malaysia. We had been discussing the Allah controversy, the latest grenade thrown into our multiracial, multi-religious milieu by the government. It opposes the use of the word by non-Muslims, claiming that it belongs to only the Muslim faith and wants to ban Bibles and religious publications containing that word.

The tutor saw the situation as evidence of deteriorating relations between ethnic groups. Many people he knew were emigrating and he too was thinking of moving to the US, he said.

From my point of view, the Allah controversy is engineered to polarise society and undermine support for the coalition of opposition parties that ousted the Umno-led government from key states during the last election. The coalition involves both Malays, who are mostly Muslim, and non-Muslims, a promising development in the political maturing of our country.

The tutor did not think this would last. “You can’t trust the Muslims,” he said. “Malays will always be Malays. They will stick with their own kind when there is trouble in the country.” I pointed out that the tensions were now no longer between ethnic groups but within the Malay community, which is divided between those enjoying government contracts and other favours from the ruling party and those who do not. Many Malays and Muslims are also revolted by examples of growing corruption within the ruling party and the government.

He didn’t dispute that but said that if the opposition was to take power, Umno would foment racial tensions to make the country ungovernable. From his point of view, the nation was doomed either way, whether under Umno or under the opposition.

So am I the hopeful one and he the cynic? Or am I the idealist and he the realist? To me this is a case of the way we look at the future shaping the evolving reality. If more think like him and see emigration as the solution, the brain drain and polarisation will get worse. On the other hand, if they take my stance, they might be condemning their children to a future in a country that will not let them prosper.

Or perhaps, it will help cause the sea change that will set the nation on a new path.

Malaysia's 2020 vision - can she achieve it?

This was the question a student asked me:

While conducting research on Malaysia, I have read former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad’s “Vision 2020”. During his speech to the Malaysian Assembly in 1991, PM Mohamad issued his version of John F. Kennedy’s” Moon Shot Moment” to the Malaysian people. In short, PM Mohamad’s challenge to Malaysia is to become a fully industrialized country by 2020. In essence, the country has 30 years (from 1991 to 2020) to transition from a Developing Country to Developed Country.

Question: From your perspective and experience while living in Malaysia, is Malaysia on track to achieve Develop Country status as outline by PM Mohamad by the year 2020? If “no”, what are the current obstacles/ challenges that the country must overcome to regain its momentum.?

Respectfully,

Xxxxxx

And my response:

Dear Xxxxx,

I have two responses to your question.

The first pertains to the "Developed Country" status as a desirable and achievable goal. While smaller nations such as Singapore are judged to have reached that status, I doubt it is possible for most of the other nations. There just aren't enough resources in the world if all the billions in the planet aspired to live like those in the developed nations. You could just look at all the implications - car ownership, use of energy, land etc - to see why the planet would not be able to bear the impact if everyone aspired to live the American dream or the French dream etc. Basically, what I am saying is that the idea of developing nation and developed nation statuses is out of touch with what scientists, economists, enviromentalists etc are saying about the planet. Both developed and developing nations are going to have to change to deal with the resource, environmental crises that is going on. Things can't go on as they have been for all these years.

With that out of the way, I'll go to my next response. Is Malaysia on track to achieving this (futile) goal? Apart from the major obstacle I referred to earlier, there are other obstacles standing in the way for Malaysia.

1. Communal politics. Malaysia has got itself into a difficult situation with politicians playing one race off against another (using measures such as privileges and quotas for selected races referred to as bumiputras) in order to hold onto power. A similiar strategy is used with the various religious groups as well. As a result, there is a massive brain drain among the non-bumiputras (mainly Chinese and Indians) while the work ethics among the bumiputras who see themselves as a privileged class has deteriorated due to lack of competition. The country as a whole has suffered from this brain drain. Besides this, the nation is fragmented without any sense of unity and genuine patriotism among the masses.

2. Corruption. There are various aspects to this. The major one is that the judicial system has been compromised and is no longer independent of the executive branch of government. As a result, corruption among the elite is hard to eradicate - indeed, the elite who run the government talk about eradicating corruption but cannot do it as they themselves would be the first to face the punishment if the justice system were to be fair. One example - the anti corruption agency is answerable only to the Prime Minister, not the Parliament. As a result, it is used by the ruling party to go after corrupt and innocent people in the opposition, while major cases of corruption involving ruling party figures go uninvestigated.

3. Use of cheap immigrant labour. Surrounded by countries such as Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Bangladesh etc where unemployment is high and living standards extremely low, Malaysia has latched on to the easy way of making money - import cheap labour for its factories etc and export them back when they are no longer needed. So the work force expands but the costs of looking after them when they are aged or sick and of bringing them up when they are children is borne by other (home) countries. The result is that wages for Malaysians and others are depressed; there is no incentive to invest in labour saving systems and machinery and the nation remains a relatively low-tech society.

I don't know if I have identified the roots or the symptoms of the problems in the above but there are a lot of related issues to all of this. One political group has dominated the nation since independence, changing the laws to make sure it can hold on to power and stymie the opposition. The media is also controlled by this group. It has tried to use religion to control people as well with the result that religion in Malaysia has become a divisive force and one that keeps people's minds closed.

Oil and natural resources have given the nation wealth with which to have a better standard of living compared to neighbouring countries but these are fast depleting and the day will come (possibly within a decade) when the government will have to rely more on taxes rather than the oil income from govt-backed bodies to keep operating - that will be a turning point in the way it operates.

regards,

Dharma

Thief in the night

Today was my first follow up at the eye specialist in Singapore following his confirmation that I had early stage glaucoma.
I was toying with the idea of telling him that I had not been taking the eyedrops and had been taking the sinseh's midicines instead but decided not to do that. He checked my eye pressure and said it had gone down to a good level - 17 and 18.
I had come prepared with my questions. This time, he did not seem to be in so much of a hurry and took time to answer them.

Question: Is it the pressure or blood supply issues that causes glaucoma.
Answer: Increased pressure has been associated with damaged optic nerves. Perhaps poor blood supply could make the optic nerves more vulnerable to heightened pressure.
Inherited traits in the eye structure could also make one more vulnerable to glaucoma - how the optic nerve is positioned as it exits the eye.
Elaboration: Three tests used to check for glaucoma - measuring the pressure, scanning the eye to map the thickness of the optic nerve network, and the visual field test. If glaucoma has gone to an advanced stage, a visual inspection of the eye will reveal it.

Question: How often should the progression of glaucoma be monitored.
Answer: More frequently at the beginning so as to establish a base line data - once a quarter; later, if tests show there is little change, once in six months and eventually once a year. But it is important to monitor because the changes are hard to detect; glaucoma robs you of vision like a thief in the night.

Question: Will you become dependant on the eyedrops?
Answer: You have to decide that you are going to take it for the rest of your life. No getting away from it. The drops available now are much more better than what may have been available years ago. There are three kinds of drops - beta blockers (don't remember the other two)

That was a sobering discussion. He gave me three months worth of drops and set another, final, follow up for Dec 24, after which he said he would give me a referral to a doctor at Regency hospital in Johore Baru. I shall have to think about this. Iwill probably continue with my sinseh medicine and keep the eye drops in the fridge in case I eventually have to resort to them. Meanwhile, I must make arrangements for further monitoring in Johor Baru.

Things fall apart

Last week was a wake-up call to the fact that I am ageing and can expect to face the inevitable deterioration that entails - in my case, poorer vision due to glaucoma.

I had returned home after work with a bit of what I thought was a headache and went to bed. When I work up the next day, it was still there, an ache behind the eyes. I remembered a couple of times when various people - opticians, doctors had alerted me to raised pressure within the eyes.

My panel doctor at the office referred me to an ophtalmologist and a couple of days later I went to see him, thinking to myself that it would be a wasted trip as the headache had gone and there would be no evidence of whatever the problem was for him to see.

The doctor's assistant gave me some eye drops to make my pupils widen and then made me peer into a device with tiny moving constellation of lights, which looked really pretty. Later I learnt that it performed an optical coherence tomography (OCT) scan. By the time I saw the doctor, he had a print out from the machine - a contour map of the inside of my eye, showing the optic nerve and the thickness of the nerve fibres covering the retina. He said the scan showed there was a thinning of certain parts of the layer. I had told him that my mother had lost vision in one eye due to glaucoma and that my sister's doctor had warned her about raised pressure in her eyes as well. He said that made it more likely that I too might be suffering from glaucoma as well. He then used a device with a beam of light to look into my eye and inspect the retina. My eye had become so sensitive because of the eye drops that I felt the light was unbearably intense. He also did a tonometry test to measure the pressure inside my eye but the readings turned out to be within the normal range.

I went back again a couple of days later for another tonometry test and a perimetry test, which maps out my visual field. For this, I had to peer into a device with a globe shaped screen and press a button each time I saw a spark of light. The sparks - up to 300 0f them - occurred in a random fashion all over the globe and at varying intensities. The machine beeped each time a spark appeared and I was aware there were many times that I heard the beep but saw no spark.

When I saw the doctor, he had a print out of my field of vision for each eye, with an X showing the sparks that I had failed to detect - the dead areas in my vision. He drew a circle around the Xs - they formed an oval cluster, one each on the upper part of my field of vision.

At this point, I still had doubts as to the accuracy of the test. Could I not have missed out some of the sparks due to tiredness? He said the clincher was that the clusters corresponded to the thinned out areas of the OCT scan I had done on my previous trip - a clear confirmation that the clusters did show dead areas of my field of vision.

He said it was still the early stages of glaucoma and though the dead areas could not be revived, further damage could be prevented through treatment. He said he believed I had a genetic propensity to the build up of pressure within the eye.

He has prescribed some eye drops to help lower the pressure inside the eyes. The eye produces a fluid (aqueous humor) that washes the lens and other parts inside the eye and then drains out into a system of veins and into the blood stream. The fluid is produced throughout the day so much so that there are up to 10 changes of fluid in a day! Sometimes, the drainage gets blocked and this leads to an increase in the pressure, which hurts and gradually kills some of the optic nerves. What the eye drops do is to lessen the production of the fluid and help clear the blocked drainage.

Although I am glad to have found out that I have this problem while it is in the early stages, I am very dissatisfied with the treatment, which deals with the symptoms of the disease and not the cause.

The eye drops have to be taken twice a day for the rest of my life. They sting and I can feel my eyes getting stressed. And I wonder what a lifetime of drug taking would do to the other systems like the kidneys!

In addition, I have a question: by reducing the production of the fluid, are we not upsetting the eye's self-cleaning system? And then there is the uncertainty about whether the elevated pressure is the real cause of the dead nerves. Apparently, there are people who have elevated pressure in the eyes but their optic nerves are fine. The death of optic nerves can also be caused because of poor blood supply. And since I have a bit of anaemia and low blood pressure, I wonder whether that could be the real cause.

All of this puts me in a real dilemma. For the moment, I have decided not to use the eye drops and try alternative treaments instead. I am seeing a TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) doctor who has given me some pills and a syrup which he says will improve blood circulation. Although he has asked me to continue taking the drops, I don't think I will. Apparently, the body gets used to the drops and you have to take higher and higher doses. Since this is to be a life-time regime, I really don't want to get into it.

What is clear to me from all of this is how Western medicine has become so dominant that the legitimacy of all 0ther systems is questioned. So with this ailment, I am going to try my luck with non-Western medicine.

Visit to CERN'S giant atom-cracker

Dear Friends,

I had the rare opportunity of touring a particle accelerator near Geneva this April.

This is how it happened - I was visiting my sisters in Europe and one of them signed us up for a visit to CERN (The European Organisation for Nuclear Research) which had organised an open day for the public.I had read about the centre before - it has a 27 kilometre tunnel that runs in a circle about 100 metres underground.

What it is doing in its latest project is to send beams of atomic particles (protons) racing around the tunnel close to the speed of light. One beam goes clockwise and the other anticlockwise.Then they are made to collide into each other. What happens then is that the protons annihilate each other in a blast of energy and an array of new atomicparticles are produced, which scientists then study.

When we arrived there, we thought we would be justgiven a tour of the premises and a lecture but we were actually taken underground into the tunnel!

Cern hasjust finished building the accelerator - a project that has taken them several years - and will be turning it on soon. Since it hasn't begun operation yet, it was safe for us to go underground.

We had a Chinese professor from Beijing University who acted as our guide. He took us down in an elevator and then into a huge chamber where they had assembled a device called the Atlas detector - as large as a 5-storeybuilding - which tracks the various new particles created by the collisions.

What struck me was the sense of fascination that was there among all of us in the group. We were all working our brain muscles to understand what Professor Sijin was telling us - we didn't want to miss any thing out. The concept was grand - they hoped to reproduce with the collisions the same conditions that existed when the Big Bang created the universe!

Those conditions existed for a tiny fraction of a second. Particles were produced, existed for a moment, and then changed into the more long-lived kinds that are still present today. But by using the accelerator, they could keep producing a stream of these short lived particles, giving them time to study them at leisure.

As we returned home we discussed what we had seen. Although none of us had much of a scientific background, we were all gripped by the sense of having been at the cutting edge of research. I found myself vicariously identifying with the scientists who work there and admiring an institution where knowledge was valued for its own sake and not for the commercial benefits it might or might not bring.

I'm still trying to figure out why we were all so thrilled by the experience and why we felt like we wanted to hold on to it in some way.

Sometimes things happen that throws apart for a brief moment the curtain that veils the mystery of life. It could be the birth of a child or a death, or a descent into a tunnel under the earth. And although the curtain closes again, the mystery remains around us.