My Political Journey to Becoming Apolitical
A bit of a clickbait in the title, but I’m unapologetic as to changing it, just like how many politicians are not remorseful of the qualities they fall short in or the things they could have done better.
Over the past few months, the political climate worldwide took a big shift in power dynamics. That’s not to say that the federal power of many countries have changed as most hierarchies remain untouched. Nonetheless, a lot more individuals are expressing themselves in their attempt to put their representatives accountable to the decisions they made. For us people who believe in democracy (one vote, one value), it is truly inspiring and empowering to see people as young as me being so vocal and brave when putting their beliefs and opinions out in the open. Personally, what’s uplifting about this youth empowerment movement was that most of these people were not politicians. They are everyday people. Some of them are walking down the streets right now holding up protest signs, some of them spend hours behind a computer screen designing those minimalistic Instagram graphics spreading awareness and some were more than ready to open up and expose to the world their personal stories and experiences with our hedonistic, masculine culture…
It’d be weird if I didn’t get pumped up after all that. It’d be unnatural if I were to read so many stories of racism, hidden supremacist propaganda and so many real-life experiences shared on social media and not get my feet kicking and my heart pumping. This year was particularly grueling for the boiling political cauldron that is the social-democratic sphere. I saw it rode itself to the peak of relevancy but also observed the manmade phenomena of inherently placing systemic barriers to obstruct it. I saw the rise and fall. The two phases were so close to each other that my memory blurs the two progressions as happening almost simultaneously.
March 2020 until now was the catalyst period to a political awakening among so many young people, including me. For many people, our adolescent innocence died along with the death of George Floyd and many of the deceased from the pandemic. This is a period where we transition to adulting earlier than the previous batches of young adults where for once we have something to be more worried about than missing job interviews or saving cash for a car. I witnessed some of my close friends beginning to convey thoughts I’ve never thought I would hear from them. I witnessed myself starting to feel a link towards something I always thought I am apathetic to: Parliament.
“I DON’T CARE,” said the teen/college student/fresh graduate.
There is a general stereotype, especially in Asian countries(where I am from) that the youth are politically uninterested. I always thought that was an unfair generalization given that some countries while they do advocate for peace in racial and religious diversity, also criminalize and penalized citizens who question equity and equality in diversity.
Young people are interested in politics! Of course, they cannot be interested in every area of the political domain. We can only afford to be interested in subject matters that have a strong impact on our lives. We will mostly be passionate in areas we can relate ourselves to the most. For instance, through a recent event, I realized many of us (me included) who happen to have very opinionated ideas on the education ministry are raised by moms who worked as teachers in public schools. We gravitate towards issues we can find some sense and connection to. In a way, it’s a bit eerie to find people who, like me are worried over the overly-centralized education mostly share a mom who teaches in a high school and also had the same experience of being burdened by heavy administrative workload, inconsiderate colleagues and principals, and the shortcomings of some education initiatives.
For a lot of us who thrive on the Internet, have hobbies which are mainly driven by its corresponding online community, we are more likely to be interested in civic engagement or are already in a way directly involved in some political movement. Even though the hobby could have little to no correlation to real-world politics, participatory cultures that form around interest-based online activity were found to develop individual participants’ sense of agency and interest in civic engagement. Interest-driven participation is strongly associated with higher levels of participatory politics.
There are numerous reasons why interest-driven activities facilitate political engagement. Individuals who are part of interest-driven groups that form around shared interests in hobbies, games, and aspects of popular culture, for example, often come from a broader range of political perspectives, skills, and experiences than one encounters in one’s family or even in one’s local community. Interaction with a diverse group can expose one to a range of opinions and attitudes, stimulating thought and deliberation around issues. In addition, interest-driven groups are frequently characterized by a participatory culture where participants become part of networks and develop skills and orientations towards participation that may well advance their civic and political engagement.
For me, it was music that helped me understood better the injustice faced by the Black community, the call for equal rights and representation in the LGBTQ community, unequal wealth distribution, racial segregation and social profiling, and the validity of secular-religious beliefs. Many times, music serves as a medium for story-telling for artists who are less able to put their thought bubbles into a 300-page book. Their work tends to be more compelling when put in a format of short but packed impressions and depictions, complemented by audio world-making. My hobby of listening to music has made me more politically engaged than most from my age group.
BEING INSPIRED BY NORMAL PEOPLE
These past 2 months narrated my feeble attempt at finding some footing in the local political world: a realm ran by 40–50 something year-olds for everyone of age. I started reading more material that was directly related to the governance of a country and the history of specific oppressions. In regards to music, I started paying more attention to the lyrics of politically contentious songs since I tend to focus more on the instrumental and the actual sound than the spoken word parts.
I finished reading the book Unfree Speech by Joshua Wong, a dyslexic Hong Kong student activist and politician. I was inspired by how normal he described himself to be. He was a teenager, like me who watched Anime and anxiously waited for the next release of the Marvel superhero movies. However, he had an early raging fire in his heart against the undemocratic system he and his people were living in because they were promised a separate functioning system from mainland China. That was the significant difference between him and me, his political awakening began light years ahead of me in terms of political struggle. Such a struggle can feel like a lifetime of tension pulling at you even though in real life, only a mere two months had passed.
And so I thought, with hard work and patience, anyone can make it. I can do the hard work part and now all I have to do is practice in being more patient with myself and the process too.
PRIDE
Little did I know that in conservative Asian countries, there is a huge gatekeeping to who can enter the lower house of Parliament (and an even bigger, taller fortified wall for the upper house). I found that people who are sitting in Parliament or people are striving to earn their place in governing the country tend to sacrifice a piece of themselves to get to where they are at, whether that’d be for a ‘noble’ cause reiterated in the lines of representing the common people or to be a little more thick-skinned than the typical person. Whatever it is that they are willing to throw away, repress or hide, sometimes they become less compelling to me than say an activist or a leader of some grassroots organization. I find more satisfaction in diverting attention to the latter group of people than actual politicians because I can relate more to their aims and what they are pushing for.
Very rarely do high-profile politicians prove themselves to be worth the time to sit through their entire speech. A recent example was New York representative, AOC standing up for herself and women worldwide being condemned by egotistical men. Again, what really captivated me wasn’t the fact that her speech was well-delivered, it was because of my understanding of AOC’s humble background of upbringing and her particularly powerful written notes of what she was going to articulate in response to the misogyny she faced by Republican representative, Ted Yoho. The way she highlights certain words: forgiveness, systemic, the sarcastic use of ‘thank you’… These written down quotables really double down on what she was preaching.
Even younger Asian politicians who advocate for youth representation also contribute to the gatekeeping culture, at least in some indirect way albeit with no malicious intent. To be fair, the culture is overall not the most welcoming to start with. To be able to survive and not break down in spirit and momentum, there’s a sort of pride every politician carries with them. A good way to put it is this phrase I constantly hear from MPs themselves:
“The enemy wins by making you feel disheartened and if you are disheartened before they even try, you already lost.”
I think being disheartened is … alright. The loss in confidence personally helps me feel confident in the weeks to come. Like any other negative emotion, it reminds me that I am flesh and bone, not a walking machine with just neurons and an appetite for bubble tea. A (temporary) loss of confidence in myself grounds me and brings me back to earth. This is particularly important for humans who based themselves on their creative process and tend to overthink and be overly critical over every single little thing. While pride itself can be defined in numerous ways, this is the one type of proudness that I have difficulty connecting too.
Since politicians do not rely on self-doubt as a source of check and balance to what they are doing, what do they rely on? Could this be the reason why so many people always emphasize to put politicians answerable to the citizens? Is it for the fear that they will slowly begin to represent themselves than the voters who voted for them? Are the least self-aware people the most fit to run for elections because of their lack of human social sensitivity?
PRIDE-FULL
Parliament does not meet every day and it doesn’t operate on a 24/7 basis. Not every worthwhile issue will make it onto the discussion table. Only the ones that are deemed with the most political will to succeed in implementing the policy will be up for discussion. Many ambitious policies and urgent issues are neglected because politicians don’t see enough bright success from the recommended solutions given several factors in play: budget constraint, political climate and sustainability. In other words, there is another sort of pride in politicians in being content with solving one important issue while also not being terribly disheartened by other presiding problems that can be just as detrimental to the development of the country.
To play devil’s advocate, we shouldn’t view politicians as wise people. That isn’t to say that they aren’t clever or smart. Branding, marketing, public speaking, broad network connections, mental stamina, charisma… Politicians depend on a lot of other capable people to help them in what they do. They don’t actually make the policy from scratch partly because they have so little quiet time to themselves to self-reflect. Instead, they’d go up to their professor friend who specializes in policymaking and asked them with a straight face:
“This problem. Can solve?”
“If can solve, how?”
Only then, they get to work on a new policy.
NORMALISING & CULTIVATING HOBBIES
In Malaysia, we have a relatively short attention span compared to everyone else. Even though we are internationally connected with the rest of the world, unless those events happened to us, we lack the endurance to maintain focus on societal issues that don’t directly involve us despite overwhelming evidence of there being spillover effects. In regards to the earlier point of civic engagement tying together with interest-driven activities, not many Malaysians indulge themselves in committing to a specific hobby.
Local interest-driven cliques are very small in numbers, concentrated in one metropolitan area and are not tight-knit. By far, the most widely distributed and most frequently practiced hobbies are sports-related. Following that, Malaysians who are interested in less popular activities have to depend on the Internet to connect to others who share similar passions. There are more barriers towards connecting to an online community than an actual physical gathering. For me, the online music community was a welcoming one (for most parts) but still took a year and some to adjust myself and feel comfortable participating in.
A great (but not decisive) indicator of civic engagement is to see if youths are particularly engaged with the things they like doing! Currently, Malaysia has very little of that. I recently participated in one of the hallmark events for youth politics in my country and I got the opportunity to talk with other young people who were bringing with them a similar excitement as me to know what it’s like leading the country. Many of them happen to be great speakers! But so little of them were actually spitting words of content. Very few were inviting conversation by encouraging someone else to do a follow-up to them or opening the floor to criticism. Many were hard-headed and not willing for their comments to be subject to disapproval and only lend both ears when people say nice things about them. These people also tend to be the loudest in the room in terms of loudness.
However, a small number of people proved the exact opposite. When given the time and space to speak, they reverberated the room and shook the ground. These people aren’t necessarily quiet, but most of them displayed a similar pattern of choosing when to speak up. They are opportunistic but also clever in choosing the more appropriate chances to have the audience listen to them. The work they produced along those few days from the event was stellar, their work dynamics outshine others and the confidence when they speak is supplemented by the weight their words carry. It’s a shame that in such a prestigious event, as little as 12% of the participants were the loudest, not in terms of presence but the long-term effect they instill throughout the event.
TRUST THE PROCESS, NOT THE OUTCOME
All in all, people like me who are brave enough to be keyboard warriors but fear real-life social confrontation, come out of the shower grinning because they won a shower argument with themselves or have first instincts to mediate conflicts… cannot adopt the sort of pride(s) I described above. I cannot be directly involved in politics. It will kill me. It will deprive me of my humanity. And if I were to still survive after all that, I wouldn’t be alive enough to be wearing skin; I’d be dragging my sack of flesh against the ground wherever I walk.
That does not mean I am politically apathetic. It took me 22 years to realize that I am blessed with a diverse background. My social circle has no commonality in demographic factors(age, race, socio-economic status): I am not friends with everyone but I am friends with any one person who can be open and honest. It’s because I grew up in a small quarters on the edge of a jungle for 5 years, moved homes 3 times, and now am in a fortunate position to even be able to study overseas for even a short year. My compassion stems from the people I interact with which helps me bridge gaps between issues that other people would view as partisan in their world they live in.
Creative people do not do well under spontaneous intense pressure, including me. We also have a habit of fault-finding, even in our own work so we can never have the pride to be proud of an achievement for any longer than a few days. We are perfectionists and to work in a world where imperfection is so obvious and needs correcting yet very little can be done about it, is considered a step away from actual torture for us. Any avenues that could overstimulate us will overwhelm us.
However, I will continue to advocate for the values I believe in through what I do best, just not through some big public platform. I am my biggest platform.
