Fixing Flaws

It's a rainy day today and I had gone downtown earlier using the Park and Ride facility: leaving my car at the Phileo Damansara MRT station carpark and taking a train to Bukit Bintang. After running my errand in town, I returned by train and then drove to Cyberjaya. I'm now happily parked in my apartment, catching my breath while typing these words. 

Another week to go before our national general elections: GE15, as we call it. I'll be driving back to my hometown on the 18th so that I can vote the next day. The campaigning among all the political parties has been heating up over the past week, since nomination day. Lots of mud-slinging and name-calling are going on and social media is busy with people sharing political gossip and conspiracy theories.

We all think we are better than politicians. As I wrote in a previous article, Of Pigs and Politicians, politicians are just a reflection of us. They are just our Monsters from Id. People spew hatred just to boost their own ego. That's just human nature. 

I prefer to see people as flawed creatures. Rarely are people outrightly evil; most of the time it's just fear and selfish interests that are driving them. I try not to hate. Hatred is wasteful as it takes up a lot of mental energy. Why not learn instead of hate?

We all have a vision of what the country should be. Some would like it to be more liberal, others think that religion is more important. Each side is uncomfortable living in a world populated and controlled by the other. So we fight for what we think is a better vision of the future.  We can argue our case and campaign vigorously for our vision to be realised. But we'll still accept the election results even if they do not go our way. In a democracy, the majority rules. But the majority does not always make the right decision nor does it always yield clear results.

Like all systems created by humans, democracy is flawed. But it's the best system we have. So we have to learn to mitigate its flaws. These flaws are ultimately inevitable and unavoidable. We just need to be aware of them and not let them destroy the entire system.

We are also easily swayed by emotions, even though we pride ourselves in our reasoning faculty. Political rallies are all about firing up the crowd, and persuading the masses to follow the leader's interpretation of ideas and events. We certainly vote more with our hearts than our heads.  Very often, what rules our hearts is the emotion of hatred. We hate our perceived enemies so much that we overlook the flaws of our favourite candidates. 

This mental filter that we have in our minds is so efficient that we will subconsciously downplay the negatives of our preferred candidates and amplify those of the opposite side. It's similar to how we tend to ignore the flaws of our partner when we're in a romantic relationship. Once the excitement of courtship is gone, the filter suddenly flips: we become blind to our partner's positives, which we had previously praised to high heaven. All we see now are his or her flaws, because these are the things that irritate us on a daily basis.

 When we see flaws in others, what does that say about us? Does it mean that we do not poses those flaws ourselves? Or do we think that those are areas where we usually hold ourselves to very high standards. Or perhaps they are traits that we hate in ourselves and seeing them manifest in others only remind us of our own inadequacies?

Whatever it is, we are all flawed creatures. Flaws are like fractures in a structure, they can ultimately weaken the system. Let's celebrate our seemingly superhuman ability to identify flaws in others, and turn that microscope around so that it can detect these weaknesses in ourselves too. Does the anger that you project outwards simply a shield to hide your own failings? 

Observe them. Trace these cracks and fissures to their source. Heal them by releasing your anger. Only then do we have hope of fixing the flaws of the entire world.