Cloyingly sweet is the sound of silence amidst a world drowned out by the cacophony of the swarms of mall goers and masses of steaming vehicles all stacked up like a procession of tanks about the breach the battlefield.
As the dust settles on another day, I take solace in the abject absence of any noise, apart from the gentle sigh of the pale mouth on the wall and the occasional thump of my cat climbing through the rafters.
Despite the apparent sedate and sultry pace of life that most attest to here in Penang, it seems many are kept busy dealing with the demands of existing in a modern society, like paying premiums and bills, repairing vehicles, home appliances and teeth. The hours are rarely sufficient for most to be content, everyone vying to out-busy the other.
Do we stay busy to keep up appearances, to fit in with our fellow man?
Do we truly need to toil and stay productive every working minute of every working day?
Gradually I have assimilated myself into the life of a typical working adult, dedicating over a third of each weekday to the pursuit of an impassioned career, although the emotions tend to not be shown over here. I try to lead a simple routine life, which involves sleeping late and waking early, and sitting in front of a glowing, blowing device for hours on end, listening to customers I only vaguely know and care about to get a few morsels of moolah so the others sitting around me in the office can continue to hold jobs.
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just not bother trying to create something different and unique, something entertaining and uplifting? Instead to go with the flow and feed the system with the same old baby formula of clock in clock out go home? No need to get creative on the job, and tap into the latest AI tool to make ends meet?
Most of our work now is built upon some great virtual machine, this indomitable gargantuan whale known as the internet, the great information repository with sights and sounds that constantly have us tapped into a glowing outlet device. Even our cars and critters are joined into this global consciousness of social media, feeding the voracious data-hungry beast in the cloud every second of every day.
How many of us are still willing to work the earth, to excavate and cultivate precious things like our ancestors? Even the trades aren’t seeing a lot of action, despite the robots having yet to wrestle control of such mundane tasks from our grasp. Cleaning and construction are still largely human endeavours, and yet there is a shortage of electricians and plumbers and mechanics.
Is labour prohibitively expensive in Penang? Can we start a car wash business? How viable are the good old trades like carpentry and seal clubbing? Will the entertainment industry be the same now that everyone is staying at home playing mobile games?
Leave a legacy, they say – where am I going to find the land to plant a tree? I certainly don’t intend to spawn more ravenous mini monster beings into this world. I could write a book, but what would be the point? Most Malaysians don’t read, at least nothing beyond their Facebook feed.
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the literacy rate in Malaysia decreased by 0.4% in 2021 from a high of 94.6% as surmised by the UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics. According to data from an interim study by the National Library of Malaysia (PNM), as of May 2023 Malaysians read an average of 20 books annually, compared to 15 in 2014.
Now 1.6 books a month seems like a decent statistic, until you realise that the demographic for this survey is from users of the library, and our local libraries are primarily frequented by students. Thus one could come to the conclusion that these 20 books a year are not all voluntary, and probably belong to a few specific genres, namely those related to school and exam topics.
Let’s be honest – who still goes to the library to read books these days? Sure, people still go the library, but it is to socialise and gather, to study and frolic on devices in public air-conditioned spaces. Our Penang libraries, especially the fancy digital ones, have hardly any books in sight! The halls and walls are now occupied by periodicals and kitschy signs filled with QR codes to download the latest e-book app developed by the library board with taxpayer money.
With all this information at our fingertips, and an assortment of products at the touch of a button, we could have it all, as long as we can ask the right questions and plug in the correct query. Isn’t it wonderful? Should we not be adrift in utopia, having achieved this magical singularity in an oasis of knowledge and comfort?
Then why do we still work so hard and sleep so little and complain so much? Why are we constantly searching for happiness in that distant future instead of simply enjoying the moment and being grateful in the present?
Maybe we should learn to be more like the jovial space travellers in Wall-E, blissfully ignorant blubbercopters cruising in circles on our hover-recliners being fed through tubes and tablets mounted right in our faces. They were certainly perfectly happy until those darn dirty robots came along and ruined a perfectly pleasant space ride.
The more we have, the less we appreciate. Will our future generations fare better, or has our human nature hardwired us to continue our suffering as we succumb to our inadequate addictive proclivities, have us constantly searching for more or the next best thing?
Shall we keep swiping? Or return to the sound of silence, the sensational severance of stimuli in a world so hellbent on stuffing us full of content.
Can content alone keep us content? I imagine the content ones are usually silent on social media, rarely feeling the need to generate additional unnecessary content for the masses. Or will others create their content for them?
