The Opiate

"Kau kalau takde degree, tak jadi orang, Long."
"Apa pulak macam tu, mak..."
"Kau dengan kambing atuk kau tu, sama je nanti."
"Kambing tu kan binatang."
"Kalau takde degree, kerja apa kau nak buat? Kerani?"
"Kerja sendiri ke, berkarya ke, business..."
"Kau jangan nak malukan mak, Long. Malu mak nanti."

My mom believes in planning the future of her four sons; the first an engineer, the second a doctor, the third an ustaz, and the fourth a lawyer. Had she a daughter in the family, she would have designated her to be a professor in a leading university, I assume, for she imagines the notion of the perfect family each time all of us are at the dining table. I remember her saying that if there is something needed to fixed around the house, Faizal would come to the rescue, and if someone in the household were to be taken ill by a rare disease which medicine and cure are expensive, Fairuz would tend to it, and if she needs to hold a kenduri doa selamat in remembrance of dad's mom who passed away when he was 3, Farhan will lead the reading, and if she gets tangles up in the bureaucratic web of the government when dealing with her pension plan, Farris will sort out the form's details. She would be the happiest mom.

"Senang hidup tua mak. Tak payah pikir masalah duit, masalah anak-anak."

My dad does not believe in mom's cute little bullshit. The man of the house is by far more religious and more practical; his view on the issue is as straight as his face when he says it; his words are so clear and simple that it is hard to believe that mom did not thought of it in the first place -- us her sons came out of between her two legs bursting, all pink and screaming. At the dining table, he waits for the wife to end her constant ramblings about how she sees the future of her four sons, and at the conclusive end, without even taking off his face from the fried chicken leg that he is holding, he says in his slow voice:

"Ayah tak kisah anak-anak ayah ambition apa; janji pada ayah, jangan lupa solat."

Dad is not without fault, but oftentimes, his pragmatism and cool head save us all from getting into even deeper holes; and Mom is a woman, her emotions are her great escape; 'so, let her be', said dad once.

*****

"Is God a vengeful God, or a loving God?"

In the Koran, there are enough evidence to support both sides of this argument; plentiful and obvious, here I wish not to recite any of them as proof; for those who are able to read the scripture, and for those who have learned how to read it, and has read it in the past, it is known to us that not a single surah in the holy text fails to mention, even briefly or in passing, these two said characteristics of God. In one ayat, He warns us of Hell and its vile contents, and in the next, He serenades to us the pleasures of Heaven. In one surah, He reminds us not to displease Him, for it will incur His wrath upon us so devastating that it will scar and mar both those who had displeased Him and those who had believed Him; and in another, He advices us that life would be better and more meaningful if we are to submit to Him, our one and only God, unconditionally. To please Him, a deed, and to discontent Him, a sin.

"He can be both and not be wrong; thus, He is God."

It's half-part responsibility, half-part fear; what a decrepit slave is to his powerful master; in order to be freed, he must submit unconditionally; the type of a convoluted bond that perfectly embodies the main reason why I pray to my Creator five times a day. He is my God; thus, I worship him, but I also notice that in one hand, He has Hell and in the other, He has Heaven, and not a single day passes by that He not shove His two hands at my face -- constantly reminding me that the time for me to choose between the two exits will soon come when I least expected it, therefore, I must always be prepared. I must always be in fear of the coming of death. I must always be in fear of the coming of Judgment. I must.

"To help him decide, He drives a wedge through Man."

Life is a short journey that started out as a product of animal magnetism and will tragically end at an abrupt junction that forks the road into two; to your left, the multi-level eternal fire of an afterlife, and to your right, the garden of virgins and forbidden fruits. Despite the obviousness of choice between the two retirement plans, none of us will have the freedom to our own final say. Where we head after the junction is up to how well had we behaved all along the journey; the teenage girl who was undressing herself in the privacy of her room, the window slightly ajar, did you not peek at the shade of her breasts and fondled her chastity?; the starving little boy who was begging for your mercy at the streets, his cries too weak, did you not push him to the wall and left him to despair?; our senses will come alive and be our own prosecutors. The agents that helped us to survive the journey will also now help end it.

"Between Hell and Heaven, there is nothing, which is exactly the point."

My relationship with God is very much like that with my dad; I do enough of what he asks of me so that he has nothing to use against me when the time comes. I do enough of his requests so that he would back off and leave me alone to myself from time to time and not bother me in what I want to do in my short personal life. To have your dad constantly intervening in every little detail of your life, to have to consider his every nagging word before taking upon each decision that you make, to have to confer with him your future plans, to report your whereabouts, your academic progress, health -- sometimes it makes you wonder whether he is truly your guide to a better life or simply a stabbing pain in the neck.

But this is not to lead down the conclusion that I hate God, or my dad, for that matter; it's just a complex relationship between the two of us. What is love and what is hate between a son and his dad?

*****

We go to college to get a degree, not to be educated. Had we wanted to be educated, we would not have done it in four years or less; education, it never stops. The more you learn, the more stupid you get. By knowing more, you know that you know less. The knowledge that you gain from college is the one that you can afford to pay to get; the knowledge that can't be bought with money is the one that you should have gained from your college days. What you have learned and what was being taught are two entirely different things. The moment you step into the college grounds, you say to yourself, I want a degree so that I can have a job when I graduate. Remember, next to education, graduation is nothing.

We go to college to get a degree, not to be enlightened. Had we wanted to be enlightened, we would not have been the same person before and after we graduate; the same old prick who still does not understand what the hell is happening around him, the world is still the same shady old hole that does not get better with us leaving college. There are those who go to college and there are those who got educated. One type knows what he is doing because everyone else is doing it and the other type knows nothing about anything because he does not believe that a piece of paper signed by the Dean is right to announce to the world that he is wise, he is qualified, a being of far greater values than others.

We go to college to get a degree, not to be better informed. Had we wanted to be better informed, we would have gone to the ever-present government, to the newspapers, to the state-run television station. We talk about being suppressed by the ruling party and its corrupt hierarchy, about being told what to do by those who we did not put into office, about being subjugated by the rule of Law of Man that was drawn up by our former colonial masters, and not by the Law of God; we talk about our children fallen prey to the lure of drugs, the malignant culture of the West, the promiscuity of free sex, the obscenity of the liberal lifestyle, the abandonment of the virtues of religion; and yet we do nothing but endless bitching, and yet we do nothing but constant whining, and yet we do nothing to educate ourselves, to provide the cure; our days in college are to equip us to be the slaves to the society that we loathe.

We go to college to get a degree, not to be society's agents of change. With the return of us from college, into the fold that created us as individuals, we bring to the people decay of the highest degree. Instead of hunger for a reformed social structure, we become the zealots of the corrupt establishment; filled with the burning rage for power and more power, money and more money, we are the proponents of the status quo -- change will only hurt our rice bowls, change will bring chaos to the doorsteps of our businesses, change will forfeit us from our life-long dreams of financial security and future escapades. It is from college that we learn the taste of the nightclubs, the strip bars; it is from college that we learn to enjoy dating, the lovers lifestyle; it is from college that we learn the nectars of porn, alcohol, weed. To society, instead of now being its cure to the problem, we are now part of it; a malignant new cancer.

We go to college to get a degree, and by that I mean pay for it. We pay good money through college so that we can graduate at the end with a degree, and with that degree, we earn even more money. The state of education of today has been reduced to being a profit-targeted investment for the future; no longer does it serve its original purpose to humanity, to individuality, to God. Education is no longer the most basic rights to an individual; had it been so, we would not have to pay a hefty load for it; just as water is free and health care services is free and a balanced nutrition program is free and a family housing plan is free and the access to information is free -- Ah, this is not a communist state, only a Marxist idealist would say such a utopian thing! It is to capitalism that we owe the great civilizations!

*****

"Prophet versus Profit!"
If the two were to wrestle against each other in an iron cage, would not our lives be a lot easier?

"Duel to death, only one survives!"
If the burden of choosing were to be rested on the fight, would cheering it be an unfair act?

"Whoever wins is the Truth!"
If our Iman were a sack of gold coins with a dollar sign stamped on it, would not we all be betting?

"The winner is our Savior!"
If devotion to the truth were as strong as fanaticism to the winner, would choosing wrongly matter?

Life is short so that the decisions that we make during our lifetime will stay with us at the time of our death; that is how God separate the believer from the non-believer. Those who die in the embrace of the Prophet, early in their short life they had come to the correct decision and stayed at it all through out their short lifetime, never to budge. Those who die in the embrace of the Profit, early in their short life they had also come to their decision, however unfortunately wrong it is, and stayed at it all through out their short lifetime, never to budge. Had life been a lifetime longer, would they have tasted both side of the cookie and tasted enough of both to make an everlasting decision? Would it now be right or wrong?

Religion is the opiate of the masses, I quote Karl Marx. He meant it in a way that religion is both the cause and the cure of Man's sufferings; the opiate brings relief from pain, but it does not attack the root of the sickness, it does not cure the sufferers from the disease. To Marx, religion keeps the people in a drift of illusions, content to accept their poverty and their hardships, because this life is only temporary and fleeting -- we should not care if this present life is bad or hurtful, for the next life, Heaven is sublime.

For Marx, we suffer because we let religion monopolize our life; the concept of sin and deed, Heaven and Hell, angels and devils; these are all to keep us at bay from questioning ourselves why we are here and what purpose do we serve to ourselves and to the many by being here and why is our life so fraught with endless misery and constant poverty. To him, the answers boil down to the economics of class.

But Karl Marx is history now.

Today, profits are the opiate of the masses; it provides relief and comfort, but it is not the cure itself; it keeps the masses in a drift of illusions, hope and content -- to seek solace from the fruits of our own hard labor is the new religion of our society. The lure of profits, money as the key to nirvana, is strong.

*****

At a green 23, we get a degree.

And with that degree, we get a job. Those precious youth, those short years of great potential, and all you get is an office cubicle the size of a grave at the 18th floor of a business complex the size of a warship, pushing envelopes and evaluation forms from one desk to another, and one door to the next, and writing reports about this agenda and that agenda and writing reports about this report and that report, reports about other reports, from eight in the morning to four in the evening each day, five days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year, like a goddamn clockwork, till you hit the retirement brick wall at 55 years of age and live off the rest of your miserable salaryman life on a measly pension.

And with that job, we get paid a monthly sum. At the end of every work month, as you hold that sum of money in your hand, you feel liberated, you feel appreciated, and you feel like this is exactly what hard work is all about. You say to yourself, this is why I had toiled so hard in those years at school, this is why I had stayed up so late at night to prepare myself for final exams, this is why I had gone to college. The purpose of your life at the moment has now been reduced to getting paid at the end of each month. From one payment to another, the purpose of your life is to get money so that you can survive the month and be able to work until next month before you get another payment at the end of that month. The vicious cycle goes on; and as your career goes well, you get promoted and your salary gets bigger at the end of each month, and you work even harder to get promoted further and to get an even higher pay, and again the cycle goes on and on ad infinitum until your whole life revolves only around money.

And with that monthly sum, we smile. My life is now complete, say you. All I need in my life is here in my Prada leather wallet -- delicious exotic food for my appetite, I can afford; beautiful luscious virgins for my lust, I can lure; flashy imported sportscar for my ego, I can flaunt; extravagant residential palaces for my orgies, I can build; sandy white beachhouses for my wives, I can own; elite college education for my children, I can bear. Every little thing that I have around me now is the product of my sweat; I studied hard in college and earned my degree to work in the field of my choice; I have the right to enjoy my own hard work, I have the right to live my life as pleasant as I want it to be; those who are poor, they are merely lazy sons of bastards; go to college and learn to earn money, you silly dirty bum.

Money is your God, and you know it; so, why are you still smiling?