.. continuing from my previous FB post — Mode: ‘ What we do in life echoes in eternity’ ~ Marcus Aurelius

Talking about change or transformation, I’m sure every one of us is bloating up with ideas on educational transformation, or total revamp of our national education, ‘Transformasi Nasional 2050’ (TN50), political progression for the youths, abolishment of acts like AUKU (and the list goes on..), more employment opportunities for the graduates or young persons, promoting science education, even promoting religious education, or promoting good quality science research, even promoting and grooming for achievement for the first Malaysian ‘Noble Laureate’,

and talking about ‘grooming’ — grooming our ‘Marcus Aurelius’ next perhaps — in the hope of ‘restoring’ our ‘past glory’?

(Wow, we try really hard!)

While I totally #AGREE we have to focus on all these ‘achievements’ in our quest towards a developed nation, apparently, what really is the priority for us is the cultivation of ‘values’ and ‘virtues’ in general — in which I mean in everything we do and at every opportunity we have.

(And this is the hardest thing to do, trust me!)

Here, I am referring to the values of Knowledge and Understanding, and (quoting from the popular movie, the ‘Gladiator’ — tribute to the popular Roman Stoicism, in particular Marcus Aurelius) the virtues of Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance — in comparison to Commodus’s (Marcus Aurelius’s son and successor, whose defects only emphasised by the contrast with his father) list of virtues: Ambition, Resourcefulness, Courage, and Devotion (to family?)

(I love this part of the movie the most!)

Of Knowledge and Understanding

Perhaps we should look into the root of the cause of our all-time failure in understanding science properly — in particular, the theory of evolution. Apparently, the ban on the Malay translation of ‘The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin has been there for a very long time, on the basis that the ‘knowledge’ is not suitable with Islamic values (see this letter, https://partisosialis.org/node/3016).

Now, the concern here is not whether we should agree or not agree with a certain theory or a certain belief. The issue is more about the right to access knowledge, in particular, the right to access knowledge in a language enabling deep understanding (for some people).

This is about democratising — about giving the opportunity to everybody and about having (just a little) privilege to explore our ‘uncertainty’.

By the way, how is it possible to imagine everything to be so ‘certain’ in the complexity of the world we live in? We do not know everything. There are limitations in our ‘logic’ and perceptions about the world either limited by our senses, or our loss of ‘sensibility’ as due to ‘dictation’ or even ‘indoctrination’ from the very first day we set foot in school.

To be honest, I am not interested with the ‘political’ issue here, but more importantly, on the theory of evolution itself — the ‘knowledge’ — that has been the foundation for innovations and creative technological developments from the last century and will be so in the long future — and especially when we are only just ‘starting to realise’ how important to put priority for ‘human development’ as one of our ‘Transformasi Nasional 2050’ aspiration, while in some developed countries people have been developing a science in understanding ‘artificial intelligence’ — the machine — how to make a machine think like a human, how to develop a machine with ‘consciousness’ and ‘human understanding’, and of ways to preserve our human ‘values’ into a machine, so that in the end, the machine does not annihilate us.

It is anticipated that this world ‘of mankind’ will one day transform into the world of ‘artificial intelligence’ and (human) ‘intelligence augmentation’. This ‘evolution’ seems to be controlled by a directed force which is hard to predict or to understand, and made possible by means of the development of ‘black-box’ technologies such as ‘evolutionary programming’ and ‘genetic algorithm’. These are powerful programming techniques biologically inspired which use ‘natural selection’ and ‘fitness criteria’ to find solutions and have been popularly applied to write innovative, high-powered software.

What I am trying to say is — on the ethical side, understanding the theory of evolution may make it clearer for us to come to the realisation of what life is. Apparently, it is one solution to ‘our social problem’ — in which we need an understanding about life as being a ‘struggle’– in which ‘orderliness’ or ‘balance’ in life is determined by being ‘adaptable’ to ‘fitness criteria’ that can due to the changes in the environment — and failure to adapt means decay and extinguished!

I do not mean this is ‘the only way’ in which we can understand what life is.

This world is meant for being ‘perceptible’ in all aspects. And we are here ‘to seek’, ‘to search’ (I am a fan(atic) of the Malaysian rock band, ‘The Search’ ),

and to speculate the rationality of the nature of this world.

By this I mean, we will not get to be a ‘developed nation’ we so desire if ‘we chain ourselves’ to this narrow approach of banning (modern) knowledge.

We will not able to make it even if we are given ‘indefinite’ time, trust me!

(next to continue):
Of Virtues