THE road to hell is paved with good intentions. There’s so much truth in this that people tend to overlook it and pass it off as just plain old cliché. 

In fact, take a closer look at any “bad” person, anyone you detest or dislike with great passion, and you will see traces of the “good” person prior emerging in bite sizes. 

It is very hard, nearly impossible, to remain idealistic and true in this world – and it has been for a long time, it’s not just unique to contemporary times. 

It is easy and almost natural to overstate the graveness of the present, thinking that the past was much better and purer. It is this thinking – or illusion of thought – which has fuelled many a great populace into fundamentalist despotism.

Let’s suspend this thought and try to look back at previous civilisations and eras in a more, let’s say, darker light. The eras before inoculations, before vaccinations, before clean running water, before sanitation.

Eras when child deaths were the norm and really an evolutionary trait – only the strong survive.

Even then, all healthy adults – particularly men – were sent off to their death to fight for their empires or wars, wasting generations of dreams and hopes, although to put bluntly, nature’s way of pruning the tree of life.

Nature is cruel, let’s not airbrush that fact. It’s beautiful and wondrous too. The same things that kill something is the same thing that begets life. 

Ever since the industrial revolution, society began believing in its own hype even more intensely but this hype was important too for it gave a narrative to human endurance and free will. 

Society moved from feudalistic permissiveness to labour and autonomy – not automation. 

Autonomy means that now you have the opportunity to create your own path in life, to choose the vocation you feel you will flourish in (or one that pays the best) so that the fruits of your labour will also beget other fruits, which will nourish your future and your generations to follow. 

The industrialist capitalist class was thus born – a class that determined its own fate and wealth through the labour of others, but hey, it was a better deal than feudalism. 

Feudalism took more than it gave back to the masses, so at this juncture, industrialisation was a win for the masses. 

Cities were created as the masses flocked to these industrial centres to eke out a living or seek opportunities that were not as lucrative as it used to be during feudal times. And our current epoch is both defined and a consequence of this endless chase for opportunities, “good” or “bad”. 

Hence, there is a lot of truth also in the saying “one person’s meat is another person’s poison”, especially when the realisation that resources are limited and finite – and our world is finite if you still haven’t realised that. 

Hierarchies are common in nature, there have always been pecking orders, prey and predator, and this is the conundrum of human endeavour and idealism comes into the picture. 

So, we simplify and categorise things to help us organise our world (and nature) and we create narratives that make sense of it all in folklores, rituals, and eventually religion.  

All of these metaphorically “frames” our reality like a picture frame or a view finder of a camera – we are not naturally wired to see the bigger picture, it has to be taught, and for something to be taught, there has to be gatekeepers to the knowledge. 

These gatekeepers have a great responsibility and are given a lot of trust, which has great power to shape the worldview of others, and the fallacy is that they are human and it is human to err. 

So, when you think about it, if you are an adherent in any Abrahamic religions where the concept of the end of times (or kiamat in Islam) is a core tenet of the beliefs, the world will be always “ending” and the gatekeepers proverbially fan this fire of the end. 

However, the intention of these gatekeepers is at its heart “good” and well-intentioned for the believers but there are many beliefs in this world as human civilisation perpetuated itself through the centuries, determined by geography and conquests. 

We’ve arrived at this juncture now not out of some divine script – it’s all a long cycle of causes and effects of human actions and activities. 

This clarity is lost in an ever-increasing noisy world – “noise” here meaning the intrusiveness of mediated narratives (through news, advertisements, propaganda, music, film and social media) in our lives. 

We need to not only make our bed in the morning but we should also be mindful of “pruning” our media habits. And of course, be mindful and appreciative of the modern amenities we take for granted in our homes and mundane daily lives. 

There was a time when the absence of this determined life or death, not rhetoric of misguided gatekeepers.

Speaking of sanitation, I’m told the best ideas tend to come in the bathroom. It is the last refuge of solitude to many, for better or worse. 

So, embrace your mornings and reflect on the marvel of that throne for we are all the masters and mistresses of our own fate, not the “good” or “bad” intention of others. – November 12, 2021.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.