Cultural Renewal: Specific Aims and Goals

• A quick perusal of much of what they refer to as the ‘New Poetry’ is enough evidence to show that those who are involved in it are under such a strong influence that, if we analyze it, we would discover that it stands in opposition to the Arab-Islamic culture that is the distinct spirit of our aesthetic personality across the ages. This makes their writings unacceptable.

High Council for the Supervision of Arts and Humanities in Egypt

• What the Committee for Poetry observed is not delimited to what is published in Egypt. On the contrary, it has become a general imprint of the works of proselytizers of renewal across the Arab world.   –  Ahmad Muhammad Ali [i]

• The ultimate agenda was that of putting political, economic, cultural and educational institutions in place through which the Judeo-Christian Europeans could continue to transform such colonial territories even after decolonization took place. The transformation was meant to secularize society through a process of dismantling all institutions which provided sustenance for the religious way of life in general and for the way of life of Islam in particular.                                                                       –  Shaykh Imran N. Hosein [ii]

• Western civilization is aiming at nothing less than the incorporation of all of mankind in a single great society and the control of everything in the earth, air and sea …   – Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, p. 166.

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In concert with Egypt’s High Council and Shaykh Hosein’s admonition, the specific goal of the present generation should be to counteract the concerted impositions of (a) Western litterateurs, (b) propaganda savants, (c) brainwashed academics and (d) muliti-media channels; all of which are saturated with demeaning sub-cultural themes and memes. Using sustainable urban or rural renewal developments as  working models and practical venues, ASEANS should stimulate multi-disciplinary, non-monetized approaches to relations between various institutions in order to establish effective measures to stem the tide of cultural degeneration.  Limited non-monetized exchange systems are indeed viable but it is a question of will rather than ways and means.

There is also a need to promote collaborative interdisciplinary research with a view towards synthesis while simultaneously seeking avenues for practical implementation.  This must involve academic, governmental, NGO and business organizations across all social strata. The aspirations of most indigenous people are consistent with trans-ASEAN cultural mores’, which lamentably are being sedulously eroded by Western impositions:

• “…Biar mati anak, jangan mati adat, meaning ‘let your own child die but not the adat’.  It means that if your own son is found guilty, let the adat or the law sentence him or forgive him, but do not kill or amend the adat or law… it must be based on the Quran or the syariah.”   – Dato Dr. Hasan Ahmad

To the degree it is possible, this writer suggests the re-establishment of such constructs by drawing on the gestalt ASEAN adat [1] to the exclusion of secularized Western impositions.   These latter especially include modified ‘Common’ and Maritime’ codes that highly favor Rome’s ancient forms of legal enslavement via entitlement.  I refer here to the Rentier mentality of elite privilege-mongers which includes the self-centered irresponsibility inherent with absentee landlord-ship and that of corporations who favor monetized profitability rather than social equanimity and public health in their realms of operation.

Increasingly also, these imposed legal codes liberally deny the application and enforcement of moral directives drawn from conventional oriental wisdom: those pools of social mores’ that adhere to universally applicable divine revelation. Like natives who use skin whiteners, the adat of tradition is abandoned in favor of Jacobin illusion and the boy-scout medals that accompany Romanist champions of Rotary and Golf Clubs.

All of the above exacerbate not only social chaos but environmental degradation, both of which are antithetical forces that that undermine civilized behavior and sustainable development.  Hence, the following specific measure are recommended to tip the scales in favor of not only reason, but also justice.

• 1)            Encourage dialogue between apposite institutions across regional and cultural borders for mutual benefit and the creation of vested professional relations based on common needs and mutual reciprocity.   This will engender greater regional understanding, cooperation, prosperity and autonomy.

There are rising needs and interests in multidisciplinary studies due to various influences flowing from the process of globalization.  We must replace the construct of Globalism with that of constructs that favor the gestalt synthesis that enables Cosmopolitan consciousness rather than pluralist fancies. The disciplines of anthropology, geography, history, political science, sociology and urban studies, of eco cum aesthetic-sensitive urban planning and architecture, of sustainable business management and agronomy etc., all require a more systematic synthesis with other natural and applied sciences in order to efficiently harness collective knowledge and harmonize economies, human resources and communal environments throughout the region.

• 2)                  Facilitate comparative social and cultural studies with a view towards extracting what is useful for communal and cultural renewal in addition to sustainable developments in urban, sub-urban, industrial and rural communities.

Comparative studies attend to growing needs that arise from increasing regional and international influences. Trans-national migrant flows of peoples, goods and ideas require analytics that subsume monetary interests rather than exalt them in order to sift through the chaos of colonial and neo-colonial influences erode the keen edge of authentic identities and social exchanges, howsoever these interfaces manifest.  Epistemological definition and empirical clarity will help distinguish useful from dysfunctional or misguiding constructs such as ‘McDonalds Health’ food for example. Hence, improved decision making for the beneficially good-governance that expounds and assures morally imbued business approaches and fiscal management will then enable the growth of cosmopolitan-oriented socio-cultural relations.  As it is, the cronyized approach of back-scratchers and sycophancy that presently reigns mimics that of the Yakuzza or Triad Chiefs who literally command the streets.

• 3)                  Develop methodologies and frameworks for research and development in harmony with cultural sensitivities and extant resources that allow for sustainable mutual exchanges as a regional priority;

Since the systematic synthesis of multi-disciplinary and -cultural approaches to problem solving for urban, industrial and rural developments is new ground, a multi-disciplinary, non-occidental ‘think-tank’ approach is required that calls for periodic workshops wherein issues arising from both comparative and intra-disciplinary studies may be tabled for debate and thereafter prepared for public review and governmental scrutiny. The elitist hegemony of Internationalist corporatocracy with its parliaments of half-educated pseudo-representation is thereby superseded by regional transparency and authentic meritocracy, that is of course, providing feudal tyrants such as Sarawak’s infamous dictator are cowed by accountability to a learned Council of Elders (Shura) backed by united constituencies rather than wooed by the fawning lackeys of special interests.

• 4)            Create venues that provide avenues of approach to government and private sector entrepreneurs with a view to apply constructs and methods that are sustainably beneficial for all peoples concerned.

Traditionally, the interface between governors and entrepreneurs leaves substantial room for corruptions that ignore real needs of both the governed and environment; especially when investors are alien or absentee.  Hence, regular conferences are called for wherein these parties will be introduced to sound principles of sustainably developed inter-communal relations based on empirical evidence and conclusions drawn from comparative analysis in concert with hard science whenever and however appropriate.  These will be public forums where closed-door ‘think-tank’ measures are revealed in order to remove the veil and allow for the ‘transparency’ that is increasingly in demand; and this is in lieu of the traditional corporate fascism inherited from mercantile colonialists that now reigns and gives cause for eruptions of grass-root reactions such an approach would buffer.

• 5)            Establish alternatives to sweatshop economies that benefit international conglomerates who lack empathetic concerns for exploited communities:

A new approach is called for that requires replacing contemporary monetized mindsets and impositions spawned by the above mentioned legalized facilities that favor miserly intentions.[2]  Maximizing profits with impunity is essentially an anti-social, hegemonic and brutally cruel management system for human resources.  In addition, the present stock-market system is little more than a gambling den that favors the ‘house’ as devised by shylocks (‘Jews who are not Jews’).  Hence, this Cultural Revival calls for renewed approaches to economic and industrial models wherein ‘human dignity’ and ‘plural communalism’ rather than cooperative socialism favoring elitist Cominterns are guiding phrases.

• 6)            Devise roadmaps for extra-governmental communal  policing systems that are backed by authorities who enforce moral imperatives that protect men, women and children from inhumane exploitation:

The advent of Western monetization policies wherein fiat money is the god of human negotiation is a specific Talmudic means of subversion by means of usury/riba.  This is clearly outlined in the infamous Protocols of Zion and has wrought the complete turnabout of traditional social orders globally as planned by the perfidious scoundrels—men and women who ‘burrow’ in their iniquitous plans as per Al’Qur’an.  Accompanying this insidious construct is the Machiavellian ‘the ends justify the means’ ideology, which is a JESUIT Counter-Reformation logo for wars[iii] that support libertarian concomitants that foment social disorder and moral chaos. The prosecution of these materialist ideations as developed by Western Humanists is foreign to Asian tradition. Nevertheless, they have tempted many to abandon august birthrights with offensively selfish intent.  Hence, a return to morality and authentic Oriental ethics should be sought after at all levels of society, wherein secularism and usurious monetization are given little play in communities seeking to follow their respective paths towards peace and security.

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