A Madman’s Confession
Douglas Teoh and Adelle Lim
I am a deluded person with a persecutory complex…… who thinks of our officials as – there is simply no delicate way to put this — cannibals. They devour their own kind, without mercy, without compassion, without shame. Greed controls their mind, gluttony dominates their appetites.
Doubtless, this is also true for the underlings who are content to eat from the crumbs of humanity that fall from the masters’ table in their hurried frenzy to consume all.
“Let there be abundance in our feasts! No matter if food runs out, there will always be more humans willing to sell their body to the hungry, and their souls to the corrupt. If not, may the force be with us!”
This conclusion, deranged though it may seem, was drawn after I read Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary. His ambiguous text initially makes it difficult for us to draw any sort of conclusion between the reality of the madman and the everybody else’s reality of normality – but really, the way things are at present, should we attempt to evoke the trope ‘truth is stranger than fiction’, we can take Lu Xun’s text to be literal and find that it is not so strange after all.
When only one politician obtains a scandal and reports truth, he may be lying in a blasé manner for the sake of power. Hence, we may be mad for believing his self-serving, manufactured lie.
When only one journalist goes undercover and appears to have discovered truth, he may have fabricated the data for the sake of sensationalism. Hence, we may be mad for believing his self-serving, manufactured news.
When only one academic conducts researches and finds truth, he may have chosen a biased methodology for the sake of promotion and recognition. Hence, we may be mad for believing his self-serving, manufactured findings.
But when the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the thousandth can see with their own eyes, hear with their own ears and deduce with their own minds the cannibalism that is going on, it must be insane of us not to speak with our own mouths!
The eponymous madman in Lu Xun’s story was one deranged, paranoid, psychotic soul against an entire society of sane cannibals. He was then converted back to ‘normal’ because of pressure and fear for his life.
“To live with cannibals, eat as the cannibals eat.”
But we are different.
If we are a gathering of fools trying to disrupt peace through protests, so be it!
If we are a bunch of deceptive, self-serving individuals who do not care about social harmony, so be it!
Even if we are deluded, so be it – since, we are also the majority.
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I reiterate: Our officials are cannibals. But are we really mad for thinking so?
If yes, then we are a community of madmen who outnumber these cannibals.
Deliberating Politics in Malaysia 