This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 9, 2018 - April 15, 2018

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. — English author Graham Greene (1904-1991)

Malaysia is going through a very interesting patch. Once highly regarded as an economic powerhouse in Asia, it is presently mired in perceptions of a more negative kind. The government, it seems, cannot do anything right in the eyes of the alternative media and the more vocal citizens. Conspiracy theories abound whenever coffee-shop philosophers sit down to discuss politically sensitive issues in the capital’s many hip cafés. Many are tired of the status quo and they are hungry for change.

But we have been here before — during British rule pre-independence, during the racial riot of May 13, 1969, during the fourth prime minister’s last days and even during the tenure of the very affable fifth prime minister. In short, there have been times in the nation’s history when people wanted more from the government. The current contagious mood is not planned — it never is. It festers and erupts when rapid social, demographic and technological changes shock much of the status quo that we usually take for granted.

And the world has seen it too. It happens whenever the lenses we have been looking through no longer show things as they really are. Paradigms change when new thinking gathers traction.

When popular thinking said that the world was flat, Bartholomew Dias, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama changed the way people thought by sailing beyond the “edges of the world” and came home safe, thanks in no small part to their belief in Nicolaus Copernicus and his theories.

When collective written knowledge of the West was in the hands of a fortunate few — the nobles — Johannes Gutenberg brought out the printing press to democratise learning and teaching. It was this kind of mood that energised Europe’s Age of Renaissance during the 15th century. It was a rebirth of a continental community, the likes of which had never been seen before!

While it is true that Europe has painted the Renaissance as an age of mass flourishing, the world had its own share of pain during those times. While Michelangelo was busy putting the finishing touches to the Sistine Chapel, the Aztecs, the Incas and other natives of the New World were nearly exterminated by smallpox and other germs brought to their homes by the Europeans.

A rebirth or a renaissance has always been pregnant with dichotomies. It brings with it good and bad, pleasure and pain, and genius and insanity. Binary divisions can really warp our vision.

Friends, I believe our beloved nation is at the cusp of such a renaissance.

Someone once said that a renaissance is a contest for our future at a moment when the stakes are highest. Malaysia and the world are now in such a state. We are in a global contest: between the good and bad consequences of global entanglement and nationalistic xenophobia; between forces of inclusion and exclusion; and between flourishing genius and insane risks.

We need to develop for ourselves a wider way of seeing the world. The sooner we do that, the less time we will waste frozen in disbelief and the more time we will spend helping ourselves, our families and communities to ride out the upheaval to come.

As we gird ourselves for the upcoming battle royale that is the 14th general election, I would like to put a thought out to you: most of us think ourselves as passengers on a ship at sea, with little control over the weather, yet lulled into complacency by our general destination and the apparent competence of the captain.

Recent developments have made us wise to our true predicament. In this new age of discovery, there is no agreed destination and there are no passengers. We all need to learn how to pilot the ship between the good and the bad consequences of our choice. Whether we flourish or flounder as a nation depends on what we all do to promote the possibilities and dampen the danger this contest brings.

The stakes could not be higher. We each have the perilous fortune to have been born into a historic moment — a decisive moment — when events and choices in our lifetime will dictate the circumstances of many, many lifetimes to come.

I write to engender a mix of hope and determination. Hope, because amid the chaos of yesteryear, our founding fathers left a legacy that we still celebrate. We too can seize this moment. We too can realise a new flourishing, a renaissance that in magnitude and positive consequences will far surpass any triumphs of the past.

Determination, because this new golden age will never simply arrive, we have to achieve it, in open defiance of the forces tearing it apart.

If we want to attain the greatness for which Malaysia is destined, we must keep faith in its possibilities. We must combat ignorance with evidence and fear with courage. We must broaden and share more widely the benefits of progress. And we must help one another to cope with the shocks that none of us will see coming.

Speaking of Michelangelo, I am reminded of my first sighting of his sculptural masterpiece, David, in Florence last year. It is a fitting icon for Europe’s rebirth.

Michelangelo’s genius fixed into stone a moment I could not have contemplated. David’s face and neck are tensed. His brow is furrowed and his eyes are focused determinedly upon some distant point. He stands, not triumphant atop Goliath, but ready with the implacable resolve of one who knows his next step but not its outcome.

Michelangelo masterfully carved that fateful moment between decision and action — between David’s realising what he must do and summoning the courage to do it.

Fellow Malaysians, if this is to be a rebirth of our beloved nation, this is our moment. Let us not waste it.

Zakie Shariff is a member of the board of directors at Universiti Malaysia Pahang. He is also a director of FA Securities, a boutique stockbroking firm in Kuala Lumpur.

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