From the Selangor Times 22 February 2013. Ask Lord Bobo is a weekly column by LoyarBurok where all your profound, abstruse, erudite, hermetic, recondite, sagacious, and other thesaurus-described queries are answered!

There was some hoo-hah down south about what it means to be a “true Singaporean”. What do you think it means to be a “true Malaysian”? Does the 1Malaysia concept capture it? (Identity Seeker, via email)

Lord Bobo fails to understand what is behind this Earthly fascination with race or nationality.

Elsewhere in the billion galaxies, folk don’t bother about these classifications. We don’t attribute particular characteristics (other than physical ones, obviously) or stereotypes to creatures just because of where they’re from.

This is the reason why His Supreme Eminenceness has no problem wandering around freely in other planets but faces a problem on Earth, where humans seem to have an issue with a wonder typewriting monkey walking the streets.

This false homogeneity just because one happens to hold a particular passport is really quite ridiculous. You’re all human beings, why would an artificial construct of a “nation” suddenly make you different, or exactly the same?

We know you struggle with moving away from this because it has been drilled into you your whole life, but perhaps the following will help get it through your thick skulls and puny human brains.

Think of a person as a home in the making.

Say someone is born into the Malaysian Chinese demographic. If they were to not venture out of this, holding tightly to what they think makes them “Chinese” instead of exploring and embracing other cultures, it is akin to leaving a concrete foundation lying abandoned in an empty field.

For a foundation to be a building, such as a family home, it needs walls, roofing, windows, wiring, plumbing, a Lazy Boy, LoyarBurok books, Yamazaki, and all the other components to turn a concrete foundation into a home.

That’s what other cultures do to the heritage of your birth. I believe they flesh us out and develop the true human in all human beings.

So, you are not made to be homogenous and fitting the mould of a “true Malaysian”.

As Dr. Martin Luther King said: “If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”

Who the hell cares what it means to be Malaysian? You should busy yourself with working out what it means to be human.

What’s going on in Lahad Datu? Should we be fearing for our lives? Is Malaysia going to be invaded by enemy forces? (Real Sultan of Sulu, via email)

His Supreme Eminenceness has been having problems with the intergalactic internet connection, but no worries we have been keeping tabs with Malaysian news via the trusty mainstream newspapers. Nothing much seems to be going on in Lahad Datu.

Apparently a small group of feeble folk have holed up in a village miles away from Lahad Datu, and the good ol Datuk Seri H2O paid a visit and things are going fine. H2O even had time to pose for photos with some mean-looking guns – obviously there’s no danger over there.

We overheard some young fellas at a mamak stall complaining about the lack of firm action by the army or police, but we’re not really sure what the big deal is. The newspapers don’t think that there’s anything much worth reporting, so it must be true that nothing major is going on there.

These same young fellas (obviously ungrateful youth who don’t realise that the government has given them a platform to great futures, enabling their parents to make enough money to give them a good education) were also comparing the inaction to the overzealous actions of the police against Bersih protesters.

Now, we’ve heard all sorts of stories about what happened at Bersih, but if Lord Bobo recalls, reading the same mainstream newspaper as we were referring to earlier, isn’t Bersih that event where a crowd of rowdy punks went wild and destroyed a police car?

Young people these days obviously need to read the mainstream newspapers more often to find out the truth.

Have a question for Lord Bobo? Call on His Supreme Eminenceness by emailing [email protected], stating your full name, and a pseudonym (if you want), or tweeting your questions by mentioning @LoyarBurok and using the hashtag #asklordbobo. What the hell are you waiting for? Hear This, and Tremblingly Obey (although trembling is optional if you are somewhere very warm)! Liberavi Animam Meam! I Have Freed My Spirit!

You can read archives of all the Ask Lord Bobo columns by clicking here. These are the divinely-inspired words of His Supreme Eminenceness Lord Bobo Barnabus PhD SP GBE OMGWTFBBQ.

Ask Lord Bobo is a weekly column by LoyarBurok where all your profound, abstruse, erudite, hermetic, recondite, sagacious, and other thesaurus-described queries are answered! It is the ONLY place that...

2 replies on “Ask Lord Bobo: True Malaysians and the Lowdown on Lahad Datu”

  1. I disagree with His Supreme Eminenceness

    Your views on race and nationality are simplistic like an 90's advertisement paid for by the BN government with child actors taking up a role of innocent inter-racial kids playing cartwheels in a kampung.

    When I was born into this world, I happened to be born in Malaysia as a Chinese. From day one, I have already been branded as a race. This was properly recorded in my birth certificate and later on, my passport and IC.

    I was constantly reminded that I am a minority. Was told that if i screwed up the public exams, that I will not be able to enter into a public university. I was constantly told that I am ungrateful human being and should be lucky that I have a nationality and a place to call home (Malaysia). I was told that if I am not happy with the way things are run in Malaysia I should go back to China.

    Understandably that this is no way a reflection on the majority but rather the elites who run this country and those who subscribe to such agendas.. They have poisoned the very existence of unity with subtle but vehemently potent neo-Nazi agendas.

    I hope his His Supreme Eminenceness is not really buying into the 1Malaysia crap. We dont need a brand to assist us with racial unity. That is just plain silly.

    Look at the USA. They were laws which prohibited a black man to share the same loo used by a white man. There were laws prohibiting a person on a Orient origin from living in a particular area. Because of that, the majority of Americans were brainwashed to think that it was okay to oppress a minority before the civil rights movement occurred.

    We as Malaysians need our own civil rights movement. We need to tell our government that if it is seriously about unity, I needs to make the first step of changing from within.

  2. there used to be this user who posted with the name "true Malaysian". I think that name is just disgusting.

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