From the Selangor Times Issue 2, December 3-5 2010 (you can view the entire paper at the end of this post, and download a pdf of Ask Lord Bobo here, or the entire paper here). Don’t forget to also check out the first edition, here. This week, Ask Lord Bobo deals with right and wrong, love, half-past six lawmakers, Malaysian timing, and the meaning of life!

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Ask Lord Bobo is a weekly column by LoyarBurok (www.loyarburok.com) where all your profound, abstruse, erudite, hermetic, recondite, sagacious, and other thesaurus-described queries are answered!

What is right or wrong? Which should take priority in determining right/wrong? Is the end more important, or the means? @woonkingchai via Twitter

Right or wrong is a function of culture, fashion and geography. For example, bell bottoms look so wrong now, but were so right in the sixties. Second example, slavery seemed right in the US in the 17th Century, but is wrong now. Underlying the vicissitudes of right and wrong through the ages is one constant — the wishes of Lord Bobo.

In line with the above, the state of Lord Bobo’s digestion must take priority in determining right or wrong. It is not as arbitrary as it sounds, for Lord Bobo is now the supreme manifestation of human rights principles. He is compassion personified. He is the pinnacle of human evolution, come back from 100,000 A.D. to enlighten the great unwashed (i.e. all of you).

Finally, Lord Bobo’s end is very important indeed. It is where obsolete and tainted concepts, memes and bananas are discarded from the Body of His Supreme Eminenceness to maintain the purity and integrity of the simian state. Whatever means necessary to get to this end, is justified.

Lord Bobo, why is love an illusion? @xiaohengyip, via Twitter

It seems like the questioner has recently suffered a tragic loss in the name of love, has probably had heart ripped out of chest, torn into itty-bitty pieces and discarded in the wind. Lord Bobo is very sympathetic to all orphans of love.

Now go and give yourself two hard smacks, preferably cheek-to-cheek (feel free to choose which cheeks) so you can stop wallowing in self-pity. For love never ends, is never lost, it just transforms. There is no such thing as a lost love.

The illusion that you allude to is the transformation of love that you once knew. Sure it sucks when the object of your love does not return your favour, writes police reports against you, and sends Big Hairy Scary Uncle Macha Relative to your door (may or may not have happened to some of us). That is not to say that your love has not made a significant difference in her life, for it has. Trust in it.

Learn and become stronger from this, yet keep your heart childlike and open to new possibilities of love. Let your love be your example for a better life, and let that be enough. And if not, we have it on good authority that Lord Bobo has a very attractive cousin-sister who is ready to settle down, wan or not?

When can Malaysia have competent Parliamentarians, and not half-past six lawmakers? @kennethwpl, via Twitter

This question was so compelling that Lord Bobo channeled answers to two LoyarBurokkers.

The first revelation:

This one is a pickle. The setting must be congenial enough to encourage and nurture competent Parliamentarians. This can be analysed in terms of supply (political parties offering competent candidates) and demand (voters demanding such candidates). The key to both is meritocracy.

From the angle of supply, meritocracy must be practiced within each political party. That means the party leadership at all levels have to identify and nurture competent members. This is a tall order because it requires such leaders to be selfless; if they come across a member more capable than them, they should not block his rise, but instead facilitate it.

Where demand is concerned, voters must regard competency as the main criteria in making their choice. For example, one should not vote out of sympathy for a widow of a recently deceased MP. Nor should one vote for her because the coalition to which she belongs has promised to develop the constituency (which, by virtue of being in power, is their job anyway). Voter maturity is essential. At a party level, members should not vote out of loyalty to certain camps, nor out of self-interest.

On a micro level, the potential candidate is faced with push and pull factors. Assuming that he is motivated by proper interests, the push factor is more dominant. Many are “pushed” into politics to try to arrest the decline of our country into the toilet. But that is not enough to encourage more to be involved. To “pull” them in, the supply and demand infrastructure mentioned above has to be in place.

Back to the question of when — hopefully soon, for all our sakes!

The second revelation:

We sincerely believe that Malaysians can rid themselves of half-past six lawmakers if they first rid themselves of Malaysian time, i.e. the phenomenon of making appointments one turns up for at least 30 minutes later. As for competent Parliamentarians, it’s very simple — initiate a government project for a new Parliament at the cost of RM2.3 billion, which will balloon to RM5.0 billion, then hush it up. A building that costly MUST have competent Parliamentarians.

Apa reti idup? (What is the meaning of life?) @j_rubis, via Twitter

Throughout the course of your existence, you may have come across many answers to the meaning of life. Either through religion, philosophy, Very Important Books, or the time you were convinced you saw The Almighty Hairy One on a popsicle stick but nobody had the gall to believe you (just sayin’).

And perhaps at some point of your life, you were quite convinced that you finally got it, and yet here you are once again, looking for an answer.

The answer is that the answer does not matter; what matters is that you don’t stop seeking, don’t stop questioning. Hold fast to what is true to you, your set of core values, and choose to live your life according to it. Because if you do not choose for yourself, society will do so for you.

And oh yes, be good to people, eat less carbs and live in peace and harmony with all kinds of primates, no matter what their beliefs are.

Although Lord Bobo already knows your question before you even knew you had a question, as a practical display of your true desire to have your query answered, His Supreme Eminenceness has graciously allowed you to communicate your questions by —

  • emailing [email protected], stating your full name, and a pseudonym if you wish the question to be published anonymously (and a good reason for anonymity).
  • tweeting your questions by mentioning @LoyarBurok and using the hashtag #asklordbobo.

The first 100 questions published will receive LoyarBurok’s ONLY merchandise you ever need (worth a lot for humankind) courtesy of Selangor Times. Now, 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!



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...

3 replies on “Ask Lord Bobo: Right and wrong”

  1. Quoted from the above article:

    Second example, slavery seemed right in the US in the 17th Century, but is wrong now.

    Are you sure slavery is wrong now?

    What do you say to those many Malaysian households who employ live-in Indonesian maids?

    I say that it is modern-day slavery!

    On the Dutch telly, there has been a segment done on the abuse of these Indonesian maids.

  2. Dear Lord Bobo,

    What is your take on the Planet of the Apes? (as in the classic one not the recent crappy remake)

    Thanks.

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