Is materialism a national sickness?

COMMENT | “I notice you don’t need material things to make you happy,” one of my former colleagues said to me.

Quite possibly, he was struck by the absence of a watch and jewellery and had observed that I always wore rubber tapper shoes (known colloquially as Adidas kampung) and was usually outfitted in a range of fading rock T-shirts. A battered briefcase and a 22-year-old Perodua Kancil being other components of the get-up.

But he was quite right for I have long lived by the credo of keeping things simple and not placing any value whatsoever on expensive material products. It seems to me that it’s a lesson lost on many of us.

Certainly, our former leader and wife seemed fond of ostentatious living and we have already been treated to almost surreal accounts of the lavish spending of businessperson Jho Low. But we don’t really have to go very far to see examples of Malaysians competing with the Joneses to display their wealth. Popping your head out the front door will probably suffice.

But how did it get like this? Over the years, I have become acquainted with no less than four families of cabinet members from Tunku Abdul Rahman’s time. While successful and comfortable, they are not overflowing with wealth the way ruling party politicians from the 1980s appear to be. In fact, they spoke of how making personal sacrifices for the sake of the nation was an essential part of their political journey.

When did it become the norm to try and own garages full of vintage Rolls- Royce models? I visited a long-serving state minister with an expensive imported grand piano in each of the front three rooms of his office...