LETTER | Let’s incorporate beauty, goodness and truth

LETTER | One of the core advanced characteristics of human development is the ability to grasp the innate beauty, goodness and truth of mystery, nature and human persons.

Nature has its own inherent beauty and characteristics that sustain the planet, the ability to see goodness in other human persons sustains coexistence, and seeking the truth of the mystery of the universe and human foundations results in objectivity that transcends subjectivity of feelings.

The truth that resides in scientific research is inadequate to understand the whole mystery of the universe. For example, the Covid-19 crisis that cause the death of millions of people shows that the knowledge of science alone was inadequate in dealing with the complexity of human suffering.

Today we are confronted with various crises in the world from extreme poverty, inequality, degradation of the environment, war, and killing of the unborn, which is due to the inability of the so-called educated to intrinsically understand the beauty of nature, goodness and truth.

Nature is seen as something to be exploited to the maximum for material profits, causing climate change, ideological dualism has prevented communities from seeing the goodness of the other, and truth has been reduced to half-truths of propaganda to deceive people in the name of democracy.

All this has brought about suffering in the national and global nation-states that have lost a substantial opportunity to work together to bring about the common good.

The critical question that Malaysians should ask, is, are we as a nation merely producing graduates of technical and management skills or are we endeavouring to open their minds to appreciate and admire beauty, goodness and truth?

Are we encouraging young and old to explore nature’s gift and understand its intelligence and contribution to human ecosystems, or are we just focusing on its economic benefits?

Is our religious teaching saturated out do’s and don’ts to keep ourselves exclusive or do we break from the chains of exclusivity and interact with other human beings by seeing the goodness that is innate in their culture and traditions?

Do we have a sense of mystery that seeks the truth and meaning of existence or have we confined or reduced ourselves to materialistic prosperity?

Therefore, let’s review our nation-building philosophy and bring about a substantial change that would integrate the political, economic and social endeavours with the spirituality of beauty, goodness and truth.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.