I do not know if I can say that Malaysia has evolved or probably revolved dramatically in the past 10 years in terms of development. Physical development has seen that the country has had a considerable leap. We pride from the tallest, the biggest and recently the first Malaysian to go outer space. Most often than not, we always define or at least see development as material or external expansion or progress. Seldom have we heard about spiritual of internal development i.e. human development. This is the basis of all the developments. It is the foundation to higher level progress. It is the first pass before we proceed to focus on the physical part of it. Developing the moral and spiritual values is more important as it defines the values of the future generation of who will be in charge of the physical advancement of the country.
Recently the country has seen a sudden tremendous plunge in our moral values in the community. It is shocking now how Malaysians have been inundated with immoral behaviour of their own people. The brutal murder of Nurin Jazlin has put me on my nerves. It is unimaginable how someone can go to the extent of barbarically molesting and killing a little girl. This is but one case that has been brought forward to public knowledge and there are many more such cases happening everyday in our so-called peaceful society. It is poignant how material progression has led to a fall in our morals and etiquettes. It is not wrong in my opinion to say that we are being one sided in terms of chasing development; i.e. we forget to invest in human development. It is of futile effort should we develop the nation physically but in the end of the day the society with weak moral values is being generated at a cost of the external development. We are not ‘engineering’ a generation that is capable of handling the material progress that is being developed in the future i.e. the generation of strong moral and leadership values.
What has gone wrong? Or rather where have we gone wrong? The country has announced a lot of development plans from NEP to RMK-9 but sad enough that very little is being dedicated for human development as in developing a well-mannered and spiritually-aware nation. This internal human development should be in line with the material progress in order to secure a future that is well-developed externally (i.e. physical development) and a nation that is well-brought up in terms of etiquettes, morals and religion. Our focus is more towards human capital development that is capable of bringing up the economy but we forget to bring up the human themselves in terms of cultivating added values in them.
There are efforts that have to be stepped up to warrant a society that is strong spiritually and morally. Undoubtedly this course of action should begin at an early stage as internal development is not a day process but a process that needs to be nurtured gradually.
