Preaching to the choir
By JASON LIM
Observers, on several occasions, have pointed out that socio-political blogs in Malaysia tend to attract like-minded people who are only a minority of Malaysians. A tiny minority at that.
“Preaching to the choir,” they call it. Only people who have activism already thrusting in their veins would seek out websites like Malaysiakini and JeffOoi.com, and spend hours a day refreshing webpages to see if the witty-yet-intelligent comments they made appeared on blog-entries and whether anyone has been flaming their comments.
Why bother with the preaching, when the choir already knows the words?
If average everyday Malaysians like Johan bin Public is not likely to come visit these sites, why bother writing infortmative, well-researched articles at all?
Not many of you may be familiar with Christian choirs in churches. They normally consist of enthusiastic, vocal and energetic individuals. I speak from my personal experience in a Christian choir, when I say that choirboys and choirgirls do not always know the right words to sing. And that’s where good preaching comes in.
In this example, KinkySexyBoi and TokPakarEverything are both choirboys who sing at the JeffKini Choir. Both of them like the song “KisahAP” but KinkySexyBoi only knows half the lyrics because he spends too much time clubbing the night before choir practice. TokPakarEverything knows all the words but can’t carry the tune well, even with his best intentions.
Despite all this, because they both regularly sing at the JeffKini Choir, where the words are projected up onto a screen and the melody is sung by pretty little birds, the songs they sing come out pitch perfect.
But is the music always going to be confined to the small choir-halls?
Who knows? Music, like truth, if sung well, has a way of reaching many ears. KinkySexyBoi often sings that “KisahAP” song to his carpool mates on the way to university. TokPakarEverything often sings it to his friends in the kopitiam. Suddenly, to everyone’s surprise non-choir people might get hooked on the tune and request it on Light&Breezy.FM. If more people request for it, it might even reach the top of the charts, beating Siti’s latest single.
Preaching to the choir is usually regarded as a pointless exercise.
However, call it faith, but sometimes, with the right sermons, choirs tend to grow.
Disclaimer:
The author does acknowledge the fact that the JeffKini Choir is not the only place to learn to sing good songs. The MoonStar&Sun choir and BalakongAllStar choir may just be as good. For a full listing, please refer to the yellow pages or Malaysia Central.
—
JASON LIM is theassistant director of theCICAK.
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Echo chamber?
Are bloggers merely preaching to the choir? There is an interesting topic by Jason Lim on cicak.com. Quote: Observers, on several occasions, have pointed out that socio-political blogs in Malaysia tend to attract like-minded people who are only a minor…
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It all boils down to FAITH REALLY…
Even if Desi’Place gets ONE guest calling a day, I promise my theatre will go on, because it’s fun, enhanced by an out-ofsync choir singing WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONG,(sowat, as long as WE ENJOY!) mayhaps, and on, as the good Bard says:
The world is a satge
And all men (and women) actors
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the prime minister of malaysia is a preacher to the choir. im a preacher to my choir, and YOU are a preacher to a choir. Its very good when people put signs on the road that should be there isnt, everyone benifits isnt it!
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I do preach to the choir but only to my own crowd of people who are less informative and yes I do make reference to Jeffooi and MKini. So what if I preach it to audience, at least I am doing a social responsibility of educating them on what is going on.
I will still be acting on my own stage, even there is one person in the audience.
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“However, call it faith, but sometimes, with the right sermons, choirs tend to grow.”
That depends if you want the choirs to grow in numbers or in faith. Since you are using ‘Christian choirs’ as example, I’ll like to say that …the reason choirs come together is not merely just to sing (we have the Karaoke place for that), they are there for a bigger purpose, to worship the Lord. Same here, people go to Screenshots, not just to bitch, but at the same time gain views from other politically-awared person, share insight and discuss differences… so you can discern for yourself and makeup your mind. You see, Screenshots (and others) is the place where ‘politically-aware/conscious people’ meet to share views.
You see, you can sing your choir tune to others, but you gotta realize many do not dig gospel tune, some prefer pop, rap or even blues. You cannot force them to like your tune but of course you can tell them about places like Jeffkini choir etc. and hope that these sites will make them more aware of things around them. Political awareness cannot be forced, it has to be found by the individual himself, just like Christ.
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The mistake made by Jason Lim is to believe that even in a Greek-style participatory democracy, people actually do entirely independent view of each issue or item. The truth is part of the way we make decisions and opinion is by taking the views of others we respect. In fact, its a major way of which we make up our minds about issues even in the top leadership. It is actually the rare genius that can look at issues entirely independently.
Bloggers are actually what advertisers call first adopters. They are the first to adopt certain views and opinion. This is due to one key trait of bloggers - the believe in participatory democracy at least those who just blog (we shall ignore the futility of propagandist).
The reason why it appears they represent a certain socio-political view is because the issues in Malaysia are pretty much obvious on the first cut and hence with first adopters, they take that view. I would argue that Malaysia blogs are very representative of what the society views are lead by these first adopters.
Some argue that these views lack depth but I would argue that any intellectual lacking is due to the apathy or lack of participation of Malaysian intellectual rather than the fault of the bloggers themselves. There may be intellectuals who could offer much more to blogging but do not simply because as Malaysian bloggers know, the government watches over it and they are not completely free to express themselves. For example, there is no non-bumiputra and non-Muslim counterpart of a yound sharp mind like Farish Noor simply because he would likely end up in jail by now if there were. It is perhaps a sad testament of Malaysian non-bumiputra political activism.
I would also argue that bloggers are not just first adopters of consumer culture but also primary stakeholders too. Those who read popular blogs on issues tend to be those who have the biggest stake in the issue. We see the participation these stakeholders in all our blogs including extremist views. The reason why these stakeholders pay attention not just because its popular but because first adopters are looking at it and they know where these first adopters goes, goes the views more often than not.
Hence I don’t think Jason Lim is correct at all. He thinks that just because there are a whole group of silent majority that are not participating or looking at blogs. The bloggers are representative maybe not perfectly so but Greek democracy is history and impossible now.
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I think that Jason Lim has, despite some of my misgivings, a pertinent point, because more often than not there is significant absence of an active partipating public in such social-political dialogue and in the end such dialogue remain on the margins of the society at large. On the other hand, Jason should remember this is the beginning, feeble as it may be, but a beginning nonetheless, where by word of mouth and increasing partipation, it would pose as an alternative voice and outlet to mainstream media and the dominant social-political discourse, and in the course of time with more and more partipation and readership become an important and powerful space for dialogue that would bring about an awareness and social consciousness in societal thoughts and ideas, hence a force of change in the future.
Well, call me an idealist, but let it be a beginning and harbinger of more social debates and dialogues by others in the years ahead.
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quote: ‘…with the right sermons, choirs tend to grow.’
good stuff jason.
who does theCICAK have in mind when they sing? (thus defining the ‘right’ sermons…)
do we WANT to repackage our sermons to appeal to a wider audience..?
personally, i dont mind singing to the choir, as long as our are tunes catchy enough to get at least SOME members of our audience hum the tunes as they walk out the Church….
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Rather than hitting reload, I subscribe to RSS feeds. Now if only Jeff would give me full RSS, as will TheCicak. Giving only the excerpts, is by far, annoying, and disables me reading things offline.
Consider that a suggestion for improvement
(and yes, you use Wordpress, the feature exists. I can turn it on for you if need be)
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Am in the US and am a Malysian.
Right now, Malaysian blogs are somehwere between erudite graffiti and a cathartic wall complaining about things everyone more or less knows about but hinge on sharing and, purging oneself of grievances and naggings of despondency.
We need to be patient. It will sort itself out and evolve as issues that are ‘alternatively mediated’ become mainstream by virtue of the critical mass of awareness or just reaching plain crisis proportions.
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attila: i disagree.
i believe that things dont just sort themselves out. issues need people to actively discuss and debate them and pursue a proper resolution.
critical mass might never be reached if not for people who complain and rant and nag. it spreads perspectives and increases awareness and public uproar, forcing the government to react.
but what happens if the avenue to rant and complain is limited by the government?
decades-old issues abound. and are never resolved properly. critical mass is not reached because of this limiting factor, this inhibitor.
and this is where i would like to believe avenues of change like thecicak come in: to catalyze the reation rate, to speed things up.
[no discussion]
problem + 1 rant –> problem + 2 rant
(very low rate of reaction, essentally no reaction)
[governmental inhibition]
problem + 1 rant –> problem + supressed expression
(no reaction)
[catalyst neutralizes inhibitor and increases public exposure]
problem + 1,000,000 rants —> resolution
(higher rate of reaction, reaction takes place)
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Well, I’m pretty average (in fact, I’d say my general knowledge is church mouse level), but I do occasionally visit Malaysiakini and Jeffooi’s site just to see what’s up
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