I am the Greatest Mind of the 21st Century.
Now how do you feel reading that?
If you are an insecure monkeyfucking cocksucker, you'd be threatened. You'd feel stupid and inadequate.
"Is he saying I'M stupid?"
Someone did ask me that question after I made that proclamation. My answer was - and remains - YES!
Smart people - real smart ones - wouldn't give a flying fuck about how and what other people think about themselves. They would go on and do their work. Or masturbate.
It is only the extremely insecure who would react to this statement, who would treat everything as a competition. Because their lives are so hollow and meaningless.
Let's get back to how and what people think. Since most of the other disciplines that attract smart people - physics, chemistry, money - are all oversaturated, I have committed myself to this - about how people think. It stems from my own immense insecurity about my intelligence.
I come from a little village in the rural areas of Kuantan. 24 hours electricity was only available in 1986, the same year we got TV3. My career prospects were to be either a teacher, a drug addict, a sales assistant or join the police force. I came to KL in 1998 with immense insecurities. I had earlier seen the more affluent KL kids in my high school - SDAR - eating Swiss chocolate and getting whole roasted chickens every weekend.
My parents went to the school exactly twice in my five years there. Insecure people often compare things, and so I watched as these other kids - KL kids - spend thousands every year on tailored clothes, food and music. I spent probably RM20 a month until I was 17.
So I came to KL when I was 18, scared out of my mind. My carefully laid-out plan of landing a scholarship with my top 5% SPM results were sabotaged by George Soros and his currency speculating. Only the rich kids got scholarships. I got nothing.
Earlier in my childhood, my father had instilled in me huge personality flaws and insecurities that compel me to beat everyone at whatever game they were playing - unless it's video games. I suck at hand and eye coordination.
And so began my perilous, insecure journey.
What worked in my favour, though, is the discovery that KL folks are stupid. They are so stupid, a monkey - a real monkey or chimpanzee, Pan Paniscus - can beat them at everything. The only thing you needed to survive and even thrive is to be just a little smarter than the rest, which I was and am.
The problem with KL folks is this - insecurities. The very same insecurities my parents had instilled in me was and is apparent in them. They are insecure about everything. How else would you explain their bond to flashy material possessions without any substance? How they group together like monkeys and laugh insecurely at things and other people they do not understand. Their ironic populist behavior, their strong desire - even stronger than rural people - to define themselves while paradoxically clinging to be part of something else.
Yes. City folk are weak. Hollow. And best of all, they are arrogant. The Achilles heel of many is always arrogance. Being judgmental is stupid. Being presumptuous is stupid. 'Being clever about it' is the stupidest thing EVER!
You know what's smart? It's not figuring out a complex equation in minutes. It's not being praised or envied by others.It's not getting the approval of other people. Not the money in your bank account, not the car you drive. Or the clothes you wear.
No.
It is being happy. In order to be happy, you have to be honest - with yourself, with people, but especially with yourself. It is letting go, it is accepting things as they are and then doing something about it, without any emotional attachments. It is being free.
Now that's smart. But don't tell these KL folks. They stupid.
