Cambodians need to work together

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

Aug. 23, 2011
Written by A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News

A recent meeting I had with a former American foreign service officer and a retiree from a nonprofit, non-governmental organization had as its purpose to discuss Cambodia and change. But our discussions touched on many other issues, ranging from my column on China's overreach to the globalization of technology, and how today's young Cambodians have become adept with and immersed in modern technological tools.

It was the young Cambodians' wholehearted embrace of technology that nudged me and my NGO friend -- both of us well past 50 -- to raise concerns over the gradual decline in direct personal relationships among humans, relationships we both believe are essential to productive interaction.

As we spoke, some quotations I found in a PowerPoint and used in my column in this space five years ago popped back in my head: "We reached the moon and came back, but we find it troublesome to cross our own street and meet our neighbors. We have conquered outer space, but not our inner space." And: "We talk much, we love only a little, and we hate too much."

Having learned how values and principles historically have been guides for human beings, I write from time to time about Lord Gautama Buddha's ancient teachings 2,500 years ago, which seem to have relevance in today's Cambodia, where 95 percent of her 14 million citizens are Buddhists, where democrats are fighting for rights and freedom.

After our meeting, I received a note from my American friend, along with Foreign Policy magazine's special report, "Technology Will Take on a Life of Its Own." He suggested that perhaps we have been already bypassed by the new age and young Cambodians will have to come up with a new system of ethics aligned with the new technology.

I found Foreign Policy's special report by Ayesha Khanna and Parag Khanna frightening. They summarized American futurist Alvin Toffler's books -- "Future Shock," "The Third Wave" and his new book, described as the "Hybrid Age" or "Fourth Wave" -- man becomes part of the machine and the machine becomes part of man.

"Billions of the world's poor from Africa to India are already participating in technological experimentation," wrote Khanna and Khanna. "And yet we have not even begun to grasp the implications of human-technology co-evolution."

I emailed my friends that it seems like humanity is being robbed of its soul, and I am not willing to lose that soul. Those values and principles that have always guided collective and individual behavior must not be allowed to disappear.

I am a fan of Alvin Toffler. He said, "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." To learn is to think. In the words of the great Chinese teacher Confucius, "Learning without thought is labor lost."

Toffler, who predicts a fusing of man and machine as technology engulfs every aspect of our lives, still espouses the value of continued learning. Those who are acolytes of technology likely would respond that they are continuing to learn. Look, they might say, at my Facebook page; I have 1,200 friends. Look at all the tweets I keep up with. I'm learning. I check Wikipedia all the time.

This, though, is not what I think of as learning, nor do I think Toffler would consider the reading of 10 Facebook pages and assiduous watching of "Entertainment Tonight" as the sort of learning he had in mind.

Learning, as Toffler noted, requires thought. Thought, I believe, is not the product of seconds, but of blocks of time devoted to consideration of information and ideas from a variety of sources. Technology offers the capacity to expand the sources of information, but simultaneously demands of us that we discern among the many sources those that inform, not misinform.

To discern the difference will require that we maintain the human connections that have framed human interaction until the present day. The quality of our thinking is improved when it is challenged by those who hold views at variance with our own.

Our own analysis of information is inevitably filtered through the sieve of our values and principles. Much as I continue to encourage Cambodians to be guided by the traditional teachings of Lord Buddha, among others, I hope each of us will not lose sight of the principles that have been the foundation of our communities. As my American friend lamented, when one begins to curse and engage in name-calling, an exercise made easier by the anonymity of electronic communication, one stops thinking.

As Lord Buddha said, "Nothing is permanent." Everything changes; things change and people change. "Fill your mind with compassion," Buddha preached. "When you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it," Buddha taught.

Reason was what Socrates, a founding father of Western civilization, also propounded.

A young Cambodian graduate in political science from a foreign university emailed me from his home village in Cambodia's northwest, praising regime opponents for working "tirelessly" with villagers, even when threatened by representatives of the government in power, but he criticized those who share the same goals for failing to work together -- and for dividing villagers further into different parties that believe in the same thing: democracy.

This failure to work together toward common goals flies in the face of Buddha's teachings and will thwart democratic progress, with or without the boost that modern technology can give to the struggle.

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.