Sustainable Development and Worldviews

Mobility is the backbone of civilization. The easier and further people can move, the population can be more connected, wider networks established, more trade transacted, more goods transferred, more knowledge exchanged, and mega-city formed. This is especially so for major roads. Take for instance the ancient Silk Roads, as Oxford historian Peter Frankopan wrote: “There was good reason why the cultures, cities and peoples who lived along the Silk Roads developed and advanced: as they traded and exchanged ideas, they learnt and borrowed from each other, stimulating further advances in philosophy, the sciences, language and religion.” Roads are the main infrastructure for land travelling throughout human history. Many roads remain so for short distance journey in every country today. There is not a single developing country or city that does not use roads or stop building roads as part of socio-economic progress. Sure, each country utilises roads differently but none of them stop build...

I can never forget the strangeness of May 10, 2018. Everything was actually the same, I walked past the same street, drank the same 2-in-1 instant coffee and ordered food from the same hawker. But somehow, that day felt different. It was as if my experience was out of sync with the physical surroundings. I guess many Malaysians felt the same that day, right after the watershed fourteenth general election. The mass existential discord was vivid and swiping through the nation’s collective consciousness. Our surroundings remained the same but there was a sense that the national fabric underneath our country was changed overnight. A new era has arrived, but not yet. We Malaysians carried on with our familiar lives in a strange place, like actors who found themselves performing an old play on a brand new stage. Since then, two months have passed. Today, I attended the first day of the three-day “World Conference On Islamic Thought and Civilisation? (WCIT2018) organised by the state governm...