By Kuik Cheng Kang, Sin Chew Daily

On Nov 5, I wrote the article Chinese community should not be a 'political orphan' on this column to highlight all the possible situations for the Malaysian Chinese community in future. That was my personal view and concern, and the same has since drawn the attention of some in the Malay society.

Several Malay NGOs and political leaders have taken the initiative to meet me after reading the article.

Prior to this, because of Sin Chew's news reports on the Seni Khat issue, I had meetings with then Pakatan education minister Maszlee Malik and youth and sports minister Syed Saddiq. These two gentlemen did not read Chinese but because of what they had heard in the cabinet meeting, they decided to meet me in person to find out how Sin Chew carried this issue and what the local Chinese community was actually worried about, among other things.

In a world overwhelmed by fake news and misinformation, it definitely helps for people to sit down and talk. This is particularly true in a multicultural country like ours, where people from different ethnic groups typically live in their own little worlds. This makes listening and rational exchanges of ideas all the more important.

In reality, different races in this country would normally live their own lives with hardly any intermingling.

As if that's not enough, many of us are growingly "kidnapped" by our own smartphones. Under the influence of web algorithms and stratospheres, people begin to live in their respective virtual circles, hence entrenched suspicion, animosity and displeasure against those beyond their own ethnic communities by virtue of the differences in their political beliefs.

If you were to browse through Facebook comments of people from different races, you could be excused for thinking that this country is virtually having a "civil war" right now!

Our society has thus become more and more closed as hatred keeps expanding. Sadly, many countries in this world are walking down this path today, including the Untied States and France.

Back home, many Chinese Malaysians do not seem to know much about the Malay society. Many make trashy talks based wholly on their deep-rooted perceptions and prejudices, and they don't have the slightest clue what our Malay compatriots want and think.

Take for example, some Malays indeed require cash to survive the current pandemic crisis, but the Chinese would tend to hint that Malays only know how to buy new furniture when they have the spare cash. The reality is, there are many Malays around us who are working really hard to supplement their household incomes!

In a similar manner, there are some Malays whose cognizance about the Chinese is very much stuck in their stereotyped impressions. As a consequence, Chinese Malaysians are generalized as being unpatriotic and in no way should the UEC be recognized, while SJKCs are detrimental to national unity.

While the pursuit of justice and equality as well as a strong disgust for corruption and abuse of power prevalent among the Chinese do strike a chord with the urban Malays, to majority of rural Malays, their utmost concerns are stability and making enough money to feed themselves and their families.

It is not because these people do not cherish justice and equality, or abhor corruption and abuse of power.

According to Abraham Maslow's hierarchical theory of needs, a lower level must be completely satisfied and fulfilled before moving onto a higher pursuit. Indeed, people need to first have their survival and physiological needs satisfied before they develop secondary psychological pursuits in the likes of safety, love, self-esteem and self-actualization.

During my meeting with several Umno leaders, I came to discover that they almost wanted to give up Chinese votes after being abandoned by Chinese voters in two consecutive general elections. They saw the local Chinese community in equal measure as DAP.

If not eliminated, such prejudice will continue to prompt irresponsible politicians to fan racial sentiments by exploiting sensitive controversial issues, eventually sparking disastrous intercommunity clashes.

Thanks to the systematic exploitation of various social media platforms by irresponsible individuals, in particular politicians, the hatred lurking inside many will get instantly agitated and infinitely expanded, throwing our society into a state of chronic confrontation and making it impossible for people to sit down, talk and reconcile.

Technological advancement was meant to improve our quality of living and bring conveniences to our day-to-day lives. Unfortunately, it has at the same time toddled down the wrong way, negatively affecting or even destroying an entire generation of people.

"The Social Dilemma", a documentary on Netflix, explores the dangerous human impact of social networking with engineers and founders of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram and other platforms, how social media has turned angels into devils and how algorithms have dictated our daily behaviors in a way that people get hooked on it subconsciously, as well as the tremendous impact it has on socioeconomic, political and cultural fronts of nations.

Smartphones have become a vital organ of the human body. Whether you are a Chinese or Malay, a black or white, smartphone addiction has evolved into a lifestyle and culture common to the human race.

Parents with children should know very well that to calm an agitated newborn baby, they need to put the pacifier into the toddler's mouth to appease his anxiety and restlessness so that he can sleep soundly. Today, the smartphone is the digital pacifier that will calm billions of addicted earthlings — old, young, and very young – feeding them with often more negative than positive information round the clock.

Everyone gets constantly obsessed with hunting a cache of information offered on social media sites, makes wild comments and hurls abusive curses in venting his own frustration.

People are becoming increasingly restless and jittery, and will easily go berserk emotionally.

Majority of people living in such a world of information overload do not see the truth. They see only what they want to see and mingle only with like-minded people inside their distinctly demarcated circles. People living within the same stratosphere warm one another up while antagonizing those beyond.

The inundation of fake news has almost gone way beyond our control. We find ourselves harder to tell between facts and lies and therefore, more readily instigated.

This is the heavy price humans have to pay for adopting modern technologies.

We need to shatter the stratospheres, and learn to listen to divergent voices.

And only by so doing we can see salvation for our world, including the country we are now living in.