by Justin Teoh
Hello again! Thank you for joining our readership. For those who are tuning in outside Malaysia, February is when we celebrate Thaipusam and Chinese New Year concurrently, hence the cheerful tone to make up for the lack of large-scale, in-person festivities. While checking the calendar would show that they run on different dates, I say concurrently because economic activities ever so point out that we are interconnected in one way or another. From getting a product to a consumer, to the RELA guards managing festive crowds, and (more recently) to the food and mail delivery drivers too, we are always reminded that our cultures are not one to obstruct the way we communicate on the daily.
And one other constant amidst all our festivals is the presence of religious gods. We acknowledge that our readers and content creators come from various backgrounds, but looking at ourselves from the lens of cultural anthropology, it is arguable enough to say that gods are cultural products. The identity of a deity (or deities) will not prevail if it were not for the first devotees who preceded them, who spread their word in the form of preserving their beliefs and maintaining certain practices. All this begs the question: if kindness does exist still, do gods walk among us? People today relate with cinematic and/or televised superheroes; heroic figures in literature; video game lore, especially from the recent popularity of Genshin Impact, also appeal to our interest in gaining insight from the way otherworldly characters interact. Why are there so many interpretations going around?
What if we are projecting their image already? Thinking all of this—at least for me—goes to show that we are not all godless beings ourselves, whether or not you believe in them in the first place. Religion and myth, in their purest form, show us what we love and value as a community. They build up an appreciation for other collectives around us, and that in itself is still important today, as told from many bygone ages.
Hence our title for this issue. Along with the usual broadcast of topics you should care about, such as the anti-Asian hate crimes and the coup of Myanmar, we explore how we relate to overarching figures other than ourselves. How we already have some readily available guidance to be better actors of social justice, straight from beyond the Earth’s crust. If you ever go out for a celebration, keep in mind that you may be meeting a god or two. Maybe they exude a mystical aura, or maybe they happen to wear Nikes. The nice thumbnail attached to this editor’s note bears no relation to February. I am just trying to tell you, dear reader, to enjoy festivals the best you can and to attend to your personal mythologies.