THERE are no refugees in the entire world for time immemorial who have been grateful and appreciative to their host for taking them in when they were driven out of their own land or hounded by their own people.
The Jewish diaspora, probably the first refugee race in the world, never assimilated in any of the countries that gave them shelter even after thousands of years of being refugees.
Europe today is also facing the problem of assimilating its Middle Eastern and North African refugees and asylum seekers. Even Malaysians have faced trouble with the Rohingya refugees.
Only people who voluntarily leave their country will be appreciative and grateful to their host country. A sign of that is that they will easily abandon their old way of life and adopt the lifestyle and practices of their host nations.
In contrast to voluntary emigrants, it is not unusual for refugees and asylum seekers to develop contempt towards their host nation by rejecting the lifestyle and practises of their host in disdain while clinging to their old lifestyle and practises in an aggressive, irrational and stubborn manner.
The reason that refugees will act in such a bizarre manner is because appreciation and gratitude is a humbling experience. To be forced out of one’s own home is a humiliating experience. What people who have been humiliated need to feel the most is pride, not humility.
We are unable to fathom the level of psychosis that a refugee experiences. A refugee is someone who is hated, abused, abandoned and harmed often by their own people simply for the crime of being who they are.
‘Untampered pride’
When your own people are trying to kill or humiliate you in your own homeland, you will likely have to brainwash yourself so that you will remain just as yourself even if you are threatened with punishment or death for being who you are.
You will not only apply such mental force on yourself to the point that you might drive yourself insane, you will also have to condition yourself to see everybody around you as evil or worthy of contempt.
You therefore cannot be expected to just let go of your existing mindset just because you have been rescued and whisked away to a foreign country.
Our hearts and minds don’t work that have been conditioned by pain, fear, terror, humiliation, anger and hatred will not flip suddenly to become appreciative, kind, easy going and delightful just by taking a plane ride to settle in a new country.
In their host country, more than food, shelter or medicine, what a refugee will need the most in order to deal with the trauma of their past is untampered pride.
Take away pride from a refugee and they will likely feel like they are less than nothing.
We need to understand that when we deal with refugees, we have to be extremely compassionate and that compassion is not a transaction. Compassion is not something that you offer while expecting gratitude, praise and appreciation in return.
Compassion is considered the quintessential quality of the noble, because compassion is a quality that rests on itself. We must be prepared to accept that people whom we are compassionate towards will one day behave in an ungrateful manner towards us.
As a matter of fact, we will probably have to contend with a lot of losses and hardship that we do not have to contend with, in lieu of our compassion. Despite that, those of us who choose to be compassionate will still choose to remain compassionate for a reason that transcends any worldly explanation.
Some Malaysians are to the opinion that we should not accept refugees in our shores not only because they believe that charity begins at home but because they feel that the refugees that we help are ungrateful towards the help that we have extended towards them.
‘Just send financial aid’
As in the recent case of a couple of Palestinian refugees who stirred up a ruckus in their Wisma Transit Kuala Lumpur (WTKL) temporary dwelling recently, I actually feel that we should not accept refugees in our shores because we should cut our cloth according to our own measure.
KEKECOHAN DAN AMUKAN WARGA PALESTIN DI WISMA TRANSIT KUALA LUMPUR*
Pada 02 Okt 24 jam lebih kurang jam 1815, terdapat beberapa Warga Palestin yang menginap di Wisma Transit Kuala Lumpur telah membuat kekecohan dan amukan atas dasar tidakkepuasan hati. pic.twitter.com/43H9JSq48u
— #UpdateInfo🇲🇾🌍 (@update11111) October 3, 2024
Divine qualities like compassion are not something that we are born with. They are qualities that can only grow in us if we practise and cultivate it.
Malaysians are to an extent compassionate but we are certainly not that compassionate a people to delude ourselves into thinking that we will be able to deal with refugees on our shores.
At our level of compassion, we probably should just aim to collect some money and send money, food, clothing or medicine to troubled people in a one-off fashion instead of believing that we will be able to deal with them on our own shores for years, decades, a lifetime or many lifetimes.
The worst thing we can do to ourselves and the refugees is to bring these refugees or asylum seekers into our shores because we are overrun by a “saviour complex” that makes us believe that we are better than who we actually are.
When we have a “saviour complex”, we might believe that we are being compassionate when we bring refugees into our shores.
It is when we seek to validate our vanity through praises and gratitude from people like refugees who are unable to humble themselves any further after having undergone too many humiliating experiences in their life – and thus are clinging to their pride as the last vestige of their sanity – all hell will break loose. – Oct 6, 2024
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Main image credit: The Star
