Interviewer: Good morning, it is my pleasure meeting you. Thank you for granting us an interview.
Mayor: Good morning! I hope you enjoy your stay in the State of Brunei, and that this interview may satisfy your curiosity concerning the working of Brunei.
Interviewer: Brunei is certainly the most pleasant place to stay; where else could I find skyscrapers in the midst of a forest? However I am not quite used to the food…
Mayor: [laughter] I understand; this is not the first time people say this to me! To address your first point, once upon a time Brunei was just like any other city in your country right now, with lots of roads, concrete and all that – trees were scarce! But as we developed the Integrated Land Transit System (ILTS), it gradually reduced the demand for road, so much that we removed most of the roads and plant trees in place of them!
Concerning the food, well, I do understand that life without meat can be hard for foreigners, as they had lived with it for so many years. But it is our principle that animal life is on an equal footing with human’s, and there should be no discrimination between the two.
Interviewer: But life is surely less enjoyable without eating meat…
Mayor: [laughter] I can’t comment on this as I had not tasted meat before. However, I think enjoyment is a matter of tastes and preferences. We tend to think of things foreign to us as absurd and false, or at least presumed to be so; and attach all sorts of connotations to it. Perhaps the absence of such a presumption enables Brunei to grow much faster than the rest of the world – 2.7% per year for the past 600 years – as we do not cling to unjustifiable ideas! To be specific, I had heard of the claim that not eating meat weakens one’s body; but I’d have to plead the fact that Bruneians are the world’s longest-living people by a considerable margin!
Well, Bruneians are generally guilty of not responding to such claims as ‘meat encourages health’ – such responses are not integral to our prosperity!
Interviewer: But surely extending the prohibition of eating meat to foreigners in Brunei is detrimental to your economy?
Mayor: Well, I’d have to admit that it reduces opportunity to trade with the rest of the world. But so much of Brunei’s demand can only be met internally; the rest of the world is, pardon me if you would, too primitive to produce most kinds of goods and services Bruneians demand. On the contrary, the rest of the world is greatly hurt by failure to trade with Brunei, since it fails to grab the fruits of Bruneian research and ingenuity.
Sorry if I appear to be snobbish, but I’m not sure if that addresses your question.
Interviewer: [laughter] I don’t mean to criticize you in return, but you say that in the face of Bruneian prosperity. Let’s say if Bruneians are not that prosperous, would the ban on eating meat on foreigners still be enforced? Or you would trade the ban for more trade?
Mayor: If you do a little math using the growth rate I talked about earlier and the present per-capita annual income of Brunei, you would see that the corresponding figure 600 years ago is less than $10. That is very low indeed, compared to its contemporaries! But nevertheless the ban was maintained, and most Bruneians remain vegetarian. There were quite a few who left, though, and we felt sorry for them.
We prospered in the face of this. It’s not an overnight process; it took us decades to catch up with the rest of the world, Bruneians being slow learners. But we never looked back since then. Today our average family is quite a bit wealthier and more productive than some nations on earth.
It is a matter to generate wealth, but another to keep it. I believe humans generally are not lacking in the former, but it is the latter that differentiates Bruneian approach from the rest of the world. The key is discipline and self-restraint. The two qualities are imparted upon us mainly through our practices of not eating meat. I’m sure you understand the urge to eat meat is hard to resist indeed!
Interviewer: That all sounds very well; but why Brunei still maintains weapons of mass destruction? Isn’t that contradictory?
Mayor: Yes, and we are sorry. But one does have to remember that he is living in a world with other irrational people. It is plausible that one day, we may see situations that it is far worse to survive than to die. Think of enslavement, for example. We would rather die with the rest of the world than to see ourselves in the kind of situation I mentioned earlier. In any case, the weapon is in the form of our fusion reactors, which upon release of reaction control, would release energy sufficient to destroy the earth several times over. So there should be no worries!
Interviewer: But it is very paternalistic that Brunei gains an upper hand in determining the fate of human race!
Mayor: It is also possible to interpret the situation the other way around: by failing to develop, the rest of the world has forfeited its right share in determining the fate of human race! [laughter] Well, I am just joking. But we have nothing to gain and all to lose if the weapon is ever to be used.
By the way, you’d have to realize something, that reasoning does not work in all situations!
[To be continued...]
