The builder vs the destroyer

Originally I wanted to write about “Building For A Future”. However, I find it difficult to write about building for a future when the current is being destroyed. I could not just turn a blind eye and continue writing about business after the recent senseless mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. I am struggling to find words that would fully describe the level of evilness that the perpetrator possesses to kill people who were having their most intimate connection with their Creator. This monstrosity is just inhuman.

If the killings happened in any other place of worship regardless of faith, I would feel the same.

Killing a person is one thing, but I can’t even begin to think how evil one person can be when women and children as young as three years old were senselessly gunned down in cold blood. This devilish act was even streamed live on social media as if it was an unmissessable sporting event. To take the life of another is ungodly but to take the life of a child, the defenceless soul among us is unspeakable. This is a heinous crime against humanity.

Thinking of the dead children, I believe only the hardest of hearts would not break down and weep. But that is not enough. As rational, responsible people, we must search our soul, we must question and do our part in every possible way to speak and act for humanity.

This set me thinking. Even a business cannot be cold and without a soul. Humanity must also exist in business. After all, consumers of products and services are human, and we cannot talk about business, or create products and services in isolation from humanity. As much as we set out to build good things in life, we have to acknowledge that there exist people who are set to destroy what we have built.

This reminds me of the times I brought my children to the beach and tried to teach them lessons through building sandcastles. They soon realise that they cannot build the castles using dry sand. They must wet the sand to get the right texture to build a sturdy castle. That is not enough. They must make sure that the castle is built at a safe spot where the waves cannot roll and crush it. They do everything possible to protect it, too. Then here comes a child out of nowhere, who sees this castle with a glint in his eyes. Then he charges at it, kicks it and stomps on it, and then scoots off laughing.

Similarly, in business, we build and create, making sure everything will work. We do everything possible to make our business, product or service sustainable for the long haul. Then here come the ‘enemies’ – the competitors, the disrupters or worse, the ‘corporate vultures’ whose only aim is to destroy. What we have taken pains to build and nurture over time can be gone in the blink of an eye. Just like the children who perished in the mass massacre in Christchurch. Children who are built for the future. Gone. Just like that. Destroyed by the destroyers.

Who are these destroyers and why do they destroy?

To answer this I first ask this question, who knows best the purpose of creation – the ‘created’ or the ‘Creator’? The purpose of creation will always be best known to the ‘Creator’. But when people, the ‘created’ want to play the ‘Creator’, that is when the problem starts. It results in conflict when the ‘created’ do not understand the real purpose of creation. This gives birth to destroyers and the justification merely follows the changing laws of mankind.

Previously if the majority of people came to a consensus, then what was agreed became the norm and then the law. Then this changed. It was no longer decided by the majority but by the mightiest. The mightiest was the law, the judge and the executioner. But even this has evolved. Today in the digital era, the ‘loudest’ has become the new norm. If we are not aligned to the ‘loudest’ amongst us, what we say can be judged as wrong. So what’s next? Because this scenario created by people keeps on changing, there will always be these destroyers among us.

To attend to them, we must get back to the fundamentals. The ‘created’ should not behave like the ‘Creator’. When the ‘Creator’ commands thou shalt not kill, all the ‘created’ should comply. If all comply, there is no space for these evil destroyers.

As a builder in business, I have to prepare for this. I must attend to it. No one in our right mind with an iota of sanity can afford to ignore it.

Just because this time the atrocious murders occurred in a peaceful place such as Christchurch in a country that people mainly have visions of green pastures, gurgling rivers, sparkling waters and grazing sheep, the world sat up. The media went into a frenzy. Whereas it is happening everyday but goes mostly unreported in Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and many more places.

So for now, I refuse to say business as usual. For it is not. We are living in unusual times.

Datuk Azrin Mohd Noor is the founder of Sedania Group, an innovator, author and IP expert. Reach him at amn2000@sedaniainnovator.com