RELUCTANCE can have many reasons. It can simply stem from a psychological inability to decide, a lack of power, or the absence of clear and realistic goals. It can of course also be a conscious strategy to maintain the status quo, however untenable that may seem to others.

Building a NATION—be it to achieve a homogenous society or a pluralistic one—requires the generating of a sense of common purpose among key stakeholders in society. Strangely, a sense of common purpose is something that is harder to achieve than actually having expressly common goals. In fact, stating common goals tends to work against the sense of common purpose, ironically. Words divide, while experiences unite. That is one insight gained by the author of these articles over 30 years of political analysis and philosophical thinking. Common purpose is gained through common daily experiences and struggles as simple as taking the same bus or being drenched in the same storm. Ideological statements and policy goals divide by infecting daily experiences with abstractions.

With his tenth compilation of articles, Ooi Kee Beng enters new territories of thought on nation building and on Malaysian political history. He considers his writing more as learning processes for himself than as public expositions of ready thoughts in his mind. In that sense, these pieces point forward as points on an endless learning curve, and are best contemplated collectively more to understand a certain potent frame of mind and paths of thought, than as statements of facts and as claims for the reader to accept or reject.