The Gentlemen Of Harvard

Have you watched the movie about the youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg – the Social Network?  Gosh! I just love brilliant movies about brilliant people.   I always feel that bad movies could give me migraine if not a cardiac-arrest. 

Well, if you have watched the movie, you probably have heard a character in the movie mentioned, ‘..the gentlemen of Harvard’.   

It was a reply given by one the character to his twin brother on why they shouldn’t take action against Mr. Zuckerberg for ‘stealing’ their idea.  The argument was that, as gentlemen from one of the most prestigious university and coming from a family of status, they shouldn’t chase anybody around like little kids. 

Yeah, some may judge the character as stuck-up, but are they? 

Is choosing to be a gentleman, that is, showing good manners, be judged as stuck-up? 

In our society, these kinds of gentleman are called ‘elite’, meaning they come from a background of big-shots or highly-influential families, which are usually well-off or at least, was well-off.   In older days, these families were called ‘golongan bangsawan’.    

Nowadays, you can hardly find the elites anymore.  These elites are forced to blend in with the ‘ordinaries’ when the government opened up the once exclusive schools for the elites in the colonial days, to every Mat, Dol, Din or Minah in the surrounding areas, feldas and kampungs. 

As a result, today, any Mat, Dol, Din or Minah may become a CEO, a Country Manager, a Pilot, a Doctor or a Lawyer and own half-a-million ringgit intermediate houses up to millions of ringgit bungalows in the heart of KL or even overseas.   They may also drive cars that cost higher than the whole floor of a low-cost flat, combined.  Wealth is not exclusive for the elites anymore. 

But that’s not the issue here.  The issue is ‘good manners’. 

Regardless of our background, we should all practice good manners.  You shouldn’t necessarily have to come from elite families to have good manners. 

What do you think about a Datin selecting rolls of songket that were laid down on the floor in front of her by using her feet?  Or a Dato’ belittling and humiliating his staff with sarcastic, even dirty language?

It is irritating enough to see someone throw rubbish out of a decent car, what more a luxurious car.  It is most annoying to see a well-off, successful Engineer saying nothing to her kid’s littering the shopping mall corridor.   

Or a well-to-do kid in a hotel lobby accidentally bumped into you and just didn’t know how to say sorry and the mother following behind just didn’t care less about you or her kid’s manners?

To see a Mat Rempit or some foreign workers from the third world country behaving like that is enough to cause eyesore but to see a supposedly ‘successful’ educated Malaysians behaving like that is just sickening.

All I’m saying is that, manners are not exclusive possession of the elites.  Every Mat, Dol, Din and Minah who are now Dato’, Datin or Ir. or Dr. and all the ‘untitled’ wealthy educated Malaysians should have good manners.   

We should take pride in having manners.  You may not be a gentleman of Harvard but you can always be a gentleman of Felda, a gentleman of Kampung Ulu Chendering or something.  

As long as you are a gentleman, you are at a class of your own.