Part 3 of the debates...

On the other side of the coin;

The arguements against the Western influence on Malaysia were mostly the obvious - the liberalisation and sexualisation of society, media influence on children and teenagers, a willingness to question authority and even the rise and rise of fastfood.

I guess these are true enough.  I certainly agreed with them.  But what was missing from this side of the arguement was some facts.  Like the side which only spoke of the benefits of Western influence, it was all anecdotal evidence.

Of course there has been a liberalisation of societies values in Malaysia.  But the funny thing is, as Western culture has been blamed for this, they seem to have taken the worst of Western culture and applied it unevenly while ignoring the other aspect of liberalisation - education and responsibility.  We have a very comprehensive sex education policy in NZ, something which is needed to balance out all the sex on tv and in the media in general.  That crucial aspect is missing here, so you get this wildly warped sexualisation in Malaysia.  But the arguement was on the right track.

Another point in the arguement was the supposed eroding of that great ambiguous idea of 'Asian values'.  Now, if you ask an Asian what 'Asian values' are you'll get answers relating to conservativeness, piety, filial duties, deference to authority and the older generations and a few other things.  If you compare the East and West today, you'd see some differences along these lines, but if you go back around 50 years in the West you'd have found the same values there.  But again, the debate was about life now, not then, so in context the points counted.

I enjoyed this debate immensely, and have kept the notes each side used in the debate.  I may refer to them again in the future sometime!