The Youth’s Search
for Identity
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
Introduction
A
recent study on the Thinking Framework, Attitudes and Lifestyle
of University Students in Malaysia shows 66% of
the students around the age of 18 to 25 years old are largely
conversant with issues pertaining to their personal and social
experiences whereas 22.4% concerned themselves with issues
pertaining to religion and academic matters.1 Evidently, these
contrasting numbers indicates a certain attitude and lifestyle
pattern that depicts a narcissistic and socially dependent life.
The surface appearance of the facts seems to conclude that
the ever changing market reforms and new ways of living have
a certain influence on the way one values one’s life. However,
what was not apparent in these data were indications of their
inherent and active search for identity that influenced those
attitudes and lifestyles. These university students are at the
beginning of the prime of their lives, where they are about to
embark on an important journey of discovering the meaning
of themselves and building relations with others – this
searching period or attitude towards life can be referred to as
youth. Youth here is taken as an adjective for those who
1
Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), Malaysia, Thinking Framework, Attitudes
and Lifestyle of Malaysian University Students (May 2016- May 2017), hereafter
cited as Thinking Framework.
147
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
exhibits an optimistic drive towards finding one’s identity with
respect to the physical, emotional and intellectual being. And
yet, according to this research, we found that the generality of
who fit this definition are prone to activities that revolve mostly
around entertainment that impede their growth in harnessing
maturity.2 The search for identity is essentially one’s attempt
to reach maturity, i.e. adulthood. Even so, ‘adulthood’ here is
not to be taken for granted; the youth-like tendency to waver or
to take precedence in search for its meanings is also apparent
among the adults. Moreover, the definition of youth should not
only be confined to their biological age, but also, involves the
spirit and attitude towards life in its search for meaning and
identity. From this onwards, questions such as, Why are youths
acting the way they do? What do they want? What do they think
of themselves? are pertinent, the answer to these questions
partly lies in one’s understanding of who and what man is and
what this period in life means to them. Recently, we see the
rise of ”youth studies” among social scientists trying to gauge
these problems of youth development by merely observing the
effects of the environment on their growth.3 However, these
external differences, despite being one of the main factors, do
not give a sense of identity. Instead, their identity lies in the
one’s understanding of their origin and destiny which shapes
the way youths think about who they are and what is expected
of them.
The Thinking Framework, Attitudes and Lifestyle research
conducted discussions with various focus groups consisting of
students from different races and genders from selected
2
3
Ibid.
Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn, Youth and Generation: Rethinking Change and
Inequality in the Lives of Young People, (SAGE Publications, 2015), 3. This book’s
concern is somewhat similar to this paper but the differences lie in the fact
that Woodman-Wyn believed that the changing environment, conditions,
gender and race play a major role in how one defines one’s identity.
148
The Youth’s Search for Identity
universities. The discussions reflected that most youths at this
age are generally concerned with economic security that
would provide them with stability in life to such an extent that
they envisioned themselves as merely a commodity to the life
factory.4 They perceived the word ‘independent’ to be related
to merely a consequence of securing employment after high
school, after college, or even after university. Life is considered
as the advancement of a person to fit into a career, and
education is the vehicle by which they believed would take
them to this goal. This has posed a threat to the whole
education industry, such that it has failed to provide the right
knowledge that would aid students not to solely prepare them to
become a good citizen that contributes to the state’s economy,
but also, good mature adults.5 How did this understanding of
man as a commodity come to be?6 Marxists would blame the
spirit of capitalism fueling industrial values unto the fabric of
society. But capitalism, as an ideology cannot cultivate on its
own without the right soil and fertile ground.7 To this, we must
investigate the basic, fundamental assumptions that built this
ideology such as the conception of man himself.
The contemporary conception of man espouses the idea that
maturity is achieved after the transition from one’s dependency
on others during childhood to one’s independence of thought
and action, marked as adulthood. But what does childhood
and adulthood mean altogether? Postman sees childhood as
Thinking Framework report.
Harry R. Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?
(New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 147. “One of the oldest ideas about college
is that it is a place where children becomes adults.” “… students are to grow
in mind and soul.”
6
Many have despaired over this notion and that there are something missing
with this kind of attitude towards life. See for example Ivan Illich, Deschooling
Society (Richmond, United Kingdom: Calder & Boyars, 1971).
7
See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York:
Scribner, 1958).
4
5
149
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
a social and an intellectual category.8 He proposes that the
ground for understanding the idea of childhood came from
the Greek ‘invention’ of the idea of schooling.9 The function
of schooling - which provides necessary training on life skills to their mind is to create good citizens that could function in a
society, ready to “serve their turn”. This perspective prevailed
throughout the medieval ages, where they regard education as a
means to provide skills for children to be able to execute work.10
However, creating an individual that could contribute to work
does not consequently create a good man. An excellent and
skilled computer programmer, for instance, may be loyal to
his company, but not to his spouse. Therein lies the indication
that a certain moral decadence in a man was the result of an
education that does not involve proper ethics and values that
runs parallel to their social and individual responsibilities. The
fact that the progress from childhood to adulthood is
considered as a social construct carries a semblance of the
theory of evolution such that definitions change over time
as society sees fit without an end and purpose of man.
Using Postman’s own argument, we can imply that this is
Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, or.
1982, this edition is 1994), 43.
9
Ibid., 7-8.
10
Ibid., 38. Postman analyzed the elements that make up the distinction
between childhood and adulthood lies in one’s ability to read and write, which
leads to one’s conceivability of what education is and knowledge to what
is right and wrong. He thinks childhood is a social and cultural construct,
same as the family constructed to become an educational institution etc.
Cultural construct here means that people evolved from one stage to another
a spectacle of evolution - a state of becoming something, but never be. Their
intention and intervention in education is to create or assist in this evolution.
This understanding partially contributed to why the West perceives man
as merely a commodity. These are perhaps merely narrations of what had
happened in the Western culture. The most fundamental aspect that needs
to be analyzed is its philosophical outlook is on their implicit definition of
man in order for us to get a clearer idea on how it affected man’s search for
identity.
8
150
The Youth’s Search for Identity
in fact happening as he expresses concern on the increasing
disappearance of childhood which consequently denigrates
the existence of adulthood altogether. He says:
If one looks closely at the content of TV, one can find a
fairly precise documentation not only of the rise of
the “adultified” child but also of the rise of the
“childified” adult…adults on television do not take their
work seriously (if they work at all), they do not nurture
children, they have no politics, practice no religion,
represent no tradition, have no foresight or serious plans,
have no extended conversations, and in no circumstances
allude to anything that is not familiar to an eight-year –
old person.11
The “disappearance of childhood”, as socially observed by
Postman, is a direct effect of the continuous process of the
undeveloped man attempting to achieve maturity, to which he
called it a “homogeneity” of characteristics.12 The effect of
assuming the conception of childhood and adulthood to be a
mere social construct, contributes to the never-ending search
for identity,eventually culminating in the recent cultural
invention of the adolescent identity. The invention of
adolescence has been discussed by many as a side effect of
urbanization and industrialization.13 This is correct not only as
a matter of fact, from analyzing the social symptoms, but also
the very concern about this is the over usage of the concept of
man which was subjected to ‘adolescency’ in order to justify
this type of identity. It is important to not see adolescence as
merely a condition but an attitude one has towards life, a state
of becoming not yet a complete being. The adolescent attitude
Ibid., 126-7.
Ibid., 132.
13
Perry Brimah, Dr. “Boys to Men: The Invention of Adolescence”, Modern
Ghana, 4th August 2013. https://www.modernghana.com/news/479599/
boys-to-men-the-invention-of-adolescence.html. Accessed on December 7,
2016.
11
12
151
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
is prevalent in a grown man who is inflicted with an optimistic
spirit but has yet developed himself internally to become
balanced and mature in his act. Most people living in the
modernized and postmodernized society tend to be trapped in
this phase of their lives. Socially constructed popular culture
groups like punks, skinheads, hipsters and such are a cultural
phenomenon and a direct impact of youth’s search for their
identity. Identity is a disposition where men identifies his or
herself within their existence of their origin, purpose and
destiny in life.
As the world begins to value image more than the inherent
value it brings, man’s actions, attitudes and lifestyle
continuously strive to fit this new perspective towards life into
theirs. The optimism prevalent during men’s search for their
youth identity is due to the fact that it is in this period where
they have courage and strength to venture on this journey. As
they grow older and still failed to find the meaning and
wisdom to the life struggles that they experienced, they will be
in a state of hopelessness, anxious, and perturbation. By
surrendering the power of society’s dictating the course of
values in one’s self, they believe that they might not be fit to
understand the ever changing value systems. They began to
put all their hopes on those who are younger and stronger than
them to find the answer that they could not have. The
accidental adults have lost their optimism that they once had;
they had passed the biological clock to know their selves and
have rendered unto themselves a tragic spirit, unable to find
their place in this world. Therefore, they either pass the torch
to the youth, hoping for them to find their place, or desperately
hold on to what is left: their inferior pride and principals. These
individuals are influenced by the constant state of becoming,
such that the gap between generations are getting bigger and
bigger to a point where maturity is rendered as unachievable.
Al-Attas recognizes this attitude in the society as when:
152
The Youth’s Search for Identity
The youth, who at that stage experience change in life,
consider the values handed down by their fathers, the
middle aged, no longer useful nor relevant to their way of
life. Consequently, they do not take the middle-aged as
models to guide them in life, and hence demand of them
their freedom to choose their own destiny. The middleaged, realizing that their values too, when they were in
the prime of youth, did not succeed in guiding them in
life, and now they know they are themselves unable to
provide the necessary guidance for their sons, and so
surrender freedom which they seek to choose their destiny
in the hope that youth may yet succeed where they had
failed. Now the youth, in demanding freedom to choose
their own destiny, also know that they need guidance,
which is unfortunately not available…14
As mentioned above, the attitudes and lifestyle posed are
merely symptoms of a more fundamental feature that
influenced one’s thinking framework. Therefore, this builds
the thesis statement which this paper seeks to address, that is,
the influences of the Western concept of man to youth’s
thinking framework and how they come to understand their
identity through that framework. Hence, the need to look into
the meaning and process of development the way they
understand their identity.
Understanding the Concept of Man
The civilization that we live in is essentially worldly-centric. It
is claimed to be worldly-centric because the indubitable, direct
proof of advancements and developments that promotes
modern life today focuses only the benefit of the here and now
which affects the conceptual understanding of the basic
foundations of life. Indeed, it is not an easy task to
14
Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islām and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur:
ISTAC, 1993), 92.
153
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
describe the conceptual understanding of a thought without
understanding what it is or what it represents. However, it is
sufficient to say that for the purpose of this paper, we will only
describe the fundamental elements that define the spirit of the
here and now (zeitgeist) in order to determine the consequence
of its conception of man. The spirit of the here and now
can be discerned from the general culture characteristically
adopts a rationalistic, dualistic, secular, humanistic, and tragic
approach to reality.15 ‘Rationalistic’ is the reliance on the
powers of human reason alone to guide man through life;
‘dualistic’ here means the inability to unite separate entities
absolutely and levelling them into the same ontological plane
which eventually discriminate truth from reality; ‘secular’ is
the perception of time and location in reality that revolves
around the ’here ‘and ’now ‘which commemorates the ’spirit of
the age (zeitgeist)‘; ‘humanistic’ is the confidence of positioning
15
These philosophical characteristics of the spirit is what al-Attas defined as
the characteristics of the West; this definition of the West has never been
clearly formulated and conceptualized by anyone in this philosophically,
non-geographic and non-political manner except by al-Attas. His exposition
seems coherent as compared to other’s attempt of describing the West in his
Islam and Secularism. He first outlined this to expose the intellectual and
religious tradition of the West that claims epistemic authority over the world
through their concept of education which inflicts confusion of knowledge in
the Muslim community. This, in effect, brings al-Attas to present at the 1977
First World Conference on Muslim Education in Makkah for the need for Muslims
to understand the epistemic challenges and return to Islam’s own conception
of education. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Concept of Education
in Islām (Kuala Lumpur: The Muslim Youth Movement (ABIM), 1980), 45
and extended or elaborated by Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, The Educational
Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas (Kuala Lumpur:
International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC), 1998),
309-10. For a more extensive deliberation of al-Attas’ conception of the West,
refer to Syed Muhammad Muhiyuddin al-Attas’ unpublished Master thesis
on “Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’ Conception of the West”, completed
under the Centre for Advanced Studies on Islam, Science, and Civilisation
(CASIS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur on
November 2017.
154
The Youth’s Search for Identity
man to be at the center of reality; ‘tragic’ is an attitude towards
life that has lost its meaning and relevance.
The Reliance on Human Reason
In history, the dispute between ratio and intellectus that occurred
in the Hellenic Christian tradition rigorously during the
scholastic period, where Thomas Aquinas attempted to
distinguish from Augustine’s intellectus. Intellectus here means an
internal metaphysics based on intellective knowledge which
cannot be acquired through reason, therefore faith is to be the
criteria of receiving knowledge, as oppose to Aquinas who
believes that faith requires a cognitive approach in order for
reason (ratio) to be significant in acquiring knowledge. This
distinction is a conflicting understanding of human intellect
and the nature of knowledge itself which presupposes believing
and understanding requires two separate trust on sources, of
God and man accordingly. The Aquinas approach gained
more impact as they began to experience distrusts on the
dogmatic approach of the Church, which represents God,
denunciating anything incomprehensible via one’s reason, for
example, of the existence of God. This eventually led to
Descartes’ philosophical conclusion towards being as cogito ergo
sum: “I think therefore I am”. It acknowledges one’s existence
only through one’s reason that is automatically isolated from
reality. Instead of revelation being the source of knowledge,
man is on its own a source for any epistemology. As men, the
subject was placed on the pedestal, man became the measure
of truth and reality and considered themselves as ‘self-made’,
liberated, and free to venture through life to seek for truth
finding meaning on his own. However, the lack of guidance to
know fundamental aspects of the unseen, such as, the purpose
of life, the origin of man, what is right and wrong and such,
have impaired them from understanding reality as presented
to them. The complications of life as experienced by them are
155
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
left unanswered and in despair. The rise of extreme rationalism
puts man in a state of being that was left to wonder alone in
the universe, only able to grasp his surroundings with the help
of science and technology. Investments towards understanding
man through merely the faculty of reason sees the birth of
secular sciences such as anthropology, sociology, psychology,
and philology, to name but a few. These sciences influenced
the education system that we have today and shaped the way
people view man in the world over.
Levelling and The Inability to Find Unity
In a dualistic view of reality, one believes that there exists an
unmitigated fine line between two extremes, such that there
cannot exist a condition whereby both extremes meet in the
middle. They considered truth - as what was told - and reality
-as what was experienced - to be separated and on their own,
independent from each other. This outlook depicts a defective
epistemology affecting the view of their capacity of knowing.
Utilizing the Cartesian dualism, the only window to know
reality is through one’s reason alone. The modern man’s
ability to know is proven to be limited when Kant summarizes
the impossibility of knowing the unseen (noumena) using man’s
reason alone to culminate an existential problem. This creates
an existential confusion of knowing what is true and what
reality is—to which they call it the mind-matter problem.
Kant’s criticism influenced and induced a person’s inner
anxiety due to the uncertainty of outlook on life imposed to
them. This is a distinguishing mark of the modern age. The
solution to the mind-matter dualism as proposed by some, is
for man to have the courage to be just (as who they are).16 Modern
man would consider true and real as two different point of
16
Paul Tillich, Courage to Be (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,
1952). Hereafter cited as Courage to Be.
156
The Youth’s Search for Identity
axis, never to be united as one; truth is reduced to a mere play
thing of the mind conversed in words, sometimes subjected to
variations and change in meaning, to which reality is only
considered valid according to the material nature of empirical
evidences. To have the courage to endure life in this state is like
a blind man walking in broad daylight without a stick. This
methodology only considered man in his physical, behavioural
aspect and man’s reason to be seated in his brain. Humans are
then reduced to traits taken from there behavioural , brain
reaction of the brain as well as a product of bio-chemical
interactions of the body.17 With this as a frame, man is seen as
a physical entity and a rational animal – by emphasizing the
animal aspect – as they embark on a search of meaning.18
Eliezer J. Sternberg, My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the
Threat to Moral Responsibility (New York: Prometheus Books, 2010). In addition
to the scientific approach of understanding man in neuroscience, a cultural
approach of the trend nowadays is the usage of profiling man according
to their so called ‘cognitive thinking process’ (extrovert, introvert etc) and
biological subjectivities (phlegmatic, melancholic etc.) such that it has
reduced and limits an individual to solely those conditional categorization.
To read more on this, refer to Anne Murphy Paul, The Cult of Personality
Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage
Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (New York: Free Press, 2005, reprint)
and Dan P. McAdams, The Art and Science of Personality Development (New York:
The Guilford Press, 2015).
18
The act of profiling people that scientists nowadays engage in to supplement
their understanding of themselves and as a means to define their identity.
Using the profiling system, only helps to an extent: they understand their own
behavior towards the surroundings, but never how to grow beyond it. These
profiling based on human behaviors are the effect of the modern conception
of individualism such that they are able to know who they are and who other
people are through this mechanism, but the interaction (or relationship
between two people) that exists out of this will only be a bond based on mere
‘toleration’ of each other. But toleration is a weak bond for a relationship. It
is like a relationship between two separate individuals. But in Islam, we use
the tawḥīd approach: as relationships are meant to unite, two individuals must
be one, in companionship, collaboration, complementary to one another. A
relationship must grow together, pushing each individuals to become the
better version of themselves. Perhaps this could be the answer to
17
157
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
The ‘Here ’and ‘Now’
This courage to be a rational animal was acquired through
dependency on reason alone. This paved the way for the theory
evolution to eventually becomes the basis for justifying the need
for’ independence ‘to one’s natural processes for an individual to
reach to a state of maturity.19 The theory of evolution proposed
by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in his Origin of Species (1859)
affected all three ontological, epistemological and axiological
states of man, and it provided the very idea of what is meant
by change, progress, and development of a person with respect
to their physical being and nature that surrounds them. The
evolution theory suggests that the progress in man is subjected
to a period that is continuously evolving and changing. Evolve
here denotes a linear movement with respect to time and living
in this situation can only be through its moments. This state
is what “coming into being” means, never to reach ”being”,
but always “becoming”.20 The condition of always becoming
suggests that maturity is impossible for one to achieve, because
progress can only be considered if there is a final aim or purpose
to the basis of change. If maturity is impossible to achieve,
why there are many divorces among the society today: people want to grow
on their own as a static individual, but not dynamic.
19
The natural processes means the growth that occurred is through the
environmental and conditional factors. Tillich, Courage to Be, 82-3.
20
When man sees living as always becoming, hence therein creates a problem
where the ideal ‘being’ fails; such that what one aims to achieve are
unachievable. To this the Western man experienced a sort of existential crisis
where being and existence to them are rendered as a social construct.
‘Existential crisis’ to is the problem of the individual in understanding its own
purpose of existence. Martin Heidegger attempted to solve this problem by
using the phenomenological method in his Being and Time (1927). However,
Alparslan Açıkgenç has made a brilliant comparison between Heidegger and
Mulla Sadra’s exposition to answer the problem through the explanation on
the concept of Being. For further elaborations on this matter, refer to
Alparslan Açıkgenç, Being and Existence in Sadra and Heidegger: A Comparative
Ontology (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993).
158
The Youth’s Search for Identity
consequently the search for identity is also unattainable. Man
will be limited to only know themselves in the moments they
live in and are subject to change according to the ‘natural’
selection when his/her biological development takes place.
External, physical growth is then falsely considered to be
concurrent with internal growth.
Man Centric
Consequential to the aspiration towards achieving ‘maturity’
through independence, the detachment of man from (the
other) source of power—is in actual fact, a total dependence
on one’s reason alone. Therein this contradiction comes the
cry of agony and despair that ”God is dead!”.21 This phase
epitomized the secular aspect of reality and has created anguish
and discomfort in the modern man as he began to realize that
he is left to his own devices. From the above explanation, at
this point, man now considered themselves to be in a state of
independence, and when it comes to knowledge of themselves and
the world around them, they chose to start at a ’clean slate/
tabula rasa’ as a direct consequence of their shattered trust in
anything higher than themselves, this creates a displacement
of identity. Through this epistemological separation, man saw
themselves undergo their life independently, only to realize
that they are not free from the thoughts of others, i.e. the
society. Man now is suddenly and tragically, subjected to the
minds of society.
The assimilation of the concept of human evolution into
the understanding of ‘development’ becomes the central
principal of progress in modern society, where man is
considered an agent for and of development. Man is sought
21
A famous saying by Friedrich Nietzsche (1884-1900) in his book The Gay
Science published in 1882 who later on died after years of mental breakdown.
159
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
as both the resource (for) and means (of) by which a nation or
a civilization sought to achieve, often related to economic
gains. The perpetuation of both influences the way one
perceives, thinks, and place themselves in the life they live. In
the modern context, the former understanding of man as an
agent for development is flourishing22 in the field of politics and
economics especially, such that it encouraged the creation of a
new sub-science called Human Development. Human
development initiatives in its shallowest pursuit largely consists
of making a tool out of man, developing them in terms of skills
to contribute to materialistic gains. If one understands man as
constantly changing and becoming, the notion of developing
man is hence linear and could never achieve any final goal.
Therefore, human development in the modern context
functions contrary to its purpose, which is to grow into its final
cause. Development should rightly be seen as a dynamic
movement, such that it has to move with meaning, towards a
direction. Moreover, for it to be developing, the certainty of
the direction should not be subjected to change and firm with
its state (stable). If it is not fixed, the movement will be endless
and no such development would be achieved. This is what
Wan Mohd Nor termed as “dynamic stabilism”.23 For example,
the development of a pine seed is that it will see itself grow to
become a pine tree. The pine tree is the direction, the final
cause it seeks to become: but to achieve that purpose, the seed
needs an agent of growth, such that water and nutrition. The
water recycles its agency for the tree to appear just as
knowledge is to the identification of our soul. In relation to
See David Simon (ed.), Fifty Key Thinkers on Development (Routledge, 2006,) M.P
Cowen, Doctrines of Development (Routledge, 1996), Gilbert Rist, The History of
Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (Zed Books, 2008).
23
Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, “Al-Attas: A Real Reformer and Thinker”,
Knowledge, Language, Thought and the Civilization of Islam: Essays in Honor of Syed
Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, (eds.) Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud and Muhammad
Zainiy Uthman (Johor: UTM Press, 2010), 50-1.
22
160
The Youth’s Search for Identity
human development, what does a person seek to achieve in
realizing his/her purpose? As exemplified in the preceeding
paragraphs, man seeks to know him/herself and his/her
purpose in life.
Hegel thinks that self-recognition begins with other’s
recognition, as if only the external factors make up who you
are. The problem with these contrasting views is that, they fail
to clear any of the misconceptions at the level of what can be
known of this reality. It is at the level of first principles, on the
possibility of metaphysical reality, as portrayed by Kant in his
prolegomena.24 Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas is one of
the few contemporary scholars who have directly proposed
otherwise in his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islām25— that
knowledge of reality is possible and echoing the many
theologians in our tradition.26
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, the Paul Carus
translation, extensively revised by James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1988, 7th printing).
25
Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islām: An
Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islām (Kuala Lumpur:
ISTAC, 1995; repr., Skudai, Johor: UTM Press, 2014). Hereafter cited as
Prolegomena.
26
Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (3rd Edition, Simon and Schuster,
1997). Adler says that the disagreement of human nature is not a philosophical
mistake, but a moral one. Adler also stated that these disagreements on
human nature is avoidable if one could correct the fundamental mistakes
made by philosophers in the past. Philosophy has turned into an intellectual
pursuit that no longer solves anything, instead produces more questions to
make it seem as if it is progressing. Again, this is the epitome of what they
perceive as change, progress and development. There is no ultimate aim or
purpose to why one does something, except that it is merely a reaction from
moment-to-moment.
24
161
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
Loss of Meaning and Relevance
Hence, the silver that lines the mainstream conception
of man27 can thus be said to promote the confusion of
authority such that it is denigrated and stripped of any form
of dependency to acquire truth pertaining to one’s purpose of
existence. This in itself influences one to inadequately place
one’s self and eventually others in the wrong position by
simply levelling them as one and the same, this creates
injustice, a condition where a thing is not in its proper place.28
The demolition of authority then leads to the renunciation of
a higher being such as God and His words revealed to His
Prophets which provides confidence and certainty of their
purpose and origin hold. Divesting it further, without an
anchor that provides confidence and certainty to man’s
intellect of what is true, man will encounter a meaningless
state. The person has afflicted his or herself with a life bereft
of the true meaning of life. These absence of meaning produce
a distinctive tragic characteristic of modern man and his/her
outlook in life. Man, in this state, is subjected to available
theories of man29 offered by the market such that he or she is
perceived as a product of evolution from a lower, baser form
of animal and is subjected to continuous development; man
is rational but without personal will, due to influences from
the physical and psychological selves which are both
considered as a product of environment and society
respectively; man is liberated from any form of authority,
but dependent on science and technology to inform them how
to live. With these in mind, the crucial
Through the four salient characteristics: the rationalistic, dualistic, secular,
humanistic approach to reality
28
Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, On Justice and the Nature of Man (Kuala
Lumpur: IBFIM, 2016).
29
Example of an anthropological lense, Elvin Hatch, Theories of Man and Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).
27
162
The Youth’s Search for Identity
question that man ask him or herself would be: is, is there
meaning to life?
What was described in the previous paragraphs can be simply
put as a cognitive condition in one’s thinking framework of the
dichotomy between truth and reality in the way of looking at
life. Such condition casts an uncertain spirit in men: difficulty
to portray or define their true self, or even to know reality at
all. Since to them, there cannot be intersection of one truth in
a changeable reality. Through this epistemological separation,
men see themselves as ‘independent’ as opposed to being
‘dependent’ on any source of truth, especially those provided
by something unverifiable through the naked eye in religion or
tradition. Moreover, this is believed to be - and celebrated in the
modern and postmodern culture as if it is - the rational means to
finding the true self. This has caused them to incorporate logical
premises that is dried off of meaning to direct the conclusion
that knowledge can come from nothing. This methodology of
arriving at knowledge is what they term as ‘doubt’. But doubt
does not build upon anything, since it presupposes that one
knows nothing in order to arrive at something. The nature of doubt
is precisely to deconstruct any attempt at building any meaning.
Doubt dismisses any notion of authority in knowledge, which
creates its own source of knowledge relative that is to condition
of surroundings and circumstances.30 This renders one’s search
ultimately, directionless.
30
Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide to The Perplexed (UK: Penguin, 2006). The
latest dismay among the Western society towards this method of doubt is the
proposal of the idea of post-truth, Katherine Higgins, “Post-Truth: A Guide
to the Perplexed”, Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, 26th November
2016,
http://www.nature.com/news/post-truth-a-guidefor-theperplexed-1.21054. Accessed on December 20, 2016; and Chi Luu, “The
Collapse of Meaning in a Post-Truth World”, Jstor Daily, 21st December
2016, http://daily.jstor.org/collapse-of-meaning-in-a-post- truth-world.
Accessed on December 21, 2016.
163
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
Search for Identity
Returning back to this article’s concern for identity, the
contemporary experiences of man’s search for identity are
always trapped within the categorical implications of thinking
processes, class, gender, race, nationality, and generation. In
fact, the socially constructed divisions, as mentioned above,
have been prevalent in current discourses as the means in the
search for meaning of their identity, and are in themselves
redundant and counterproductive. The reason for this is the
fact that in order to come to a true definition of man’s identity,
the dialogue concerning man should surpass the specified
fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, biology, and the
like. Yet social scientists construct new categorizations over
categorizations of human societal divisions, thinking that it
could help shed some light to what it means to have an identity.
This way of thinking is largely the result of the philosophically
programmed change to what they see as the meaning of life,
in relation to the way the world functions.
Identity Crisis among the Youth
As elaborated in the earlier paragraphs, the thinking
frameworks influencing the youths can be categorized
according to external and internal factors. The current
thinking framework that shape our mind has posited itself as
an external threat to the attitude and lifestyles of Malaysian
youths in particular. This thinking framework is detected
through the global existing education systems, whose ultimate
aim is to create good citizens instead of good men. Many
educational systems of colonized countries adopt the secular
philosophical foundations shaping the objectives or approach
to education, thus compromising the universality and unity of
man’s education.
164
The Youth’s Search for Identity
Internally, the lack of confidence to one’s tradition and
religion for guidance leads the youth to a new understanding in
the shape of modernity and a cry for liberation by demanding
‘independence’. To them, being independent is to value and
cultivate self-reliance, to think on their own, to make their own
judgments, to choose and explore on their own, to avoid
conformity and not follow things blindly, to not submit to the
expectations of others and to evaluate truth and falsehood on
their own. Their working definition for identity is to identify
the places of man as the measure of truth; in this case, the
individual is the determiner of truth for him or herself. Would
an alternative contrasting postulation then be true?; that is, is
being your true self be constituted by one’s relation to others,
and that no one could know themselves without any relation
to others? This is true to an extent, but another factor that
is fundamental in deducing as such must also acknowledge
and recognize the levels of the self that could be known to the
person and to others. The highest priority is establishing a
strong foundation of man’s origin.
We have demonstrated the logical consequence of
evolutionary origin of man, let us now look at the created
origin of man. If man is created, this means his true self or
the final cause lies in the hands of a Creator. The next level is
to know that the necessary distinction designating the position
of a person presupposes is having a ‘position’ within Reality,
and this Position assumes a point of reference for roles to be
appointed and responsibilities to be upheld. Position cannot be
isolated or detached from reality—without such positioning,
there can be no individual nor the networks of individual
which the society made up of. Both individual and society
complements each other, the former being more real than the
latter with respect to their degrees of existence.
Therefore, having an identity is synonymous to knowing
one’s position or place in relation to one’s source of origin and
165
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
destiny. An individual bearing requires one to know who man
is in order to know how to relate to others—extensions of the
self, such that they play roles in a society. An example to this
can be seen in a family dynamic where each member of that
institution has a clearly defined role according to both their
physical and intellectual abilities and capacities. A mother, a
father, a daughter, a son, a brother, a sister and so on, has their
designated roles that may be superadded as one grows both
internally and externally. Seen as an increase to the level of
responsibility, both their roles determine their disposition of
themselves and keep relation to others. Knowing one’s place
in relation to others provides roles and responsibilities to fulfill
one’s destiny, but knowing yourself as a human provides one’s
origin as to why and where these responsibilities are due.
Therefore, the place of man as a created being correlates with
a natural position that conforms to both the internal and
external aspects of themselves.31 Once this knowledge is
recognised as true, thus begins the maturing stage of maturity
in one‘s search for identity.
Indeed, there are levels of maturity that according to one’s
potentials before coming to a full actualization. Youth is the
time period in which man find him or herself the need to
attend to understand his or her potentials. Adulthood, however
is the time period in which the right attitude is taken to actualize
one’s potentials. Understanding requires knowledge and
actualizing requires action. The first stage of maturity is the
experience of being aware of the true self. Through
education,32 one will reach to the second stage, where one
accepts the trust placed upon them—a responsibility with
respect to the self, family and society. This trust elevates man
from his position where he will be raised from a level
31
32
Al-Attas, Prolegomena, 130.
Education here means the knowledge imbibed in the self of the truth and
reality of things.
166
The Youth’s Search for Identity
of dependency stemming from ignorance to a level that will
enable him to actualize and gain independence. The final stage is
when the independence presumes one’s acceptance of this
responsibility; depending on the level of his/her potentialities,
he/she should give appropriate contribution, practice, and
acknowledgement, exhibiting proper values and virtues such
as courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, sincerity, patience
and such. Only then can the youthful soul be certain of its
disposition for one to act confidently.
Maturity is both a state of being of the person and an
act. The basis of maturity is not merely intellectual, nor is it
biological, emotional, or action only, it is the combination of
all four that reflects wisdom one’s attitude. Maturity is a process
that elevates the soul, which consequently implies one knowing
one’s self. Man’s life journey is to reach its highest potential in
a form of maturity. One needs guidances directed and led
through the darkness to find the light. However, the modern
concept of man has deconstructed any form of dependency on
guidance that will eventually denigrate justice, preventing one
from reaching their highest potential, hence, destroying one’s
identity. Having the knowledge of one’s identity is the same as
knowing one’s position, which implies that one knows their
roles and responsibilities. The responsibilities that one upholds
will automatically give them certain rights to that position, and
hence, will incur a level of accountability.
Having guidance does not mean that man no longer need
to think or has free will to live their life; instead, it provides the
necessary preparation in thinking and experience proper
freedom. This is where education plays a big role in preparing
a person to reach maturity, that is, to prepare him/ her to
understand who they are. Sadly, current educational
institutions do not emphasize on understanding the different
layers or levels of man’s emotional and spiritual needs, and so
these needs are left neglected. Intellectual needs however have
167
Sharifah Hajar Almahdaly
been reduced to a series of narrowed specializations that does not give unity in
their aims and objectives in life. However, the solution does not solely lie in the
revamping of the system, but the individuals themselves are to recollect and reflect
the essential constituents of their origin and purpose of life.33
As a conclusion, we can see that the identity of man is essentially nonphysical base, but instead, spiritual and intelligential in its core, and should be
rid of any relation to individualism as an ideology that worships the physical
aspect of the self as the most valuable aspect of themselves.34 The role of
education is important in imparting the right thinking framework to youths in
their search for identity and realising their destiny through the act of maturing.
Maturity is to become a good and balanced man, thus, contributing to a more
harmonious society.
33
34
Al-Attas, Islām and Secularism, 109 & 148.
Al-Attas, Risalah Untuk Kaum Muslimin (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001), 81-83.
168