The Bugis Mode Has
Many Advantages To One Suicidically Inclined.
A man thinks
himself wronged by society - he is in debt and cannot pay - he is
taken for a slave or has gambled away his wife or child into
slavery - he sees no way of recovering what he has lost, and
becomes desperate.
He will not put up with such cruel wrongs, but
will be revenged on mankind and die like a hero. He grasps his
kris-handle, and the next moment draws out the weapon and stabs a
man to the heart. He runs on, with bloody kris in his hand,
stabbing at everyone he meets. "Amok! Amok!" then resounds
through the streets. Spears, krisses, knives and guns are brought
out against him. He rushes madly forward, kills all he can - men,
women, and children - and dies overwhelmed by numbers amid all the
excitement of a battle. And what that excitement is those who
have been in one best know, but all who have ever given way to
violent passions, or even indulged in violent and exciting
exercises, may form a very good idea. It is a delirious
intoxication, a temporary madness that absorbs every thought and
every energy. And can we wonder at the kris-bearing, untaught,
brooding Malay preferring such a death, looked upon as almost
honourable to the cold-blooded details of suicide, if he wishes
to escape from overwhelming troubles, or the merciless of the
hangman and the disgrace of a public execution, when he has taken
the law into his own hands and too hastily revenged himself upon
his enemy?
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