Mindless minister

Wow, it's been a long time since my last blog entry! I really must get my act together and not let my busyness get in the way of my blog.

Anyway, I was just reading Malaysiakini.com this morning and I came across an article, "Haze conditions here better than Santiago, says minister", and it really shows how mindless even ministers can be.

Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister, S. Sothinathanwas, was quoted as saying, "the haze is not as bad as reported... I was in Santiago (Chile) two days ago and haze is a permanent problem there. But nobody talks about it, and not the international press."

Duh! Doesn't he realise that by the time we have such a situation in Malaysia, that means things are so bad both environmentally and socially that people couldn't be bothered anymore.

I certainly don't want to live in a society where people are apathetic towards the environment. Indeed, the apathetic attitude itself is bad for the environment.

Form vs. Substance

It's been a while, and there certainly has been quite a few mindless things happening in Malaysia.

What caught my attention today was something I've covered before. Check out my blog on 24 May 2004, "Thou shall not hold hands in public places".

Apparently, the Kuala Lumpur City Hall has taken up moral policing, too. The city's enforcement officers found the time in their busy schedules to book a couple for kissing and hugging in some public place.

The offence: creating public disorder, or something like that.

Amazing! I really wonder where these people get their sense of right and wrong from. Perhaps, Socrates' faith in humanity may have been misplaced.

Hang on, that's not all.

A friend of mine told me today that a couple of City Hall buildings around town actually have signs that prohibit people wearing shorts from entering those buildings.

The reason: "menjolok mata" (roughly translated, offensive or indecent).

Well, that's news to me. I didn't know that every time I go to the pasar malam or the mamak stall, I was being offensive or indecent.

Contrary to what I said in earlier blogs, I don't think it's just a question of morality anymore. In my opinion, people generally can no longer tell the difference between form and substance.

Either because of our education system or the materialistic (read "shallow") culture, people nowadays tend to take things on face value. Whatever the reasons for it, this mentality has creeped into every sphere of society.

Regardless of whether we are talking about fashion, politics or religion, most people tend to take the simple route: the hand-me-down type of solution.

Yes, yes, Italian fashion is good. Yes, yes, the latest shoes from this that or other designer is the best.

That is the least of our (or my) concerns. What is scariest is that people can't seem to tell the difference between the law and justice, or worse still, the news and the truth.

Just as someone with an important sounding title wearing a suit and a tie is not necessarily smart or powerful, a nation with long highways, big airports and tall buildings is not necessarily a developed one.

As pointed out by some IT guy once, "it's the software, stupid" - even if we have the fastest processor in the world, if we don't have the software to run it, we don't have anything but a very expensive paper weight.

Thus, we have dead woods applying guidelines that don't make sense, instead of having intelligent people with the discretion to decide whether certain behaviour or dressing is acceptable or not.