RIFLE RANGE BOY

Stop, Look, Think! By Farouk Gulsara Here I am, waiting in my car, clutching my steering wheel. It has been a good five minutes, and I am at a standstill. There are no vehicles in front of me. It is a T-junction with traffic lights. There is no traffic on either road, but I have no choice. I have to wait. https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/07/15/stop-look-think/ This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

The Zone of Interest (2023) Director: Jonathan Glazer Even though this is about something that happened more than 80 years ago, put in a similar situation, I foresee we humans do the exact thing that we did during World War 2 Nazi rule of Germany. We justify our actions and inaction through the dog-whistle call of the majority without taking a step back and asking ourselves, "Am I doing the right thing?" Even during peacetime in Malaysia, a section of people is trying to steamroll their agenda to the rest of the country. Any sane person of reasonable intellectual capacity would understand this is not how democracy works. The majority chooses, and the rest would follow suit. Changes are made via constructive discourses at the appropriate forums. This renegade group is trying to change all these. The might of high decibels in the confines of an echo chamber cannot be underestimated. Like Grobbels, who thought that the propaganda machines of the State could steer the thinking of...

Credit: orangjohor.com Lest we forget that the building of civilisation is paved with a bloody trail of heartaches, violence, injustices and loaded with double crossings, mutiny and vices. No matter how much we try to whitewash and sugarcoat our history, the fact remains. The victors and losers are equally culpable to take the blame for the mayhem that put us all in a quandary in the first place. No one party can put their fingers to accuse the other of drawing first blood. Winners always sanitise their ascent to power through mutual consent as though the conquered willingly embraced their intruders with open arms. People do many things to escape torture and fear of death to themselves or loved ones. Towns did not flourish the God-sanctioned ways. Without fail, thuggery, vices condemned by religions, sex, intoxicants and threats helped. Skyscrapers did not sprout through teachings of the book but via earnings of the unholy kind. Once conquest is complete, the victors are...

Experimenter (2015) Now, how often have we seen seemingly good people doing incomprehensibly evil deeds which are atypical of their general behaviour and predisposition? Too many times, middle management officers had been cruel beyond comprehension just because they were given the authority to do so. Even though, these junior officials know it is wrong to do certain things, they still do it as long as somebody else is taking charge. This phenomenon of blind obedience to authority was a favourite subject of Dr Stanley Milgram, a Jewish psychologist whose relatives perished in Hitler's concentration camps. The question of the Holocaust and the justification for the acts of genocide by those accused at the Nuremberg trial must have been close to his heart. Around the time of Eichmann trial, in 1962, in Yale, Milgram performed an ingenious social experiment (see Youtube clip below) which was later condemned as unethical, for invoking emotional stress is some participants, to ...

Victory over evil? Burning effigy of 10 headed Ravana on Vijayadashami. Now, what is education and what is it to be learned? Is it the ability to regurgitate in verbatim what is written by page and chapter without actually understanding what is written or recited? Or is it the ability to understand that there may be two sides of the coin and allowance must be given to an alternative perspective to what has been accepted as the truth without batting an eyelid? I do not think that one becomes stupid or is a trouble maker by questioning what seems to be a no-brainer. Year in year out the effigy of Ravana is burnt with so much pomp and vigour to signify the win of good over evil with the help of the Gods. Ravana is painted in hideous hues and is vilified as the epitome of everything that is evil on Earth. After fasting and praying for 9 days to signify the greatness of the matriarchal forces of Nature, devotees celebrate their victory of staying true to their endeavour by symbo...

Deep inside, we are all the same. Despite our seemingly outward differences and self inflicted desire to be different, deep entrenched in the crypts of our sulci and gyri and between the creases of our DNA, we are all one. Our desires, our inner, our likes, no matter how much we deny or suppress, it is pretty much the same. We may impose restrictions on what we should eat and should not. It would only last that long. The inner drive would prevent it or suppress our desires to taste the forbidden fruit but at the same time we change the goal post to suit both the regulations. A vegetarian yearning for fish came with fish textured soya minus the odour, prawn like crusted soya to be sizzling in a wok and  so on. Kebab and teriyaki lovers replaced meat with cheese on skewers. They keep their faith and their taste buds happy. With the aim of keeping social problems of uncared children, society imposed strict rules and penalties for its subjects pertaining mixing of the carnal kind. A...

As usual after our usual hard run on Sunday, during the breakfast of thosai, we got involved in our usual banter about events around the country. This time around the subject was rather morbid, in particular about the death of an detainee by assault and the killing and unceremonial cremation of a millionairess recently. What makes a man do all these violent things to a fellow human being without flinching. Being a doctor, one of the group members could not stomach the idea of landing punches after punches and the coup de grace that tips the living daylights of the victim whilst looking straight into his eyes. Unfortunately, I do not think that people of the medical profession are immune of this charge. Scores of heinous crimes against patients and even loved ones are testimony of this charge. In fact, philosophers and psychologists have pondered upon this topic since the end of WW2. Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of banality of evil where people just did evil th...