Friday, May 30, 2008

(am I ranting or what?!)


I was looking at a few articles on a rather contemptious topic to discuss (i.e. one related to the blocking of several user-generated content sites). In particular, I'm referring to the Xenophobic and Commander parts of avianto's post. Here they come.

"Indonesians are one of the most xenophobic and racist people in the world."
Of course not. Some of us are normal.
We merely ask from which part of the country people come from.
We revel in gushing to others where we come from.
We think it's great knowing people from different ethnic groups, but when it comes to inter-ethnic marriages we just think that's too far-fetched.
We think fair colouring is solely and purely because of non-indigenous gene mix.
We're always curious to know how much genes 'belong' to certain groups of distinct ethnicity.

Humans are prone to creatively using prejudice to pad out bits of information they lack in decision-making, and they furnish the lacking bits a tad too well (I'm still prone to this.) To make it worse, the world is locked in some sort of mental argumentative state where being able to defeat or demean an opposing party is a quality highly touted, despite best efforts to dress the shallowness of concepts in eloquent words (I'm prone to this, too.) We prejudice too much, shut our eyes and ears and minds too often, and revel in getting things done one way *with a stomp* and not the other.
Anyone can be xenophobic and racist, Indonesian or not.

Keep your eyes open for things that dispel preconceived, it-should-work-this-way ideas. Simply keep your senses peeled, just in case your eyes fail you. And if they still fail you? ...I don't know. I just hope a divine Somebody knocks me out of the road to metaphorical sensory failure.

Why not look at other ways of solving problems, and more importantly keep eyes fixed on the main aim of pursuing a particular project? As I learn today, there are three different ways to put together a particular sleeve opening that looks exactly the same on the inside and outside. Just think about how many ways could really be done if only the outside needs to look the same, or if the sleeve ovening simply needs to function a certain way.

...I could probably write a book out of prejudices thrown at me, and make money out of it. That is not bad at all, hee hee ^__^

P.S. for bookhunting, look at this one and that one. Enjoy!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

v thought provoking