The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2013 03:45 PM PST FEB 1 — I recently interviewed a young Brit by the name of Harry Fear for "Vantage Point", a current affairs talk show on Astro Awani. Before interviewing him, I did a little bit of research and found out he is an independent journalist, human rights activist, writer and scholar. The reason he was being interviewed is that he had spent 12 weeks in Gaza, Palestine, in November last year, during and after the Israeli Operation Pillar of Cloud siege. When Fear arrived at the studio and I finally got to meet him, we chatted a little before the show. I asked him how he would like me to refer to him. Independent journalist, human rights activist, writer and scholar? He laughed and said that was a mouthful and sounded so presumptuous. He said he would much rather be referred to as a campaigning documentary film-maker. And as someone who has always believed that objective journalism is bull crap and that subjectivity is fine, as long as it's honest, I took to that definition straight away. Fear believes that when it comes to the no-one-knows-how-long conflict between Palestine and Israel, a certain bias has existed that just isn't fair (what bias is fair?). The Western media has been on Israel's side all this while in its reporting... so much so that it has created a vacuum when it comes to news from the side of the Palestinians. It is this fact that prompted the young twentysomething to pick up a camera and head down to Gaza to document and report the news from the Palestinian perspective. During his stay there, he witnessed atrocities being carried out against Palestinians and documented and reported everything he found on YouTube and a blog. Officially, 158 Palestinians were killed. But Fear mentioned that there were so many others who were killed but whose deaths went unrecorded. He appeared to have no doubts about reporting only from behind Palestinian lines because he thinks that the mainstream media does a really good job of siding with the Israelis. Another interesting fact is that Fear's reporting is entirely funded by his viewers and readers through donations, and a little bit of contribution from NGOs. He does occasionally appear in mainstream media as a correspondent of sorts, but he does this for free and declines any form of payment. He believes this keeps him independent and not bound to any kind of obligation to anyone except his viewers and subjects, thus ensuring truth in his reporting. He is also quick to point out that it is depressing and disappointing to see that in Malaysia (and everywhere else actually), the conflict is seen as a religious fight. When this happens, it actually undermines the integrity of religion and religious people. Religion is above all of this. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really a political struggle and making it out as a conflict between Islam and Judaism just plays into the perception war that Israel is trying to create and, obviously, winning. Fear is currently on a speaking tour about his experience and has been to countries like United Kingdom and Canada, now in Malaysia, and will soon continue to Australia. He says that the best action that can be taken to help solve the conflict is to create awareness about it all around the world. The awareness that he is referring to isn't the fact that nobody knows about the conflict. Name me one person who doesn't realise that there is a conflict and I will eat my shoe. It is the awareness of the unfair, one-sidedness of the war that needs to be advocated and spread around the world, mainly the Western part of it. So don't forget to join me and stare Fear in the eye (I couldn't help it!) on "Vantage Point", Astro Awani, at 9.30pm, Thursday, February 7. * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2013 03:39 PM PST FEB 1 — I was queuing up to pay for groceries at a local supermarket when a middle-aged woman came from a different direction towards the counter. Standing next to the customer in front of me, she was apparently intent on cutting the queue. I was already sighing inside with exasperation. Then the customer making the payment finished, and she started to put her things on the counter. But the cashier was having none of it. "Let him first," said the cashier, whom I estimate to be in her early twenties, pointing at me. "You think so easy to cut queue ah." I felt a flash of smugness. As I unloaded my trolley onto the counter, the woman's face was stony with just a dash of red. But it didn't end there. The cashier was still going on as she checked out my items. "Some people just have no manners, simple thing as lining up also cannot. Maybe jakun, don't know how to line up." She went on and on with her tirade, which drew glances from the next counter. My flash of smugness was long gone by then and I started to wonder how angry the cashier must be to keep ranting like that and insulting the other woman so harshly. When I was done, she let the woman put her things on the counter but I could still hear her going on about the line-cutting as I walked away with my purchases. But such disproportionate responses to slights (perceived or otherwise) are not uncommon. Stories abound of would-be thieves or pickpockets caught in public, tied to lampposts and then beaten up before the police are even called. Passers-by then feel entitled to throw a quick punch even though the guy is half-dead already because the thief "did something wrong and deserves punishment." The question is, why? A research by Scott Wiltermuth, assistant professor of management and organisation at the USC Marshall School of Business, found that a sense of having power comes with a black-and-white perception of right and wrong — especially wrong. People with power (whether real or perceived) tend to punish more severely than people without power as they see things less ambiguously. In effect, the moral clarity associated with being "powerful" leads to a situation where what some people (with a sense of power) think is appropriate punishment can be seen as overly harsh or even draconian by others. This follows a 2009 finding by Joris Lammers and Diederik A. Stapel of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and by Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois that power leads to the tendency of practising moral hypocrisy. The research found that having power leads to people judging others more strictly in terms of morals while being less strict when judging their own actions. This tendency is why we often catch people in positions of power contradicting their public views and opinions with private actions that go against the very thing they advocate to the masses. A sense of having power or "being in the right" lends moral clarity where we judge things clearly as either right or wrong, with no in between, and correspondingly dole out more severe punishment. When we ourselves are the ones executing the punishment, that same sense of power lowers our own bar for right or wrong and sometimes we cross the line of propriety in the name of punishing wrongs without realising or acknowledging it. But life in reality isn't so black and white. People sometimes have mitigating reasons behind their actions, like starving kids stealing bread at the market. And sometimes we forget that people are just humans with the same tendency for mistakes, and that there should be balance in everything, even punishment. So the next time we're punishing, let's ask ourselves: am I being disproportionately harsh? * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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