Should we all not be judgemental?

It's been more than a month since my first entry. I'm not gonna find lame excuses, so I'm just gonna tell you that I've just been plain lazy. Have always wanted to pop in a few lines into this page, but no, that was not what i wanted to achieve when I first set out creating this blog. I'm not one who makes an entry just for the sake of doing so. So now that I've finally put this down in ink ( not literally.. )... you know that there must be an issue which bugs me enough to make me finally start moving my lazy fingers.

Well, someone made a very thought-provoking comment to me earlier today. He said that it is not a good practice to judge people.

Many of those who might be reading this now may be nodding their heads furiously at this comment ( I wouldn't count on there being many of you anyway... ). I can be pretty sure that many of us have been victims of unfair judgments being posed at us, be it from our superiors or even our peers. Thus, I can imagine this being a very popular opinion among people, as it touches deep into all our hearts. However, I always like to think a notch deeper into comments being lashed out casually by people, and by doing so, I cannot help but find that this comment is in more ways than one, flawed.

Firstly, is it really that bad for people to be judged? Lets not think that all judgements are detrimental. When one is being judged, he feels that there is a presence watching over him, and it acts like a constant reminder for one to review his own actions. Moral obligations aside, how many individuals have the ability to remain undeterred on the path of righteousness without the fear of being judged by a greater power? If this was possible for most humans, there would not be a need for law enforcement officers on the patrol throughout the day, and people would not have needed to turn to religion to find their way. Be it the fear of being put down by the arms of the law, or the apprehension of being judged by the one divine power of god, it is the act of judgement that leads the human population on the path of morality.

So then is it right to judge other people? Lets face it. People judge one another, deliberately or sub-consiously. This is a humanly instinct which co-exists with the gift of intelligence, which our species have been chosen to inherit. The ability to judge gives us the ability to analyse, and in turn, gives us the ability to anticipate events which might potentially occur. This way, humans are able to decide whether an individual or group of people are of any threat to them. The ability to judge then acts as part of a defence mechanism for each individual.

Having said that, I do agree though, that it is not a good practice to be overly quick to pass judgements onto others. It is always important to analyse facts and rationalise them before passing a judgement, in order to avoid misinterpretation, which may eventually lead to an ugly bout of misgivings. Realistically though, many 'hearsay' comments are difficult to affirm, and a build up of misinformation often leads to many misunderstandings.

Thus I feel that people should not take judgement too seriously all the time. Some are there to guide you on your way, but others are just being plain derogatory. When the latter happens, we should take it with a pinch of salt. When fair judgement is passed, it can be used as a measure to point us in the right direction, but when unfair judgement is passed, we should not let it bother us too much, and just get on with life. This is simply because at the end of the day, we answer only to ourselves because of the choices we make, and we will eventually project an accurate testament of who we really are.

Let us all not succumb to humanly insecurities, and then we will live a joyful life.

Bowling for Virginia Tech?

Don't act surprised. Seeing the very lacklustre efforts of the US to prevent another Columbine massacre, I cannot help but say that the inevitable has happened. High schools across the US have made conspicuous efforts to up security since the Columbine saga, but there is only this much you can do to prevent the intrusion of armaments into the campus. Surely there are better prevention measures they could have taken to prevent a repeat of this preposterous affair?

The answer is pretty straightforward and facile. It certainly doesn't need a rocket scientist to figure out that a better prevention would be to tighten legislations towards the ownership of guns. If there is one group of gadgets ever invented to the detriment of the global society, that would be guns and other weapons which are made to take a life.

I believe that I represent a huge majority of the world's population when I say that I totally cannot comprehend the need for gun-ownership to be allowed in any society. Unlike our daily staples of food, water or clothing, we can totally live without it. In fact, we would live much better if such an inhumane invention is dispensed of from our society.

Statistics don't lie. The US are have the highest number of firearms-related death rates in the United Nations with more than 30,000 deaths a year, with Italy behind at around 10,000 deaths a year. We're looking at arguably the most developed nation in the world, and you would expect a tinge of rationality in the government to curb this glaring problem. Instead, these figures soar with each year.

One might wonder, what in the world is stopping the US from implementing a nationwide ban on the ownership of guns? The fact is that there are several social and political factors that make this a very complicated legislation to be passed. There are huge group of people who would actually prefer the false sense of security of having a pistol to defend themselves against an assailant. There is also a sense of national pride amongst the Americans for their 'glorious' conquest of the land they took from the native Indians, in which their ownership of guns had a huge part to play. However, the main obstacle of such a move would be the socio-economic effects which would be synonymous with whether the current political party would be re-elected for the next term. Imagine how many hunters would require job-restructuring, how many ammunition enterprises would have to relinquish their assets overnight, and how the ammunitions black market would spin out of control. With less violence to deal with, there would probably be a need to retrench a considerable portion of the country's police force, and the security service industry would definitely plummet. At the end of the tunnel, an abysmal GDP figure awaits, and it would be equivalent to political suicide for the ruling party.

Columbine was a wake up call. It got the nation thinking for a moment, but as history doesn't fail to tell us, people make the same mistakes, over and over again. Apparently in the US, for every voice that crys out for the banning of armaments, there is more than enough voices to cover it. It is all left to see how many more innocent lives have to be lost before the nation finally realises that it has been a folly to trade national security for economic stability.

The Virginia Tech Massacre, which dwarfed the once-unparalleled Columbine affair, will once again bring about a national outcry. Once again, we will see them blaming one another for the incident, and many heads would roll. But again, they will not look to tighten their legislations for gun ownership, which seems almost taboo to the American society.

We're still a long way from seeing a decrease in violence in the US. There will be more public massacres to come, as long as lunatics continue to be able to get their hands on these guns readily.

For now, country roads leading to Virginia would never be the same again......

Prologue

Well firstly I'd have to say that I've never dreamt I would be doing something like this one day. I almost swore I'd never keep a blog as I don't really like the hype about it nowadays. However, recently I've got pretty reflective, as I started to think more about myself and everything that is happening around me. As many random thoughts have gushed through my head recently, I thought it would be a good idea to keep a record of them here.

From the way I see it, people keep blogs for several disparate reasons. Some see it as an outlet for their humanly sentiments, while some use it as a way to leave their footprints in this fickle society. Others like me, find this useful as an archive for my thoughts, and at the same time if possible, a good platform for discussion. So yeah well.. don't expect to find out what I had for brunch or how many scoups of ice cream I had the night before. However, you will get a pretty good idea what goes on in that spasmodic mind of mine.

Watch out for this column.