Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Kindness?

Two consecutive days I saw kindness.sg promoting "kindness".  The Singapore Kindness Movement was formed in 1997. Its aim is "to encourage Singaporeans to make a positive commitment to gracious living through simple acts of kindness."

The aim is nothing but perfect. So it seems. Look at the whole page ads below.


What has it to do with kindness? The picture practically say that you are not kind to snap a photo of people misbehaving. Insteads you should confront the person. The real kindness is to show a photo of people giving up their seats to the needy.


This photo portrays the same message. You should not take photo. Instead you should confront the angry man. A show of empathy to who? The waitress or the angry man? The wordings in the photo says you can "stand by", "watch", "take a video" or "step in and try". Which action shows empathy? The last one? It is practically asking people to confront the angry man. Should this photo be showing empathy towards the server and not to scold her?

It keeps saying "Kindness" yet it points to bystanders and say that they should act. By acting it is equal to "kindness"?  I don't know what's wrong with the mind of the organization. It is advocating everyone to act in confronting wrong doers as if bystanders are experts in that area while it by itself says nothing about themselves telling the wrong doers that they should be gracious and do what is right.

The two photos actually show the adverse message. It is saying you should not take photos/videos neither should you do nothing. Is it wrong to do what they try to dissuade? Are we a confrontational society? If it is not handled properly it may well hurt the peace maker's feeling or make the situation worse. Is it not better to educate the wrong doers rather than the bystanders?

Taking a photo and post online is a bad thing? It is not graceful? Many people do not want to directly confront others. They try to vent their dislike by posting such bad activity online. The action by itself is not really a correct thing to do but it could be the only way many people try to show their dislike.

By posting online, the public will be aware of such event and thus avoid being the center of attention. This is far better than trying to talk to individuals to solve the issue. Would you want to do bad things in public knowing that your bad act may be shown to the whole world? I do agree that it damages the wrong doers image. A graceful/kind person should not have done that in public in the first place.

Most public figures faced the same issue. They have to ensure that they do not do wrong in public otherwise the whole world will knows about it. Why then should individuals be exempted. You did it in public and people capture/record and show it in public. There is nothing wrong to that. The only thing I strongly disagree is to have paparazzi style of stalking people to capture their embarrassing moments. That is totally evil.

EU has passed a law to have "rights to  be forgotten". That is a good thing. At least it gives people who did wrong in ignorance/rage to be given a chance to be forgotten. That is what I called "graceful society". Maybe kindness.sg should advocate this act to be passed by parliament instead.

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