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April 17, 2006
A kiss is just a kiss
Title in the New Sunday Times yesterday and an interview with Datuk Badruddin Amiruldin regarding guidelines about kissing in public and indecent behaviour.
In one section he says that ...
"We welcome the guidelines because we want the younger generation to be well-mannered. We don’t want to be like the West which has no values. We don’t want to follow the Westerners who are road bullies, selfish and don’t love others."
I have to rant a bit when I see such sweeping statements:
- I don't see how guidelines can help to make the younger generation more well-mannered;
- Who defines what is well-mannered and what not? An office person thinks different from the hawker on the street, a city dweller different from a rural dweller, a frequent traveller different from someone who never left home;
- The West has values, of course. In fact, every human being has values. The question is, what values are these and do you reject, accept or at least understand those. To say that the West has no values is like saying there is no sand in the desert;
- Westerners are road bullies? I had a good laugher at that point. When was the last time Datuk read the newspaper about increasing numbers of accidents in Malaysia, or travelled somewhere in KL?
- Selfish and not loving others? How does he know? There are 100s of millions of people in the West? Has he met them all? Never found anyone that he would say is not selfish? Never saw a mother hugging and kissing her children? Never saw the tears of joy in a family?
It is easy to make such general statements, but it scares me, really. Because ultimately, these are people with some power to make some decisions somewhere. Is it not enough that we have such a strange discussion anyway about regulating kissing and indecent behaviour in public? What's wrong here? Where is the tolerance for expression? The freedom? How can there be a caring society when kissing and even hand holding is regulated? How cold will a society become when even such personal expressions of love are regulated and grafted in stone? And don't forget that kissing is necessary for becoming more matured! So, those that want to regulate or ban it, well, may be they are just not there yet.
And now I feel better, after this rant. But I don't think that the debate is over yet.
Posted by Andreas at April 17, 2006 11:04 AM
Comments
A kiss is just a kiss but a smile is sometimes a flirt! I was 'educated' to smile since I was a thumb and last two days, when I smiled to a Pakistani (didn't know he was), he came to me and asked for my cell phone number. What the... about 20m from us was a light pole with a poster for the 'smile...' campaign.
Posted by: Nizar at June 14, 2006 02:25 PM
I just don't understand the need to control the people so much. If a kid is found making lewd drawings, do you hit him till kingdom come, force him to read moral guidelines or nurture his drawing skills so that he can make use of it in better ways. And I find it odd that, kissing is censored on tv, but adverts that portray dark skin women as undesirable are given all go. Silly standards, really. Standards that are made without much thinking.
Posted by: BawangMerah at April 17, 2006 11:42 AM
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