Shades of gray
I am very confused. Very confused.
When i first came from my primary school to.......my present one, i was surprised at the level of honesty people possesed. They let their minds be bent my "student leaders", pep talks, and the like. The people in my primary school were as jaded, or even more jaded, than i. Nothing could motivate them but themselves, and that self-motivation was exceptioanally strong in every one. There was no such thing as people crying in class because everyone wasn't getting along. No one cared. We had our own friends, and we belonged to a class, but so what if someone's feelings got hurt? He'll/she'll get over it. That's life. Teachers would talk about, let's say a cheating incident. When asked if anything could be done to stop this from happening, the teachers was met with silence. Silence was a big part of school. Nobody cared. Cheating? Small incident. Get over it.
Imagine my surprise when i arrived in my new school. One of the first few incidents i remember vividly was the student body actually responding to a student leader on the first call. That never used to happen in primary school. After 3 years, i've been through numerous scoldings and lectures, especially pertaining to the issue of "moral integrity". When the customary "what can we do to prevent this from happening again" was asked, people actually stood up to answer. These people weren't just trying to end the lecture; they were sincerely sorry for what they did. They sincerely wanted this to stop. It really puzzled me. It was new.
What really puzzled me was why people in this school placed such high regard towards conscience, guilt and moral integrity. Apparently, keeping a horrible secret would eat them up inside. Having an unclear conscience was unimaginable.
Here's my perspective on it. The keyword to existance is "relativity". Sociologically, there are very few absolute values for human emotion and conscience, meaning that something you have been taught to regard as evil and wrong, might not be wrong in another's eye. One person's cold-blooded terrorist, is another person's freedom fighter. That's why i am sick of Americans bitching about 9/11. 3000 people dies. So what? Does that even compare to the number of deaths the Americans caused BEFORE 9/11? i think not. Not even frickin' close. I agree violence begets violence, and i'm not justifying murder,
but the circle of hate has to stop somewhere. So instead of turning into our "enemies" and retaliating with force, just like they did, why not just accept the truth, and admit that you deserved losing 3000 innocent lives as much as they did derserve losing their innocent 10000?
You may ask if that means that i support the 9/11 attacks. Of course not, but there's no need to to continue killing. Both sides have taken innocent lives, and it hard to side with one. Thus the only logical thing to do is to take a neutral stand. If being neutral means being uncaring, then i'm uncaring.
What really gets my goat is when people throw the term "immaturity" around. Do you even know what the hell that means? Once again, there's no absolute scale for maturity. You won't hear anybody say "on a maturity scale of 1 to 10, you're a 2". That's frickin' bullshit. Maturity isn't measured by outward actions. It's measured using the thought processes leading up to the action. People are quick to chuck the term around becase they are lazy to find out more. Ironically, those who deem others as "immature" are often harbouring immature thoughts processes themselves. The only thing that different between him and a 6 year old is his denial of his own thoughts, which is regression, if you ask me.
So what has all of this got to do with conscience? I think the main reason why people can't stand being guilty is because they cannot live with the "guilt". It's a rather basic emotion, so it's hard to describe. Kind of like describing the colour blue with using similes. Aren't there more important things to worry about; things not necessarily pertaining to oneself.
To be human is to feel. To think is to be god.
When i first came from my primary school to.......my present one, i was surprised at the level of honesty people possesed. They let their minds be bent my "student leaders", pep talks, and the like. The people in my primary school were as jaded, or even more jaded, than i. Nothing could motivate them but themselves, and that self-motivation was exceptioanally strong in every one. There was no such thing as people crying in class because everyone wasn't getting along. No one cared. We had our own friends, and we belonged to a class, but so what if someone's feelings got hurt? He'll/she'll get over it. That's life. Teachers would talk about, let's say a cheating incident. When asked if anything could be done to stop this from happening, the teachers was met with silence. Silence was a big part of school. Nobody cared. Cheating? Small incident. Get over it.
Imagine my surprise when i arrived in my new school. One of the first few incidents i remember vividly was the student body actually responding to a student leader on the first call. That never used to happen in primary school. After 3 years, i've been through numerous scoldings and lectures, especially pertaining to the issue of "moral integrity". When the customary "what can we do to prevent this from happening again" was asked, people actually stood up to answer. These people weren't just trying to end the lecture; they were sincerely sorry for what they did. They sincerely wanted this to stop. It really puzzled me. It was new.
What really puzzled me was why people in this school placed such high regard towards conscience, guilt and moral integrity. Apparently, keeping a horrible secret would eat them up inside. Having an unclear conscience was unimaginable.
Here's my perspective on it. The keyword to existance is "relativity". Sociologically, there are very few absolute values for human emotion and conscience, meaning that something you have been taught to regard as evil and wrong, might not be wrong in another's eye. One person's cold-blooded terrorist, is another person's freedom fighter. That's why i am sick of Americans bitching about 9/11. 3000 people dies. So what? Does that even compare to the number of deaths the Americans caused BEFORE 9/11? i think not. Not even frickin' close. I agree violence begets violence, and i'm not justifying murder,
but the circle of hate has to stop somewhere. So instead of turning into our "enemies" and retaliating with force, just like they did, why not just accept the truth, and admit that you deserved losing 3000 innocent lives as much as they did derserve losing their innocent 10000?
You may ask if that means that i support the 9/11 attacks. Of course not, but there's no need to to continue killing. Both sides have taken innocent lives, and it hard to side with one. Thus the only logical thing to do is to take a neutral stand. If being neutral means being uncaring, then i'm uncaring.
What really gets my goat is when people throw the term "immaturity" around. Do you even know what the hell that means? Once again, there's no absolute scale for maturity. You won't hear anybody say "on a maturity scale of 1 to 10, you're a 2". That's frickin' bullshit. Maturity isn't measured by outward actions. It's measured using the thought processes leading up to the action. People are quick to chuck the term around becase they are lazy to find out more. Ironically, those who deem others as "immature" are often harbouring immature thoughts processes themselves. The only thing that different between him and a 6 year old is his denial of his own thoughts, which is regression, if you ask me.
So what has all of this got to do with conscience? I think the main reason why people can't stand being guilty is because they cannot live with the "guilt". It's a rather basic emotion, so it's hard to describe. Kind of like describing the colour blue with using similes. Aren't there more important things to worry about; things not necessarily pertaining to oneself.
To be human is to feel. To think is to be god.
