Thursday, July 06, 2006

Worthwhile or not?

The clamp has been shut - here and here(note the accuracy of the report).

It's a suspension, which means it's probably temporary. Of course, temporary as of now.

I am now wondering if all the opposition voices against the response had made it worse - my brain speculates that the above happened probably as a result of panic amongst the ranks, and the opposition voices hastened the suspension.

Not that alternative voices are bad, or of little use. Raising awareness of the availability of alternatives to the dominant ideology. At the same time, it may well stir the dominant ideology to react.

Is it worthwhile or not? Perhaps, a lot of times, we are hostages to our own rice-bowls, to the sense of security and comfort, to the lives of those people very dear and close to us - faced with these factors, it is hard to accomodate an active outlook towards adopting, believing and campaigning alternatives. Or just proposing the possibilities of alternatives.

I, for one, doubt I will be able to, at this point in time, pursue an active stand towards alternatives.

But I don't think it means giving up. Change often does not take place overnight - those that do might end up being counterproductive instead. I'm always reminded of the USMSes and WITS suggestions that we used to do during those times of conscription. We used to moan and groan and doubt the effectiveness of these paperwork exercises; we kept filling in the same suggestions over and over again, and everything would seem to be futile up to the day we collect our Pinky. But if indeed, the exercises had been useless, we would probably be taking C-130s to overseas for exercises, having meals cooked by cooks as disgrunted about conscription as everyone else would have been, and so on.

The space for negotiation is highly delicate and fragile. It must be delicately navigated.

Perhaps, the insight gained here is that Satirism is not an appropriate negotiation tool in this instance.

It's terrible, though, that Mr. Brown's family is affected by the episode.

Signing off........... Hope that the suspension is temporary; take care MB..................
RC

No comments:

Post a Comment