theSun, Malaysia
August 26, 2010
“Everything is relative” is a common phrase I kept hearing this past year. That’s what happens when you live with anthropologists.
“No, not everything is relative” would be the polite patient comeback. The discussion would ensue, pursue and die down and everyone would go back to their rooms with a differing opinion to think and mull over.
There was an underlying fondness that though we differed in thought, there was mutual respect of each other’s opinion and belief system. We could agree to disagree and still have a cup of tea together afterwards. The thrust was that we dispelled the opinion and not the person. It’s almost like the saying “Hate the sin, love the sinner”.
It’s a bit of a tricky one though; one is the idea that we are entitled to an opinion and the other about how we treat differing opinions.
On the onset if we were to follow America’s First Amendment stance, then we’d be all for the entitlement. What happens when the opinion is not “correct”?
Correct by whose definition though?
A few weeks ago American talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger used the N-word multiple times on air to describe double standards of the usage of the word. This sparked great dissent on so many levels - one reason was because she didn’t mask the word in a euphemism. There was an outrage, she apologised and will end her 30-year-old syndicated broadcast.
What was interesting about this is that her viewpoint was being censored; she did have a point, just not diplomatically packaged. Dr. Laura didn’t intend to hurt, she was trying to make a point. She then tried to evoke her First Amendment entitlement – among others her right to freedom of speech.
What came out of it was that more people were willing to blindly hate than to engage in her comment. There was no platform to exchange views, no platform to trade opinions perhaps, all they saw and heard was “different”.
So much so that they missed the point totally because it struck a nerve… Sometimes we’re really oversensitive about issues that we fail to see another view. I’ve been there before, many times.
Two weeks ago, I questioned the transparency of government spending citing extravagance versus the lack of funds in providing justice to the Penan women and children being raped.
I made a mistake in my article, something I must apologise for and was rightly corrected by Tourism Malaysia. The article questioned subsidies of housing the Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board in Trafalgar Square which in fact needed no subsidies as it was a Commonwealth gift from Her Majesty the Queen of England.
The point of the article though remains. I stand by my opinion asking for transparency of public money, because there is extravagance on one hand, billions wasted and on the other, hardcore injustices not being addressed due to the lack of funds and good governance.
Perhaps there are some that disagree with my point and I welcome mature debate that does not include personal attacks. As you would like your opinion to be respected, so would I, even if its ‘correct-ness’ is relative.
The past few weeks, there have been differing opinions floating around, that of the 98.9fm crew and some school heads. If we are for the freedom of opinion, does that warrant school heads to say racists remarks since they have a right to an opinion? While if we are not for freedom of opinion, then what happens to being a thinking nation and freedom of the press?
Which begs the questions, do we really have the right to an opinion? What happens when you have a differing opinion? And who determines what is correct?
Albert Einstein once said “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
Freedom of speech should not be a passport to verbal diarrhoea and the right to spew hate rants. Freedom of speech is a privilege that comes with responsibility, contributes to discourse and possesses the element of mutual respect of another’s viewpoint regardless of age, race and creed.
Perhaps it could be summed up by what an anthropologist professor in the making smilingly said “It’s my opinion, respect it!” as he continued to sip his tea.
Natalie can’t reconcile everything being relative; there are some universal truths.
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