Unbreak My Art

Yesterday, I went back to open my FB account (unbreaking my break), much to the following news item regarding Mansour Shouman a voluntary ground-level reporter from Ghazza. I've been following him for a while. Then, just some days ago, one hears that he went missing and the photo might be a real possibility. There are conflicting reports though but in any case, I hope he is safe and sound or be safely returned.

As I have mentioned above, one should be highly critical of any news item that one receives nowadays and be aware of those who spread false news habitually. I remembered reading one post of a physics professor who said that the occupying state should invest more on information warfare as it seemed that they are losing this end. Indeed, it has come to this, that truth and justice does not really matter, but as they say in politics, it is more of the optics. It is disappointing to see such learned professor to have such (opposite) views.

This brings me to why I felt repulsive reading some recent social media posts and tried to rationalize why we do the things we do.

Why do we do social media posts

One often post things in social media to share things that occur in our life, share knowledge that we have gained. There are also other reasons that I see others do (I try to refrain from doing so): promoting business and political campaigning. Note: from time to time, I do try to promote some local businesses, helping others. The overall purpose seems to be more of therapeutic in nature, making one happy in the end. The question is whether it make others happy or more knowledgeable. Some, I see it is public shaming (rightfully or not) and worse, the readers are often "not real friends". Some would say, that rightful channel often leads to nowhere - well, that is part of our complex life, how far can one strive and do the delicate balancing act.

Be aware of own's biasness and stereotypings

Being humans, each one of us has one's own biases. This is fine, but one should have an acute awareness of this when dealing with differences of opinions. Time and again, one can see examples in real life when one's dislike of a person/community clouded one's judgment or decision, dismissing the possibility of the person/community being in the right, sometimes to the extent of causing acts of injustice. In sorting out differences, it may require a deep dive investigation, separating facts from fictions or opinions and sometimes this requires a (hopefully impartial) third party to resolve issues (and the third party is certainly not social media).

On this matter, I recall a tweet of a famous physicist doubting the view that people of different faiths generally have lived peacefully within Muslim societies in the past. One can check historical records of course and it is key to highlight the word 'generally' because there will always be exceptions and these would need a different deep dive (e.g. when conflicts occur). It can be always argued that Muslims have a biased view, giving a distilled clean history of the past. Thus, here sometimes I value (impartial) non-Muslim accounts of history (without distortions or opinionated narratives) to corroborate the said claims of peaceful co-existence. Of course, this might not be perfect (and I would be willing to listen to alternative resolutions of this problem).

To err is human, but to deceive is sinful

Humans can err in judgements/opinions as they are not omniscient. Despite this, humans have the potential to grow, to be knowledgeable and to be wise. Thus, humans must be perceived together with its dynamics. Stereotypes however tend to rob humans its dynamical character and to doom a person/community with its often-negative traits and these are often used as short-cuts for instant judgements. Given all these considerations, one could be more forgiving, emphatic and positive when treating others. 

Once one errs (with complete understanding and no room for contextualization), the normal thing to do is take corrective actions. If one still proceeds with the said error, then one is said to be deceiving others, which is morally wrong or sinful.

In this respect, I have seen scholars who might have erred in certain circumstances, but they are being vilified by sectors of a community, throwing away all the good things that they do. I don't subscribe to such actions. I may have disagreements on specific issues with the person but that does not take away my respect for the other good things that the person did. It is rather unfortunate that if some expect others to be completely perfect but yet we know our own selves are not.

Back to normal blogging: The above are my mere reflections on some issues raised in the social media but let me get back to events happening in my personal sphere. Today is my last day to complete my teaching portfolio and there are many things to be completed. Yesterday, I went back to XMUM campus to get some documents back for me to use in completing the teaching portfolio. There I met Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yap Seong Shan, who was my former FYP student in her BSc days. She has joined XMUM relatively recently (earlier than I did). We discussed over coffee on the curriculum there and the the one we had in UPM. The physics program is still new (three years) and the department is still expanding, I'm told.

After the brief meet, we went to search for the eatery introduced to us by Dr. Siti i.e. Warisan Sotong Giant. We had our lunch there and grabbed some food for our dinner later at home.