Notes on #AMALAYER

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21, NIV)

So, here and again we have let ourselves get entangled in a melodrama of sorts from our number 1 source of entertainment - the social network. I think it was two weeks ago when I first came across a video of a young woman shouting at the top of her lungs admonishing lady guard at an LRT station in Manila. Apparently, this was a video uploaded by a "concerned" individual. Little did I know that the said 3-minutish video would eclipse Breaking Dawn (Part 2) in terms of say viewership. The video went viral across social networking sites-twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc. 

I recently learned that the video did not just go viral by itself, but much to my chagrin, so are the parody videos depicting the original scene. Everyone is eager to get his or her own piece in this tale of infamy. Everyone wants to get his or her own five minutes of fame. We are like flies jumping on a heap of dung. Everybody seems to care but no one wants to distant himself away and view the issue at a certain perspective. 

We might want to ask ourselves, what does this tale tell us as a people.?

We are a group of people so full of ourselves. Our personal opinion far outweighs that of the common good. We can easily come up with very good justifications to demean and bash others. " I did this or that because I wanted to teach him/her a lesson… what if Mr/Miss Soso do this to Mr/Miss Common Tao who is weak to defend him/herself." Now, you have just anointed yourself  a hero of the oppressed masses. How convenient knowing a lot of us are oppressed, in one way or another. Our misplaced sense of justice brings us this kind of embarrassment. Again, we are so full of ourselves. 

We are a group of people so full of emotions. I have told myself over and again never trust emotions as more often than not, emotions could go in the wrong direction. Nobody bothers to ask questions anymore. Questions such as 'why', 'what if', 'how come', are so few these days. We just feel content with what meager information we have then after which we start to rant and then we bash people. It's enough for us to see the video which is just a part of the puzzle then come to think of it as the whole puzzle all by itself. After which, we get angry and then devote all our efforts to the annihilation of the object of our anger-in this case the girl on the video-by way of insults and name calling. Now , the girl is crying foul for being clobbered on the internet. Are we giving  a good case to the proponents of the anti-cyber crime law? 

Emotions could cloud our capacity to think and decide clearly. so, before our emotions overtake us, it is better to ask questions. So what if the guard shouted at the girl? So what if the guard grabbed the girl? Did that give the girl the license to bash the guard in full view of the public eye? So what, if the girl acted inappropriately? Did that give any iota of reason for any person to take a video of the scene? For what? When he posted the video on Facebook, did it resolve the conflict between the lady guard and the girl? 

I would let you decide on what would be answer to these questions. It would be better for all of us to reflect on these questions rather than answer them. Having an opinion does not always translate to having the justification to speak it.