Be gracious in your speech

Not too long ago, a colleague of mine got very agitated with me over a small difference of academic opinion. He ended the debate by saying Lanciao ( a chinese word for Penis ) to me and walked away.

In another incident, an old colleague stood up right in the middle of an official meeting and shouted at me , accusing me of delaying the meeting by asking lots of questions and he just want to go home to do his private business.

These two are not young people. They are old and arrogant grouches. Both behave arrogantly because they think they are somebody great in my organisation.

A wise man once said, "It is not what goes into your mouth that defiles you. It is what comes out of your mouth that defiles you."

In short, a person's mouth is what causes him trouble.

When dealing with friends , colleagues , guests , strangers or even your enemies, speak graciously. Do not speak arrogantly. It would not do you any good but may bring you harm in future.

If you think you are someone very smart , there are always smarter persons than you. If you think you are someone rich, there are always someone richer than you. If you think you are a very important person, you can never be very important forever.

A colleague of my uncle had his set of teeth smashed by a gang of people on the streets because he offended someone in his speech. Even till now, he does not know who hired people to beat him up.

Refusing to condemn a crime and its prepetrator is liken to being an assessory to it

Nowadays in this politically-correct ( but statistically and factually incorrect ) world of ours, condemning a crime and the prepertrators is a no-no. People are afraid to say anything that may be looked upon as being 'racist' or 'judgmental'.

An incident where an army major massacred 13 soldiers and injured many at Fort Hood , Texas. There were 170 witnesses to the slaughter. He was later shot and now in coma.

Preliminary reports says that this perpetrator is of a certain anti-Semetic , violent , oppressive Middle Eastern religion , was upset with the way his colleagues were treating him and with the war he was about to be sent to to fight his co-religionists.

He decided to shout some religious verses and started shooting people's back. 

His relatives , when were asked to comment about the incident -
" Maj Hasan's relatives have said they deplore his actions. Cousin Nader Hasan said: "We are mortified with what has unfolded and there is no justification, whatsoever, for what happened."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8347969.stm

I don't know about you but as for me condemn his crimes and condemn him , we must.

Love includes Tough Love

A message about Love was preached in my church yesterday evening. But the pastor did not explain what Love is.

But what is actually Love?

We know from the good book the characteristics of Love - "Love is patient, love is kind .. "

It is unfortunate that the world have broadly accepted the Westernized notion of Love as lovey , dovey , hugs and kisses , I forgive your wrongs , you don't have to be responsible for your actions , i will bear all your punishments  and all is forgotten.

I believe this Lovey Dovey Love is not Christian. It is from those drug-filled hippies who preached anti-war, eastern mysticism and universal sex love in the 60s.

Throughout the bible, we see God demonstrated His Love not only in forgiving and sacrificing but also in punishments and reprimands. This is the Father's love.

The good book says, "Spare the rod, spoil the child"

Lots of people, who embraced the Lovey Dovey Love fail to understand why God who is Love , punishes His people. Why God allowed famine , pestilence, wars to ravage His people.

The truth is He punishes them out of love and the desire to correct.

Tough Love - the act of reprimanding and punishing the offender , not out of revenge or anger but out of love and the intention to correct and reform.

As a person in the education field, time and time again i encounter 'Christian' students from Christians family behaving badly in school and colleges. They are indisciplined, disrespectful , rude , disobedient and etc . They may act like angels at home but they behave like devils outside their parents' monitoring.

I believe this is due to the lack of Tough Love being practiced in these Christian families who believe in Lovey, Dovey Love.

It is very sad to note that students of other religions ( especially from the Buddhist background) are behaving much better than those from Christian background.

This is not surprising because most of those children from Christian families are not born again. They never had a personal encounter with God. They just follow what their family practises - go to church , not praying to idol but they are not born again.


A survey done in UK recently found that Tough Love is good for children.

"Children brought up according to "tough love" principles are more successful in life, according to a study. The think tank Demos says a balance of warmth and discipline improved social skills more than an laissez-faire, authoritarian or disengaged upbringing." 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8348938.stm

On the other extreme, some people think Love means only Tough Love - which is totally wrong.

Do not be an apologist for wrongdoers

Do not try to 'explain' why a wrongdoer did what he did , with the hope that he would not bear the full grunt of punishment.

An apologist usually has close relationship with the person he is trying to justify for. He hopes that he could make his friend look less 'wrong' by providing 'reasonable' explanations for his friend's wrongs

There is no excuse for a crime or a wrong especially if he is an adult and fully knows the consequences of his actions.

Trying to provide excuses to the victim is a very bad thing. An apologist is doing a service to his friend-offender and doing a disservice to the victim.

The victim may feel offended when the apologist tries to deflect damage responsibility away from his friend.

Instead of advising the wrongdoer on his wrongs, an apologist would seem to want to justify the wrongdoer's wrongs.

Do not try to provide 'explanation' when the offender himself never did.

If an apologist really want to help, he should advise the wrongdoer to fully apologize to the victim for his wrongs.

Two are better than one.

The bible says it's not good for man(or woman) to be alone.

The truth is two person work together can exponentially out-perform two individual persons.

Two persons staying together in a house costs less on average compared to a single person.

Two persons co-operating can carry more compared to two persons working individually.

For example if a person can carry a maximum of 100kg, then logically two persons should be able to carry a maximum of 200kg. But the truth is ( if you care  to conduct this experiment ) , two persons working together would be able to carry exceeding 200kg.

Conspiracy Theories

In an open society like those in the West, most conspiracy theories are false.It is very hard for a open-society government to keep a secret without the media or others blurting out.

But in a closed tyrannical society, with the threat of imprisonment and execution for  secret-blurters, most rumors and gossips have big truths in them.

Thus conspiracy theories are more true in a closed society than in an open society.

Prophesies and Postdiction

A prophesy is the foretelling of future events. A postdiction is the effort of trying to fit events into a foretold prophesy.

A prophesy may be from God. But a postdiction is 100% man-made.

I am very skeptical of religious figures who claim to have the 'gift' of prophecy. I believe God does not simply give this gift to many people. Only the selected few get this gift. Not every pastor , priest or holy man is a prophet.

There are many fake prophets in history , notably Nostradamus.

How to recognise real prophesy from postdiction?

A real prophesy is very specific - with specific names , date , time place

It is not open-ended or ambigious. Ambigious prophecies are fake prophesies which try to play safe by being non-specific.

Postdiction are the following :

1. Vague  with no specific time , date , place , or even the event.
     "A disaster will happen in future .. "
     Disasters always happen yearly or even monthly.

2. Open-ended - with no specific time and date
     "In future , this will .. "

3. Recycled over and over again.

• Enthusiasts often tries to fit the most current event to the prophecy that has been used again and again in the past.

4. Cover all possibility

• The use of "may" , "might" , "could" which can turn out to be "may not","might not" and "cannot"

       " If you do this , you might ... "  or might not.

5. Shotgunning - shooting many targets so that at least one would be struck.
     "In 2010, a certain leader would raise up .. "

6. Statistically-likely - very high probability of happening
    "There will be an accident on xyz highway this morning .. "

7. Unfalsified - Hard to verify
    "When he was born, lotus plants appear wherever he placed his feet.."

8. Counting the hits not the misses - over-focusing on the few successful predictions but ignoring the many misses.

9. Allegory - claiming that it's not the physical but the 'spiritual'
    A 'prophet' may predict the death of someone famous. But when he did not die, the explanation given that he did experience 'spiritual death'


10. Moving the goal post.
      "God decided to grant you a second chance .. so He changed His mind.."


11. Conditional 'prophesies' - prophecies keep changing because 'certain conditions' are not met 

     "Your sickness will be healed by October" But when it did not happen, the explanation given is "Your prophesy did not materialize because you did not do this and that .."

12. 'Prophesies' from psychological and emotional evaluations
     We can, for a certain extent, predict what a person is like from his appearance, behaviour and speech. If a person is always anxious, we could predict that he is in fear of something etc. A shabbily-dressed person is most often a person who has a lackadaisical attitude towards many things.

Adapted from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdiction

Death is sudden and unexpected - Do not be careless

This week there are two tragic incidents happened to young people. Both are water-related fatal incidents in the little Malaysian town of Kampar.

Incident 1

A hanging bridge collapsed after a few naughty naive school children started jumping and shaking the bridge while some students were crossing it during a school camping activity. The bridge gave way and 22 students fell into the river. 3 students were drown.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/10/27/nation/20091027085329&sec=nation


Incident 2

4 college mates went to a waterfall for a swim. A sudden gush of water pushed 3 of them away and they drowned.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/3/nation/5031766&sec=nation

Death is so sudden. A moment of carelessness and naivety can cause the loss of lives.

Like defensive driving, we must always practise defensive living. We must always be conscious of the potential dangers lurking in every corner at our lives. 

Whatever that has the potential of causing injuries or deaths should be avoided.

However, it does not mean that we should be overwhelmed with constant fears but it is just that we should be aware of potential dangers.

We should use our logic and intuition to predict dangers.

In the first incident, deaths would not have occurred if those few naughty boys did not start monkeying around with deaths.

Saying sorry or paying compensation to the grieved cannot bring back lives.

Try and try again until you have tried enough

The bible says in the book of Proverbs , paraphrased, "A righteous man falls and gets up seven times"

It means even though a person fails , he would try again to succeed. It does not mean he keeps on trying till eternity.

He must be a realist. He must know his own strength and weaknesses.

For example, if a person does not have extraordinary ability in singing, he should not keep trying to succeed in this field. He should divert his focus to the field which he excels in.

In this competitive world of ours, pure effort is just not enough. One must be naturally-talented in a particular field in order to do well.

Being hard-headed and ignorant of reality would only waste a person's time , energy and focus if he keeps dwelling in something that he is not talented enough in.

If you are not sure about your natural ability, try talking to experts in the field that you want to venture into. They can tell you what it takes to be successful.

Then again, once in a blue moon, a totally talentless person can be lucky and have short-term success. But he would not last for long.

Thus, always know your strength and weaknesses and evaluate them against something that you are planning to venture into so that success would come sooner and long-lasting.