Sunday, May 27, 2007
Racial Harmony
The fact that Singapore is a multi-racial country makes her even more vulnerable to racial and cultural discrimination amongst the people. Here in Singapore, the Chinese people form the majority. It is important that the government does not permit special privileges only to the majority in order to safeguard social cohesion. Likewise, the freedom of expression should not be unlimited because this will result in the Chinese population having more power to state whatever they wished publicly since they form the majority here. Hence, the views as mentioned by Szilagyi should be adopted.
It is true that Singapore claims herself to be a democratic country. Naturally, her people would assume that full freedom of speech is practiced. However, the government should also practice censorship. Freedom of speech has its own pros and cons. It does allow the people to have a say in the society. Freedom of speech is a privilege. However, without government control, this privilege tends to be abused by the people. As mentioned by Szilagyi, “once messages are out in public, they develop a life of their own and become subject to multiple interpretations, and often manipulation that serves political agendas”. A harmless message written by someone without any bad agenda could easily be interpreted wrongly by the readers. After all, the readers decide what they are reading. And once this happens, there may be dire consequences threatening the peace of a nation. Adopting a system of democracy where freedom of expression is fully unlimited as suggested by Singer would easily result in inter-religious tensions. This is so because the people would have the right to voice out all their thoughts without caring if any one would be offended by his or her stand. This may also lead to the verbal form of open discrimination against different religions and races. As such, the people would feel unsecured and fear that the other party might try to destroy their religious believes. Racial tension would escalate and the social cohesion of a nation would then be threatened.
Updated@5:12 AM
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Friday, May 11, 2007
Do you think we should continue the death penalty today?
Do you think we should continue the death penalty today?
As stated by Wikipedia, capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences.
Different states have different reasons for issuing the death penalty. While some issue such penalties to those who commited treason, others actually punish sexual criminals with this penalty.
In my opinion, I feel that death penalty is indeed too harsh a punishment for criminals. However, I would say that the death penalty should not be removed. Instead, it should only be issued when criminals commit the most serious forms of capital crimes. The reason is simple. It’s a fact that everyone makes mistakes at a certain point of our lives. Sometimes, however, the mistakes that some of us may make tend to be more serious or detrimental than others.
When an offence is committed, the law may put some behind bars. While the period of jail term may differ for different cases, having to be a jail bird itself is already considered to be a relatively harsh punishment for the majority. The death penalty should thus not be used on crminals who are willing to change for the better. After all, it is someone’s life that we are talking about here.
Some criminals may have committed crimes while in their mental state of confusion. If a criminal committed a capital offence under such conditions, it would have been unfair to sentence him a death penalty immediatele without giving him a second chance. Even criminals deserve a second chance. Thus I would say that the system of issuing death penalties should not be abolished. Instead, it should only be issued when the same person commits serious capital offences twice. Only then can we be more certain that this person has more or less no intention of repenting his mistakes. After all, having committed hard core crimes more than once, it clearly shows that a second chance had been given to him, but he had unfortunately chosen to reject the opportunity.
Updated@5:15 AM
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Sunday, April 29, 2007
Kids today are too spoilt
Topic: Kids today are far too spoilt.
The younger generation of today are not only pampered by their family members but also by the society, so much so that many have grown to become spoilt kids who often take things around them for granted.
It is probably due to the advancement in technology that brought about a revolutionary shift in the standard of living for most societies. Many have become affluent. Technology has improved by hips and bounds and a world of IT has evolved. With an increasing number of families with better income than before, more parents are willing to spend a huge sum of money just to bring their kids up and to satisfy their unlimited wants. As such children of the modern society live in a world where they could get what they want easily.
In Singapore, it is no longer uncommon to see a primary school kid carrying around the latest model of hand phones. In fact, it has become so common that, when asking for phone numbers of kids, a majority of the people often refer it to their hand phones rather than their residential numbers. There are even cases where children get a surprising 3-digits sum of money as a bi-weekly pocket money. In the past, just having enough to eat was sufficient for the kids then. The situation changed so rapidly due to the economic upturn during the past years.
In other cases, children of this modern society are often looked upon as the vulnerable ones. Studies have shown that a majority of parents actually do not even consider beating their kids when they have done something wrong. Likewise, most parents are even more against the idea of teachers punishing their students. This has led to a situation where children are so well-protected that they have become even more vulnerable. With the over-protection from parents since young, many have failed to realise the potential dangers of the society.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with parents trying to keep their kids from dangers. However, while doing so, parents have to know their limits. Kids do need some form of exposure to hardship to learn and grow well. By having them so well-protected, more harm is done to them. Thus parents must be clear of how much kids should be pampered.
Updated@1:06 AM
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Thursday, March 22, 2007
As requested by the gp tutors, I am supposed to post an entry introducing myself. Any particulars you may wish to know can be found under the profile section at the side of this blog. So, basically i am going to skip those and go on with introducing other things about me.There's nothing much that i have to say about myself. But, I have been in ajc since the starting of this year. I am taking physics, chemistry, and maths at the H2 level with economics at the H1 level. As you can see, i am a science student.
Updated@4:22 AM
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