roses

in a world without warmth

Before I elaborate , my disclaimer : this piece is the result of my observations of human nature as I see it, living my life as a student who frequently makes trips to and from the city centre. I do not imply this as a general view of everyone ( though you are allowed to agree) or the view of the publisher.

I was on the bus to Kajang a few days ago, and it was the peak hour rush. The bus was coming from Kuala Lumpur and it was undoubtedly full of people coming back from work. Boarding the bus with me was a friend and a young couple, and the wife was visibly pregnant. ‘Good,’ I said to my friend. ‘We’ll see who will give up their seat for this woman.’ My friend smiled back wryly. True to our cynical expectations, no one gave their seat to the woman. What was more, the bus driver just kept on stuffing people onto the bus, until there were some people standing with two feet on the steps and their bodies outside the door. And the sad thing was, as people unboarded the bus and left some seats vacant, nobody was kind enough to give the pregnant woman a seat, but rather plumped their sorry behinds on it instead. The woman was standing all the way to Kajang, on a full packed bus , which I may add, was full length and not a minibus, and with minimal air-conditioning. So much for compassion and kindness.

The sad thing was, it was not an isolated incident. Coming back from Cheras Leisure Mall, I boarded a back with standing room only, and an aging man, probably in his late 60’s, boarded the bus halfway to Kajang. He could barely stand, and no one cared enough to give him a seat. Even when a person who was sitting got off the bus, people rushed to sit, not giving a care for the poor old man who looked on forlornly, and then turned away.

Initially it seemed ironic to me that people were willing to give hard earned cash to people in remote places that they’ve never heard of before, and yet wouldn’t bat an eyelash to the needy in their own backyards. Then I realised that when they contributed to funds to help people overseas, they would get their ugly old mugs in newspapers , and everyone would say what a caring soul they were ; what a socially responsible organization their company was. If they helped people in their own country, or town, no one would go and report it to any publications. I guess that is why a local philanthropist here calls up a few newspapers before he makes a contribution to some school or mosque.

During the worst of the haze, so many companies were fined because they continued to do open burning even after the government publicly prohibited it. Large lorries were flying the national flag proudly at the front of their vehicles, and yet were polluting everything around them with the thick black smoke coming out of their exhaust pipes. My dad calls it irony of the highest order. I agree.

So in our steady march into the 21st century, have we lost all sense of feeling if it does not help us put ourselves one notch up? In Economics, there is a terminology called Pareto efficient, which describes a situation where you are in an equilibrium state that you cannot make one party better off without hurting another party. Maybe there is a similar human trait to that, where a person will not make anyone better off if it does not make them even more better off. Is the bottom line the only thing that matters? Is profit the sole object of anything a company does? Take the bus I was on - they just shoved anyone and everyone in for the sake of a few more cents of extra bus fare. What if someone fell and died? Would the extra 50 cents have been worth it? Questions, questions and more questions. All will go unanswered because the key lies in the human beings we all are, and the human nature we were born with.