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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xtracooljustin" data-source="post: 225722" data-attributes="member: 67"><a href="http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/8/23/focus/18659691&sec=focus" target="_blank">http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/8/23/focus/18659691&sec=focus</a>t’s always someone else’s messRules of UnrealityBy DAVIN ARULCrime, express bus crashes, security, poor maintenance ? whenever the issue of responsibility comes up, it becomes someone else’s problem. IN THE wake of the recent express bus crash that claimed 22 lives – and let’s not forget the other crashes that followed – the authorities announced that bus company bosses would be held accountable. The bosses, on the other hand, said it was not fair to come down on them because the police, Road Transport Department and Commercial Vehicles Licensing Board needed to “get their act together” (The Star, Aug 17). The suggestion was made that it was unfair to single out the bosses for the actions of their negligent drivers. The question is, if your employees – in whose hands thousands of people put their lives every day, on the basis of trust, need and/or services rendered for a fee paid to your company – are not your responsibility, then whose are they?  If a company does not take responsibility for the people on its payroll, and does not ensure they are qualified and always fit to do the jobs they are hired for, then who will?  Sure, the authorities can step in and carry out all kinds of tests and screening and checks. But the monitoring must start in the workplace, especially when the nature of the job involves public trust and safety – just like security firms need to be very careful about their hiring and screening policies, and the integrity of their guards. Do we detect a deft attempt to shove the problem over to someone else’s side of the table here? It’s not just the bus operators who have been practising tai chi.  Yes, it is probably an insult to the art, not to mention to Jet Li and Datuk Michelle Yeoh (stars of Tai Chi Master, in case the connection eludes you), to use the name to describe this all-too-common practice of pushing responsibility away. “Practising tai chi” has, in fact, become the de facto Asian equivalent for “passing the buck”, based on the perceived similarity between the “pushing hands” movements of the actual, venerable art and the pantomimed act of shirking responsibility.  Let’s not kid ourselves about our aspirations to sainthood here. Most of us – this columnist included – have been guilty of it at some time. But, my, haven’t we seen so much of it in the past week or so?  Everything from lack of enforcement to loopholes in the road safety regulations to holes in the road to the weakness of the demerit points system to good ol’ rasuah has been blamed.  Yet even amidst the pushing and passing, possible solutions have emerged – thanks to people voicing their opinions (see The Star’s letters pages and Citizen’s Blog, among others), and bold decisions and statements by some individuals in higher places. At the heart of these possibilities is a unified network of preventive measures – one that can only exist if all the parties involved cease their buck-passing and take responsibility, at least for their respective portion of the problem. Maybe we should also look at abolishing this aberrant form of tai chi as our next national campaign, rather than go over ground which others have travelled (such as having a courtesy campaign, which our southern neighbours had, oh, two decades ago at least). We need to identify its various branches and seek to abolish them not by sending in Manchu spies to poison the abbots and burn the temples (oh, sorry, that’s Shaolin kung fu – but you get the idea), but by making a conscious decision to cease and desist in our own spheres of work and life. In the examples given above, we see the most common and reflex-based: the immediate deflection of any incoming blame, or pointing fingers. It seeks to take advantage of the confusion when everyone is talking at once – and loudly, too – in order to hide in plain sight until the fuss dies down.  The good thing is that this time, after the safety measures approved by the Cabinet last week, those involved will not be so safe in their hideaways. Yet the practice will go on elsewhere. In another branch of the art, the incoming force is diverted to no place in particular, or to a party that cannot be brought to book.  An example close to home: a couple of years ago, a group of plainclothes policemen came to my dad’s bookshop looking for books on deviant teachings.  I asked the group leader why the force dedicated so much manpower to this sort of pursuit when they could be out on the streets catching dangerous criminals like snatch-thieves and rapists. “Oh, that’s part of city life,” he said dismissively, presumably referring to the criminals and not the checks on deviant teachings. Dang, who am I to get all upset that such a social ill exists then? Another version of this practice has also been experienced by scores of crime victims who, upon attempting to lodge a police report for an incident like a snatch theft, are told: “Ini perkara biasa.” (It’s an everyday occurrence.)  Don’t you feel bad for making a fuss about something as commonplace as breathing? Or like when your offspring says or does something so completely shocking, based on stuff s/he picked up from you, and you just shrug at your gobsmacked friends and say, “Kids.” It may seem all too general and vague, but in reality it takes a lot of practice to pull it off with such nonchalance. And of course, we have the most insidious form of this art, the reflective/reflexive variety – which, like the most effective forms of self-defence, turns the attacker’s momentum back on him with minimal effort expended on the defender’s part. Recognise this? I’m sure you have experienced or heard it in one form or another. Good thing that few among us exhibit such thought patterns, though the occurrence is still alarming. It is employed whenever there is a plaintive cry for help from, say, senior citizens who are afraid to go out of the house because criminals prey on them. (Not content to merely rob, these scumbags actually deliberately injure their victims who already cannot fight back; and sadly, they are tai chi-ed over to the “social ill that we can’t do much about” category.) You see it in action when condo-dwellers appeal for tighter security, or commercial complex tenants ask the carpark operators for better lighting, or the physically challenged ask for improved facilities to help them get around more easily, or long-time residents asking not to be evicted when the land they are on is acquired. You hear it when a rape victim laments the irreparable harm done to her psyche and dignity when all she did was be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The refrains may vary from case to case, but they have a general pattern, and typically begin with “Who asked you to ?” or “No one forced you to ?” just to emphasise the “fact” that it’s really all your fault. “Who asked you to dress so sexily?” “Who asked you to move in here?” “Who asked you to make yourself a victim?” (A question indirectly asked of crime victims by a senior government official who suggested last year that many of them actually invite it upon themselves.) “Garmen* won’t let. Who asked you to vote for them?” “Who asked you to go out so late/early?” “Cannot move around, don’t go out lah. Who asked you to go out?” Maybe we could all make a conscious start today by eliminating such questions from our vocabulary; by ensuring that our children don’t fall into bad company and habits; by cleaning up our own messes; and by welcoming, rather than eluding, responsibility. Don’t you feel pressured now? Well ? who asked you to read this? Sorry, force of habit.</blockquote>

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