By Alan Ho
I am not violent by nature, although I had my youthful thrills watching Samurai movies, Chinese kung fu films, and Cassius Clay pounding his opponents to the mat.
Of course during NS days we were trained to kill, with our rifles, bayonets, and for awhile, I took up Taekwondo to learn the art of killing with my fists and my legs when I was an officer in the SAF.
But the blood and the gore, the thrill of flooring your opponents, they now belonged to a past life.
My non violent nature
Perhaps walking the path of the Buddha, and the choice of eating less meat, tempered my temperament.
My professional training also teaches the preservation of life, not the taking of it.
Maybe this was my true nature revealed.
Violence
But we are surrounded by violence daily.
Not a day passed without the media reporting some violence and death, natural or man-made.
Earthquakes, floods, fire and other disasters of nature claimed lives.
Such are the stuff that sells newspapers and raises the ratings of TV channels. But I digress.
More relevant to the topic at hand , Man’s odious deeds towards his kind: sons killing fathers, fathers smothering their children, Christians killing Muslims, Muslims killing ‘ infidels’ and apostates ( often fellow Muslims, deemed to be friendly towards the foes of Islam ). Buddhists, supposedly the least violent of Man’s religious sects, committing communal violence against other fellow beings.
Nations invade other nations, in the name of stopping genocide, tyrannical dictators, ‘evil kingdoms’.
Are the acts humanitarian, altruistic, one asks? God doesn’t even figure in the formula.
Or is there always an ulterior motive : a conquest for oil, natural resources, or other spoils? Are all wars and skirmishes not based on economic or geopolitical considerations, and the victim nations just pawns on the giant global chessboard where the world’s superpowers played?
The people suffer.
A video clip showed a waif of a girl rummaging for scrap in a desolate landscape, in return for a few rupees or pesos or dinars, she exchanged it for a few pieces of pita, wrapped in old newspaper, returns to the hovel she stays in, just a tarpaulin overhead, and fed the bread to her younger brother piecemeal…the title appeared :
I am a father,
I am a mother,
I am an orphan.
It filled me with immense sadness.
It brings an ache to my heart.
My eyes welled up, staring into her soulful eyes …
No human being should be made to suffer Man’s indignity to Man.
Least of all the children.
Dr Alan Ho is a Paediatrician in private Family Practice. He also spends time golfing, swimming, playing tennis, wine tasting, and playing his guitar and singing. He is a bibliophile and a voracious reader.
