And, Let Us Mourn the Passing of Politeness and Cordiality

(For lack of a better word. It's actually 礼让精神)

1/5/2011, Labor's Day. I was at a Buddhist ceremony, a chanting and praying session, won't go into the details though, as I don't know them too. :P What got me thinking was the attitude of the people, even when they were seemingly in the House of God.

At some point during the ceremony, we were given a choice to "bathe" the Buddha. Said to cleanse our sins, purify our souls or just as a blessing and whatnot. The long queue didn't amaze me, as it was quite a big hall, and fully packed. The thing that caught my attention was that the "queue" wasn't even a queue. Picture in your head, there's one highway lane, and the cars in Malaysia are stuck in a jam. Now, substitute the cars with people and voila! Get what I mean? Those people pushed and shoved each other, ignored old folks, cut the queue, made rude comments etc etc. The irony? It was a God worshipping session, where you were supposed to repent, for your sins.

You know, it's kinda sad, what our society has been reduced to. Makes me wonder. Was there really a time, where people were polite, kind, compassionate and sincere with each other? When everyone actually shared and give, and not just the minority? When chivalry wasn't six feet under? When girls wear actual clothing and guys actually wear guy clothes and not something androgynous? When people actually treat each other as equals without all those labels or material values? Ok, I think I'm rambling off topic, but you get the gist, don't you?

I feel totally mocked by the fact that the citizens of Japan are calm, collected and organised in the face of a major disaster, even lining up to receive supplies after the earthquake. Oh, just mentioning, their streets were without trash too. And to think I spent my entire morning one day in February volunteering to pick up trash by a waterfall which is a tourist attraction. We spent hours, filled more than 15 trash bags and we weren't even halfway through. Makes me feel so proud of my country and the people in it.

What has gone wrong? Our education? Bringing up? Environment?

And don't feed me the crap about Moral being a compulsory subject in school. We all know how much of an impact that really is.