It pays to learnt at another's expense

Another blogger was arrested yesterday for the publishing of racist remarks on his personal blog. There is a short write out in today's edition of the Straits Times and a follow up on a blog bulletin Tomorrow.sg. We live in a very different world these days; with more sophisticated technology resulting in increased connectivity amongst our society both in and out of cyberspace. Every little action or comment we make travels significantly further then we could ever imagine and every impact potentially generated greatly magnified by that many times more. I am pretty sure that when published that post, he never pictured himself being eventually arrested because of that very rash comment. 

Browsing through the after-math of the whole saga (We're a nation of serial drama lovers thanks to the negative exposure on our free-to-air channels... just an opinion...), it is pretty obvious that the poor blogger has already been taken to task. His actions should not be condoned and as observed, he has been clearly made an example of by the relevant authorities. 

With my disapproval of his actions explicitly spelled out above, I do sympathize with him in some ways too. He clearly had severe misconceptions about the limits of expressing a personal view online. He made too personal an attack on the man instead of the deed and that got him into trouble. This incident too raises another crucial issue that we need to address soon... Are we living in a racially harmonious society or a racially tolerant one? Sometimes I get the feeling we're living in this picturesque society, our faces and cheery news merely a mask for the true feelings we conceal all so well within ourselves. People like are clear indicators that we're not achieving that picture perfect society that we would like to have and that there is a lot more work to be done. Is racial harmony truly an achievable goal or a mere ideal, good to dream about, impossible to achieve?

"...pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion..." 

- The National Pledge