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If there is one thing that really ticks me off, it’s other people telling me what’s good or bad for me, what I should or should not do. The other thing I find equally annoying is seeing people blindly submit themselves to the rules imposed on them by others, and those who impose these rules get offended if people do not comply with their standards.

It is not because I am rebellious or antisocial. Given this wonderful thinking machine that we’re equipped with in the form of our brain, and given that as humans we are supposed to be the end product of millions of years of evolution (or created in the image of one maker, for the religious minded), sometimes I cannot help but think that we underutilize our intellect, our capacity for thinking. Worse, we deliberately undermine those abilities because of sheer laziness.

And when it is our leaders — or persons of influence in society — who indulge in this mental laxity, is it any wonder that instead of seeing progress in terms of our basic rational thinking, we still encounter attitudes and beliefs that are practically medieval in nature?

What, for instance, should we make of some ulemas’ paranoid objections to the film “2012” and the burning of DVD copies of the movie by elementary schoolchildren other than that they’re just knee-jerk responses by people faced with something they have absolutely no idea about? I guess for dull minds, the easiest response is to reject (and if necessary, with some form of violence), because it hurts these people’s heads to allow the light of knowledge to shine on their gray cells and expand their corseted intellect.

Hence, the propensity for proscribing just about anything they cannot wrap their little minds around. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t read this, don’t watch that. And if you ask them why, they tell you not to ask questions or you’ll go to hell. It is any surprise that the number of dull people seems to increase with each new generation. When teachers have little knowledge, students feed on barren ground.

The sad thing about people of little knowledge is their tendency to cling to whatever petty belief system they have and then shove that system down other people’s throats as if their lives depended on it. In a way, I suppose their lives do. For any sign of doubt or hesitation within that system is tantamount to the end of their lives — who they are and what they stand for — as they know them.

As such, the basis of these people’s beliefs is fragile because it is founded not on real faith, which is the fruit of wisdom, nor is it based on the pursuit of understanding or the result of self-knowledge. Instead, their beliefs are based on willful ignorance, second-hand knowledge and parochialism.

Banning the film “2012” would not only increase its popularity (and boost sales of pirated DVDs), but would also make people take the movie to be more than what it really is, which is just a fun, sensational form of entertainment. Besides, imposing a ban is just a lazy way of dealing with new ideas and a sure recipe for stunting the development of one’s critical faculties.

What sort of people incite elementary schoolchildren to engage in burning books and DVDs to protest against a film that these kids are most likely too young to comprehend? I shudder just thinking about what sort of adults these children will grow up to become if they are taught to respond to new ideas as if they were destroying some deadly disease.

Did they really think anything good would come out of their actions other than proclaiming their pitiful intolerance and narrow-mindedness? If anything, their actions preach violence and vandalism as legitimate and acceptable forms of social discourse and modes of expression. And more dangerously, their actions could take away other people’s natural curiosity and their thirst for knowledge about the world.

It would be a lot more constructive to have teachers and students go out and watch the film together and turn the activity into an interesting project for class. Perhaps such an activity would be a good opportunity for both teachers and their students to learn a bit about history and culture, surf the Web for more pertinent information and engage in a healthy discussion on the content and quality of the film.

This way, people might even have fun and actually start using their brains to learn something practical — two things which, by the way, rarely seem to occur in most of this country’s classrooms.



Desi Anwar is a television anchor and a writer. She can be reached at www.desianwar.com and www.dailyavocado.net.