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I wish to interrupt the Gunpla-oriented consistency of this blog, for something a lot more serious. Something as serious as 9/26/2010 just came and shook my thoughts for the entire day...
Honestly, I am a man who, as much as my conscience would restrict, a pacifist already dwindling back into social obscurity. That inner flame within me back when I still considered myself a visionary from the shadows have started to die down, due to the growing pressure as my family's apparent male breadwinner (which I still object to...)
But that doesn't mean I ride solo virtually all the time. I still make friends and acquaintances like the rest of society, albeit less frequent than others. The fact that I've made contact and contributed my insights and skills with various groups, is concrete proof that I still have not secluded myself from others.
However, how can we tell if a group we're dealing with would not, in one way or another, put us in harms way?
Just yesterday, I caught whiff of news about a hazing victim - a law student from my former academic enclave at that - found by the 5-0's battered and lifeless. Although my memory tells me that I have not known the guy that much, the fact that he was a batch mate of mine from college (as affirmed by my circle of close contacts), gave me goosebumps that I began to reflect on everything about the matter (especially taking my slightly decorated law school experience in account...)
Hazing has become one of those directly potent catalysts for the public (through the media) to view 'brotherhoods' as nothing more than a large group of hooligans (another would be inter-fraternity violence, like what happened back in 2010). Nevertheless, I still contend that it's not the methods and rituals that are per se wrong. Rather, it's the persons who use them to their selfish interests, masking them under the clout of brotherhood, that made them wrong in the first place.
Ending this, I still firmly maintain whatever I said in the first anniv commemoration post for the 2010 Bar Exam Blast, to wit:
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It is also the right moment for everyone within fraternities, sororities, and what have you, to start policing their ranks for a change. They created their own society to promote the very essence of brotherhood/sisterhood; they must also know what their limitations are in the first place, before someone within them exploits them to the detriment of their reputation.After all, we are all human beings, first and foremost. And we all have our responsibility to care for each other, all for the sake of preserving wisdom...
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May justice be served for all those innocents who lost their lives because of yearning for 'brotherhood'...
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"We try to honor their deeds, even as their faces fade from our memory. Those memories are all that's left, when the bastards have taken everything else." - Capt. John Price, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
