‘D is for discipline and Lee Kuan Yew was right to point out that too much liberty may not be good for any society.’
DEFENSE is one answer if one is still on a FIBA wavelength. I myself have seen so many basketball games lost not because a team cannot score, but because it could not stop the other team from scoring and scoring more.
It is arguable to say that defense wins games but one thing is sure — if you can’t stop the other side from sinking two or three pointers, or worse making twos and threes with an and-one, then the chances of you losing the game is high indeed
The other day, I was doing my HIIT around BGC and was unpleasantly surprised by what I saw: cigarette butts scattered on the sidewalks, concentrated apparently in areas where call center agents frequent to take their breaks. Many could be found underneath the plants that dot the sidewalks of BGC, but there were many still that could be found in plain sight, say, outside a convenience store. Wrappers of snacks and candies of all types too.
Actually, this sight is not unique to BGC. Doing my HIIT around the Iloilo Convention Center in the Megaworld development of what once was the old Iloilo airport, I also saw, so many times, cigarette butts with energy drink bottles plus candy wrappers of all types littered along a sidewalk fronting a building that houses a call center. I am not surprised that call center agents take cigarette or snack breaks, but what surprises me is how casually they discard their waste.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It has not been ingrained into our consciousness as a people to go that extra mile to put aside our waste; not even at fast foods do we carry our used trays to a common area, because we are so used to having someone (a househelp, a cleaner) pick up after us. Which is not a luxury other societies can afford; or which they can but don’t have to because people know what to do.
But I was thinking: BGC projects itself as a “global city,” and is a private enclave to boot, actually. So, its developers can actually impose certain. Rules and regulations within BGC that aren’t done in other places that are not private property. Like stiff anti-littering regulations, for example. When I mean stiff, I mean coupled with stiff penalties like a hefty fine.
D is for discipline and Lee Kuan Yew was right to point out that too much liberty may not be good for any society. You see, even a democracy requires self-discipline among its people.
Because if people cannot discipline themselves then the stage becomes ripe for an autocrat to step in and impose that discipline from the outside.
Which we say we do not want. Except that our actions speak louder than words.
Frankly, if discipline cannot be gently enforced in a place like BGC (as it was in Olongapo of the Gordon years), then forget it.
