The laziness of some people.

My spiritual guru, Bapak as we fondly call him, has said that nothing in this world is evil but Man. He first told us about the spirits roaming the world and that such spirits do no harm to humans but humans make use of them and their abilities to harm other humans.Thus, it is not the spirits that are evil but humans who have evil thoughts and with that our Bapak told us that none of his disciples must ever do evil deeds or he will be answerable to Bapak.

What Bapak told us, I remember today as I read about the jellyfish in the waters of Langkawi. There are now too many jellyfish and it all began because of sea-water pollution as people dump waste into the sea, a convenient way of disposing waste at the cost of increasing the number of jelly-fish as the number of turtles decrease.

Turtles eat jelly-fish and in doing so control their number in the sea. Unfortunately, lazy uncaring people conveniently throw plastic bags into the sea and those bags are eaten by the turtles as they have mistaken those bags for jellyfish. The consumption of plastic bags cause the death of turtles and with less turtles to feed on the jellyfish, the jellyfish increase their numbers and being easily gotten into contact with human bodies, they react by stinging the bodies.

Humans are lazy and so often we see people throwing rubbish around rubbish bins but hardly into them although the bins are just one or two metres away. Why can't these people walk that extra one or two steps more to deliver their rubbish to the bins? And it is not that they did not want to be clean for they would not throw rubbish in front of their houses. And there are those who even throw their rubbish in front of other people's houses when such neighbours are not looking. And all that because of laziness!

People seem to be getting lazier and lazier. Take a walk along a beach and we can see the ice-cream wrappers, the paper-bags from food and all kind of plastic containers strewn all over, a clear sign of laziness of humans. Instead of improving this is one sphere of one lives which need looking into. Not that humans have not pretended to go into this problem. I remember the first time an anti litter sign was put up in Taman Intan, Sungai Petani. (That's where I live.) It stated that anyone caught littering would be fined a sum of RM5,000. It was in 1980 and I told my wife to think of the ridiculous sum of money that was stated. I asked her how many of the people would be able to pay such a fine. My pay then was approximately RM1,000 a month and if they were to ask me for such a sum of money I would most probably prefer to squat in jail and have free rice for a few months. Oh, no! As a government servant I cannot go to jail and so may have to see a 'Ah Long' or money-lender to get out of the predicament. What a ludicrous fine for littering!

Then, I gradually understood that it was just throwing fear at the residents as I found no one being caught despite numerous cases of littering. In fact the area around that anti-litter sign was full of rubbish thrown by people in and around the area. Perhaps people saw it more as a challenge than a threat and responded by fighting it. And it was not just happening to just this particular anti-littering signboard. Others elsewhere were also suffering from the same fate. That is what happens when authorities talk but never walk the talk. There was no enforcement and the law becomes a laughing matter.

So, if I am given the chance to be an adviser, I would say that the authorities concerned must have the enforcement officers ready before implementing any law. Give something for people to show their respect. That is the only way to gain respect. Unfortunately, not sufficient thought is usually put into an idea before its implementation.