KINDNESS ARE NOT TO BE ABUSED

1.0          PREAMBLE

The world we live in are so colorful. So much vibrancy and dynamism. Guys, if you don’t feel it by now, you might in some other world of yours.

Look around you and you will find so many creativity, innovations and opportunities. Some opportunists are doing things for good – for example, 1) Social Media – how many of us are taking that opportunity to improve our life (for knowledge & networking) and financial (business promotions)?, 2) IOT – how do you pronounce it – Ee-yout? It’s internet of things – information are used and to feedback good information about the safety of your home, energy usage, environment conditions, stock in the freezer, and many other smart living features, 3) Big Data – information about customer improvements, surveys, education needs, property and investments and what not. It goes on and on.

But some opportunists – are not thinking of goodness. They are taking advantage of the situation for their own benefit either financially, emotionally, personal satisfaction or any evil desires.

My topics here is about how those opportunists taking advantages of the kindness for their evil intentions.

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Since we were kid, we were told by our parents and teachers to be kind to all. That is a very key lesson we all acquired when we grow up. I believe most of us still adopt that lesson and practice them in our every day’s life.

As a matter of fact all religion in the world teaches that. So, “act of kindness” should be adopted like when we adopt the religion. It’s a sin if we don’t do it.  

I am to make all of us aware that in every good, there are bad elements or Evil lurking behind and try to take advantage of it.

2.0          KINDNESS to ALL

And the sermon continues … blah – blah - blah.  Unfortunately guys, you better read this section so that you can understand what’s my next point is.

2.1        To Other People

LIFE is not about us. It’s about what is surrounding us. What do we do to others is what’s life is all about. First and foremost, we have to do good to the parents, to the elderly, and to our family.

Then it goes to the neighbors, colleague, community, and then the general public. Helping is caring, sharing is caring. Do good anytime and anywhere you can.

Help the needy, the poor, the sick, the disabled and the weak. Not in terms of money alone, but in terms of spirit, kindness, and knowledge.

2.2        To The Living Things

When you have been kind to other people, then it doesn’t stops there. Anywhere you turn to, you will see living things like animals or plants. Take care of them as if it is yours. As long as it is not harmful.

Let it grow, let it live, protect them if you can and they will contribute back as part of our eco-system. To some extent they will take care of you.

2.3    To The Environment

And similarly, do not perform any destructive things to the planet. The environment shall determine how well our life is and how long we can live. 

Use your resources to do good, your knowledge to educate, and your wealth to contribute.

As I said, I am not giving you all the sermons. But I bet you all got it by now. Be good to all around you and they will be good to you back.

3.0          HOW EVIL TOOK ADVANTAGE OF KINDNESS

Here comes the gist of this article. We all have been taught and sermoned by the wise men about those kindness. That’s including me, if you considered the above section was a sermon. So what’s the message?

a. Do Good to People

b. Do Good to Living Things

c. Do Good to Environment

From those three perspectives, in the nutshell it will give a nation the benefit of Good Society, Good Economic Return, and Healthy Living. That’s the perfect world we all would never get to see. Why? Because behind every good deeds, there’s always evil lurking behind it.

So let us steer back to our topic above. You never know what or who are the evil, it may be consciously or unconsciously created.

Are you curious enough? Read on.

3.1       The Giving and Helping Society

Have any one ever thought that when a poor person or a weak person appears in our life, we should be the one thanking them after we help them. To them, it seems like we are helping them, but the bigger picture tells us that we were given the opportunity to do good. In order for us to be rewarded, we have to give first.  The rewards comes in many forms which we don’t even noticed.

When the occurrence is genuine, the above scenario are well accepted. But when evil comes into play, it will affect the genuine and to some extent would deter us from doing that act of kindness.

3.1.1       The Syndicate

First scenario, we heard of so many cases where syndicates takes over the needy, poor and weak to their advantage. It is widely happened in third world countries and developing countries. They captured them and even force these needy people to work for them as beggars. At the end of the day, they will collect all the money and put them back in their so called “camp”. When that happened then, it will put both parties at stakes – the giver and the receiver. The giver are now began to realized it and hesitated whether the poor people are genuine or not. Thus, most of them decided not to help those on the streets but by giving the donation through a proper channel. But what if the poor people are genuine and have no place to go? They will already have hard time to get sympathy from others and might even being harassed and humiliated for no reason. Then it goes back to who to blame? The worst scenario would be when they (poor people) started to blame god or start doing evil things as a result. Then, that would create another evil as a consequences to the other evil. What would that make our society in the future?

3.1.2       The Newbie

Besides the beggar situation, how does the EVIL took advantage of the kindness in business. Well there are many examples. The second scenario is, have any of you share your ideas to anyone for the sake of helping them. But worse still if you have spent hours of thoughts and put them on paper for them to read. At the end they left you and run away with that ideas. It happened to many of us. Let say you just met a newbie in the company and since you have been working there for quite sometimes, you are kind enough to give a helping hand to your newbie. You help him in some assignments and then after a while start giving him ideas which are for the good of the company. A few months down the line then when you attend the company meeting suddenly your boss announced the new plan that was being proposed by the newbie. You are enthused to listen and at first thought, you were impressed that the newbie really worked hard and have been credited for it. During those presentation then you realized that most of the ideas actually came from you and it was put into perspectives by the newbie which resulted as a game changer to the company. At first you think it's ok since he did it better to convince the boss with those ideas. Then come a few months later, then a show cause letter came to your table from your boss. You got a shock of your life. Why me? You asked yourself. It seems like your performance began to deteriorate from the company perspective since you have not contributed well enough and have not improve your part of the business unit. In actual fact, you were forced to give most of your account and most of your team to the newbie since it fits his new biz plan which was just approved. And you ended up having to generate new ones with the junior team. That would take time, but the boss cannot wait.

To cut the story short, one week before your last date at the company, you began to realized that all of this happened because of the ideas which you gave the newbie have made him moved up the ladder and for him to execute his plan effectively he should have all the resources that you have and run with it. So that leaves him with no option but to eliminate you and take over all your team. Well guys – does that sounds familiar?

3.1.3       The Best Friend?

Even in relationship, you may get yourself hurt after you have done your part in helping your friend or partner. It hurts more when you feel that you cannot trust others no more when the person did that to you. In the third scenario, hypothetically you allowed your friend to use your name for a personal loan. Promises can be done before you commit but after that anything can happen. What if your friend is not capable of paying the loan for some reason. And what would you do if you yourself cannot pay it for them. So it’s a double ruined. Your life and your friends life will be in ruined. Not just that but the relationship as well goes berserk.

Hypothetically, you have been a good friend to B ever since they started working. Although after a few years both of you separated and work in separate companies, but still you have good relationship and meet B whenever you could. After a few years B was in financial trouble and was indebted to many illegal lenders. One day you were surprised to receive a call from B and B was crying and ask your help. Without hesitation you agreed and met up. Since you are not that rich, you agree to let B uses your name to get the loan since B said B can afford the monthly payments but not a one go payment to lenders. Being B’s good friend of course you trusted B at point blank. Everything goes well and a few months down the road you received calls from the bank on overdue payment. You call B and meet up. It seems like B is having some health issues and require time to heal and can’t work for a while. So you decided to help out for a few months. Then, that few months went up to a year plus. Fortunately later, B managed to get back to work and start paying again. Then a year later the bank called you again. But this time you tried to reach B but to no avail. You tried to call other friends but they also do not know where B is. But it seems like B is still working somewhere but did not answer calls from you. What can you do other than to pay for the loan. So with futile attempt, you decided to pay. A year later, crisis happened to your company and the staff could not get salary for a couple of months. Then you are in a difficult situation to solve your problem and B’s. A few months later you got yourself blacklisted and the crisis worsen due to economic conditions. When it recovered you still cannot do much since the debt is so huge plus B’s loan. So you have to live as a blacklisted person for a while and cannot do anything with new loan arrangements with any banks. Then when new business opportunity arise you have to let it go.

But, those are not the worst thing that happened. The most critical thing is the relationship. You lost trust in B and both friendship are in the limbo at the end. B cannot face you and admit B is wrong. And now you have become very cautious and will not trust anyone asking for your help in loans. The same thing goes like the beggar scenario – what if the other person asking your help is genuine? That person will not get your support and maybe you will not ever to help anybody else – "once bitten twice shy." Even when you decided its genuine, you will still help but your sub consciousness will tell you not to trust fully the person. That is how the evil can change our kindness into a doubtful society. At the end it reduces the act of kindness and denies other people’s opportunity.

3.2       The Cyber Society

We all love to do good things. Key to happiness is Love. We are living in the loving society.

At home, we love our kids so much that we give them what they wanted, sometimes without thinking, and at times those are just materialistic. Instead, to love our children we should give them the spiritual things more. Material stuff either gets used up, broken, lost, or becomes obsolete. When that happened, the appreciations will be gone and more material stuffs are being pursued. So it’s all temporary enjoyments.

With the new Gen Y and Z lifestyle, it’s all more about man-machine-man culture. Not face to face anymore, no more affections and emotional binding. In fact the older generation are forced to embrace that culture in order to get accepted and to know what is happening.

The cyber societies were created by bunch of youngsters who felt that there should be a platform that allows people to be able to get to know others even though in reality they are not able to do them due to their shyness, intimidation or even less social behavior. So there comes the “social media”. It is meant for enhancing the friendship and relationship to people that they know and the public.

Hey, that is a very noble idea. Hey Zuckerberg, you’re not alone. Many people liked your idea and were in your shoes. Let’s make it happen. Boom – here comes the new social media era. From facebook to twitter to instagram and many others out there.

As time goes by, people began to understand the platform more and “leveraging” comes into play. Instead of social – it becomes another platform for B2B and B2C. That’s ok guys since it help many others financially.

But then, the dark side of social media follow thru and “leverage” on it. Too many information is out there that can be abused. Strangers are trying to be friends to many. Although we are kind enough to open our friendship but how true is that to the other party. Are they genuinely wants to become friend? That’s when parents comes into play to monitor their children. But who monitors the adult? They use the media to attract victims – for many Evil purposes.

On the bigger setback of Social Media are the SCAMS. There are group of people smart enough to lure public into Financial Rewards and Big Returns. Even some scams are trying to get donations and contributions from the social media platform. The “Syndicate” now goes Cyber. They are taking advantage of the Kindness of the Cyber Society.

It will never ends, and the Evil becomes more and more creative to avoid the Cyber Law Enforcement.

3.3       The Global Society

Hey guys, let’s not stop there. Let’s look at the Global Society. This is a bit more sensitive topic to dwell in but let’s look at it at the positive point of view.

Look at the Palestinian issues. I am taking it from the layman perspective on how I saw it  going on. In 1947 a Line was drawn by the UN to segregate Israel from the Palestine. Without dwelling on the pre-1947 era, both Palestine and Israel should abide by that from then on wards. UN being the parent of the whole nations, is trying to accommodate what’s good for both Israel and Palestine. But what happened after that? More settlements have been made outside the Line. And that causes the protests and outrage.

It’s a scenario where you have a hectare of land and a home which you have been living in for many years. Then comes the refugee seeking a place to live in. So you are kind enough to allow them to stay there for a temporary home. After some time they grow and then they wanted part of your land. You finally allowed them to have that partial piece of land and built their home.  But then, your occupier wanted more land. They build more home outside the agreed line. What would you do then?

Okay okay – I know there’s a lot of opinions and viewpoints out there. I am not the UN or the State Secretary to answer any questions and to find  the solution.

Let’s go back to the topic – kindness is also about tolerances, caring and sharing. But we have no right to abuse them. Am I right?  or I Am Right?

4.0          CONCLUSION

As I mentioned earlier, the evil would appear either consciously or unconsciously. That’s what happened if we don’t have a strong belief and principles. We all should do our part to curb the evil.

It goes back to do good – which all of us have to do. Just like the wise men says (or was it Morgan Freeman? LoL) – “How Do We Change the World? One random act of kindness at a time.” Kindness should continue and so as the technological advancement and social responsibility.

If all of us do good things whenever we have the opportunity, how does that makes our world?