Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Showing our maturity as a debating society

Having had this site up for the past few months, we've had a great time in trying to promote a good sensible discussion over the affairs of our country. We believe, and still do so strongly, that through open discussion and debate of issues, that we could 1) promote our tolerance for differing opinions on issues - a tolerance we feel is unfortunately sorely lacking in our country and 2) to play the devil's advocate on various issues, to spin issues to show the other side of the coin/story and by doing so to give people a different perspective which otherwise may not be apparent. However today our wish to encourage this has been stumped by very irresponsible individuals who used this site to go on some childish huffing puffing which did not add anything constructive to discussions relating to our country's economy or well being.

In light of this, we've changed our tag line to highlight that despite the freedom accorded to us by our government to set up blogs and websites detailing our opinions - from social news to food preferences to sports of all kinds, we must do so responsibly and maintain social decorum. Otherwise we'll degenerate to nothing more than a bunch of intellectual hooligans where the loudest individual is heard even if their words or debate is damaging to our society. The nature of open debate, discussion and analysis will unfortunately mean that some people may disagree with the points raised, but isn't that the whole point of it all, i.e. to show people differing perspectives in a world that isn't simply black and white but contains shades of grays and a thousand other colours? Devolving our discussions into mindless deriding rants of a vilifying nature is uncalled for and unnecessary, and only goes to show that we still have a long way to go to actually reaching a level of social maturity to handle ourselves with respect and dignity when it comes to different opinions, backgrounds etc.

When this site was started, we encouraged everyone to 'Discuss. Debate. Analyse. For a brighter future for Brunei'. Now we would like to encourage people who choose to visit this site to respect our rules and to 'Discuss. Debate. Analyse. Responsibly. For a brighter future for Brunei'.


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