Feeding information, news and updates, sharing experiences – they’re extremely important in empowering society and the individual.
We noticed from many countries, recently with the Middle East demonstrations and in Thailand’s pre-general election, that news spread quickly like the plague, or like wildfire. There’s a reason why the Egyptian government infamously shut down the internet. They were living in fear of how information could influence the general public towards change.
What’s more important than the news is the ability and opportunity of mankind to make informed decisions when they have digested the information. Can we guarantee that people will always make the ‘right’ decisions? No, we can’t. What we can only hope is that people will make informed decisions that would positively influence themselves and the society.
Is that not the right of a human being to be able to make those decisions, even when they are harmful to the government? I say, let people decide for themselves what they want. Isn’t that the democratic way? Isn’t that the advantage of being human – the ability to make a stand, and make a choice. Free will.
Zashnain
An avid blogger, twitterer and photojournalist, Zashnain Zainal suffers from an incurable addiction to social work, helping marginalised communities since 1989. Nowadays he travels from the plantations of Malaysia to the slums of Thailand. He can be found at zashnain.com and @bedlamfury
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