True Fitness - a truly horrible experience

I write to share my utter annoyance at the number of calls I have received this past week from telemarketers representing "True Fitness".

I am sure that I am not alone in receiving nuisance calls where the caller informs you that you have "won" something or another when you did not participate in any competition.

While I would not normally bother to write in to express my irritation, this week's calls were partiularly appalling for I had a bereavement in my family.

The 1st call came in on Wednesday (24/3) while I was at the wake. I politely informed the telemarketer of the situation and asked not to be disturbed.

I then received a 2nd call on the next day (25/3). This time I refused to answer. The 3rd came this morning (26/3) while I was attending the funeral service. This time I told the telemarketer in no uncertain terms that I do not wish to receive any further calls from the company and to inform his colleagues of this. But alas yet another call came in while I was attending the committal service a few hours later.

This conduct goes beyond being insensitive - it is utterly despicable. I have therefore decided that since True Fitness has gone to such great pains to trouble me, I shall make it a point to recount this experience to those I know and to discourage all from signing up with them.

Update:
I received yet another call this morning! (27/3)

- Posted using my iPhone

Hiding Behind the cloak of Religion

This article was posted by a former colleague on fb. It highlights two types of behaviour which would otherwise be regarded as criminal and repugnant, but because it is linked to religion, it is excused.

First are the death threats and plots resulting from some cartoons published in a Dutch newspaper a few years ago apparently depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed. The second, the systematic cover up of paedophile Catholic priest which was exposed in recent years and for which the Pope allegedly played a role in and has, in recent days, made a public apology. The author argues that nobody should be permitted to hide behind the cloak of religion. We should apply the same standards (perhaps even a higher standard) on those who claim to be religious. All involved in these two examples, should be tried and possibly jailed.

I agree.

However, in relation to the first scenario – that of the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion must be balanced.

Criticism is vital to growth and development. Religious people, like everyone else, should be willing to accept such criticism.

The key is to recognise that motivation and methodology when engaging in criticism are extremely important. It often determines whether and how the criticism is received. If one’s motivation is for the recipient’s growth and development, then it is admirable and should be encouraged. If it is merely to belittle and ridicule, then it should not be tolerated. If one’s objective is the former, care has to be given to presentation. One cannot set out to ridicule and offend and then complain when the recipient is offended and reacts accordingly.

Cartoons have always been adopted to make fun of and criticise all manner of beliefs – religious or otherwise. Images and parody are very powerful tools and it precisely because of this power that it requires more care (as was said in the movie Spiderman - “with great power comes great responsibility”). While threatening to kill the cartoonist would certainly constitute a criminal offence, perhaps the cartoonist themselves should be taken to task for their actions.

To illustrate I shall use examples of religious people who have been called to account for adopting such practices. Comics produced by Chick Publications routinely belittle and ridicule other religious beliefs (eg Hinduism and Islam) and therefore have been banned in Singapore. As such, importing and distribution of these materials constitute a criminal offence. A Christian couple was therefore recently prosecuted for distributing them. Similarly, a pastor was reprimanded and made to publicly apologise to religious leaders for belittling their religious beliefs from his pulpit.

Such a balance is certainly vital in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society like the one that exists here.

Toyota faulty parts saga...

I’m getting very tired of the news coverage on the whole Toyota faulty parts saga. It seems that every day there are new reports and/or accusations being levelled against Toyota.

Amidst all the controversy, allegations and congressional inquiries, the one thing that stood out for me is something I heard from the 1^st report I caught on the story on CNN – the faulty parts were manufactured in the US!!

Of course, since that initial report, this small but vital fact has been dropped. It did not help that the Japanese are not as adept at finger pointing as the Americans tend to be – we know that Americans are never wrong. Even if they are, they’ll find someone/something else to blame it on. On the other hand, the Japanese typically are too ready to accept blame and to apologise.

So, yes – the Part in question is made by CTS Corp. – a Chinese joint venture company headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana (USA). It also has a manufacturing plant in Canada, which explains why some news reports has it that the faulty parts were made “in Canada” – a case of America finding someone/something else to blame?

Perhaps it is merely an attempt by the Americans to hurt Toyota’s market share of the auto-market in the US and elsewhere (not that their own auto-manufacturers would be able to gain anything from this on account of their quality).

Furthermore, I would not be surprised that one key reason why Toyota had parts manufactured in the US (at all) was because such conditions were imposed under threat of trade sanctions by the Americans through an FTA (yes, the Americans tend to do this).

Recalls of vehicles are not uncommon – every single automaker makes recalls from time to time. Even Ford has recently made recalls because of the same faulty part has been installed in some of their vehicles. Yet, all eyes (and fingers) are (perhaps unfairly) on Toyota.

Study Links Religious Groups and Racial Bias

My colleague referred me to an article which he read this morning linking racism to religiosity.

A meta-analysis of 55 independent studies carried out in the US with more than 20,000 mostly Christian participants has found that members of religious congregations tend to harbor prejudiced views of other races. The study appears in the February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review.

Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC College and the USC Marshall School of Business, lead author of the analysis, said: “Religious groups distinguish between believers and non-believers and moral people and immoral ones”… “So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them — blacks and minorities.”

While Wood does add that racist tendencies would not be limited to one religion: “All religions offer a moral group identity, and so across world religions — including Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Judaism and Christianity — the religious ingroup is valued over outgroups”, the conclusion reached above is very much targeted at one particular religion – Christianity.

This is unfortunate especially since there is truth in the basic conclusion that religious people have a tendency towards racism. However, I think that it is more fundamental than that – people are racist. I think it stems from our basic and intrinsic need to categorize and distinguish things. Religion is just one of the many ways in which people achieve this. But, I suppose a study coming to the conclusion that people are racist wouldn’t get much coverage in the media.

In a way, the study was conducted in such a way that the conclusion they reached was inevitable.

As noted above, the study included mostly Christian participants. This begs the question why the scope of the study wasn’t open to a wider demographical grouping, perhaps with participants from other religious faiths or just no religious beliefs? If, as Wood notes, a bigger proportion of participants were “white Christians” does this mean that religious people have a tendency to be racist or white religious people have a tendency to be or white people have a tendency to be racist? What about non-white Christian or other religious people – Do they have a tendency to be racist too?

Wood does go on to say that the results may ring false to practicing Christians in mixed-race congregations. But maintains that those are only a minority. She says: “There aren’t many churches that practice with a mixed-race congregation.” Clearly she and her colleagues have not been outside the US – in multi-racial countries, of which there are many and Singapore is one, you will find many mixed congregations. Certainly one is able to find a large number of such churches in any cosmopolitan city in the US. This conclusion simply cannot be true.

Now even if the conclusion that the study (or article) reached was valid, I think a clear distinction has to be made between the people who subscribe or pledge allegiance to the religion and the teachings of the religion itself. This can be most clearly seen in the case of militant jihadist terrorist groups, who claim that they have a moral and/or religious duty to kill innocent people. These views have rightly been disavowed by the mainstream religious establishment as being against the clear teachings of religion.

In this regard, perhaps the best example that racism is not condoned by Christianity is contained in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which ironically, the author of the article begins his article by quoting. While the story recognizes that some people, and in this case the religious leaders and priests, were racist, the entire moral thrust of the story is that racist is wrong and ungodly.

Bottom line – Are there racist people in the church? Sure there are. Are they racist because of the religion – surely not! If they are racist, then they clearly are not abiding by the teachings of the religion and hence not very devout or religious at all!