6/30/2010

What kind of stupid values do we want to impart?

The advert on the abusive and unreasonable grandmother is getting praises daily in the media. The part on filial piety and looking after the parents is reasonable. But shall we encourage the oldies to be abusive, unreasonable, difficult and be a bully? In the early days of ignorance and feudal values, many suffered very badly under very harsh and authoritative oldies. Being abused, ill treated, beaten, starved, ostracised etc were very common. The oldies saw it as their right. Can modern society continue to accept such abuses and cruelties inflicted by the oldies and to accept them meekly as filial piety? Only a feudal mind, unemancipated mind, a sick mind, could sing praises on such bad practices. To respect and care for the oldies are good things. But they cannot be taken for granted as a given. Oldies that are suffering from dementia or mental illnesses are exceptions. But oldies that are still vivid in their mind processes have to behave reasonably. It is not a right to abuse the children or grandchildren. And it is not their damn right to abuse daughter in laws. Such oldies need to be bungled and sent to some desolate homes to throw their tantrums and be difficult with whoever they want. It is oppression and mental torture to the victims of such abuses.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's why.

agongkia said...

I have not watch the advert.
But I repeat.Most elderly who came to this stage are usually dementias who do not know what they are doing.So we must bear with them.
If you are someone who is elderly and need special attention,need your children to bring you for regular medical check ups or need them to support your 3 meals,do you think you will be abusive,unreasonable,difficult and be a bully and find faults with them for no reason?
This is just a lame excuse for many who find their elderly useless or has got no properties for them .
What is wrong by allowing them to abuse us if by abusing us,they can be happy?Let the elderly be happy.
We all must "ren".They Hua Hee Chew Hor.Once they are gone,even you want them to scold you ,they will no longer be around.How I hope my parent are around to abuse me everyday.But ai.....
Exclude those junior or those who are handicap and cannot take care of themselves,how often can we see the elderly starve their children?

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

Hi agongkia, you are being very generous. You should try to listen to the other side of the story. The stories of victims of parental abuses. And many of the old hags are not sick, not suffering from dementia or anything. And they were only able to continue with their hurt and abuses because the children were willing to bear and suffer for it. They could just kick them out.

And the sickening thing is that they were not a little bit happy after abusing their children. They got madder everyday with their abuses. They thought it was their right.

I still take my stand that atrocious old hags need to be sent away. They don't deserve any piety at all. They could ruin lives and change the good to hate the injustice they have to bear.

Blind filial piety is like blind loyalty and blind obedience. These are very dangerous concepts that could ruin lives, families and nations. This is the failure of blind followers of Confucianism.

Confucius expected the parents to behave like parents and not to abuse their children. This is a prerequisite for unconditional filial piety. When the parents are rogue, it is a different matter altogether.

Anonymous said...

Ya bear no more with unreasonable and abusive grandparents, parents, leaders and employers.

What can you do, get heartaches and heart attacks. No one will pay yr medical bills and buy the coffin for you.

Dare you rise ?

Anonymous said...

Have we really any values left?

What I can see are merely lip-service values that flew out the window in the face of greed.

agongkia said...

From what I read,I suppose those old hag whom you mentioned are in their 65 plus. (I prefer to address them as elderly).
I am not talking about parental abuse by young parent which I am also against.
Elderly whom you find them abusive,started to raise their voice to ask for what they want ,if they are not suffering from dementia or schizoprenia,are likely those who are stressed ,seeking attention and could be on the way to suffer from some form of sickness..
This is the time children should pay more attention to them n show more concern and observe whether they can be sent for treatment instead and is not the time to take advantage of this situation and start to think of throwing them at the old folks home.Going by your logic,there will be a shortage of old folks home soon.
There is no such thing as blind loyalty,blind filial piety or blind obedience .
It is simply the duty of children to understand and treat their parents with respect.
Only those who have stayed with their parent will have that experience to tell you how their loving parent can slowly turn into someone different as age catches up.To those who stay with your elderly parent,dun give up.Bear with them and you will find that this so call blind filial piety is something worth being blind.This is something sucessful in life where even the rich and so claim educated cannot achieve.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

Agongkia, I have seen with my own eyes the abuses by the old hags on their children and daughters in law. They are mentally vivid and in their 70s or 80s. They just want to take it out on their children without knowing that the children could throw them out if they could not bear it anymore.

Some even threatened the children to go to court or to shame them by jumping off their flats or killing themselves. I am telling you this, for those who are blessed with reasonable and loving parents, pamper them all you can. They deserve it.

For the bad parents, they deserve to be thrown out. It is like bad govt or bad leaders or bad kings. Throw them out if they don't behave like they should.

Confucius said, Kings must be kings, parents be parents, people be people, then there will order and peace.

Don't always blame the children.

Anonymous said...

It is just not right to apportion blame and guilty onto any single party. Most, if not all contribute much to the domestic woes that Singaporeans face today.

Me would like to say that the prevailing materialistic culture in our society has to be most responsible. The Education System has also left much to be desired in so far as cultivations of civics and ethics are concerned and the inculcations of Oriental values of filial piety, honesty and propriety have almost all been neglected. The pragmatic focuses on sciences and economics have totally undermined the human developments in virtues.

patriot

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

The daughter in law should count herself lucky that the husband did not pawn her to buy her mother a sultan fish dinner at RWS.

Anonymous said...

Hey there I am so excited I found your weblog, I really found you by accident, while I
was researching on Bing for something else, Nonetheless I am here now and would just like to
say many thanks for a fantastic post and a all round
thrilling blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to go through it all at the minute but I have
saved it and also added in your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a lot more, Please do keep up the fantastic b.
My web site ... amber leaf