Rightly Exercising Your Rights

I recently read a blog post which was a response of sorts to an article published online somewhere. The article was about a few tips for "making your marriage rock;" it could apply to any relationship actually. The blog post was a criticism of that article, assuming things about the author's intention and personality, about the intention of the article, and the target audience.

And I thought that was really wrong.

We all have the right to freedom of speech. But that does not mean any one should assume things about someone, and worse, comment them about publicly, because it suits one's fancy or misguided world view.

The Right to do something also comes with the Responsibility to do it right.

It is extremely unfair to pass negative judgement on someone in the absence of any supporting evidence. Is it really that difficult to take a step back and think before maligning someone? Or to check whether one's perception of someone or something is in fact accurate, considering all possibilities of misinterpretation?

This is perhaps the problem with most of us. We are extremely self-centered and are always ready to pass judgement. We ignore objectivity even when it is staring us in the face. We put on our blinders, refusing to see anything except what we want to. And then we believe what we see, however myopic or deluded. We ask for validation of our comments and opinions and only remember the ones that agreed with or conformed to our view.

And God forbid someone disagrees with us and tries to make us see reason; those people are obviously ignorant, or haven't experienced what we have, or are just out to attack us.

Even the guilty deserve a fair trial. So we all owe it to ourselves and others to give everyone a fair chance before jumping to conclusions about them.