proportionality

People seem so easily offended these days. Or rather, in so many cases where 'offence' has been taken (and given), the response seems to be so out-of-proportion to the offence itself. Charlie Hebdo, for example. Sure, be offended when somebody insults your religion. No need to kill for it. The current Tim Hunt debacle. Sure, start a Twitter-storm. (The guy had it coming, really. It was such a dumb thing to say at an international conference for crying out loud ... Even if, as i very much suspect, what he said has more than a little truth to it ... ). But it was wrong for UCL to demand his resignation over a silly little un-PC remark like that.
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On the contrary, i think the Malaysian justice system has been quite measured in its sentencing of those tourists who stripped on Kinabalu. A 3-day jail sentence is really nothing very much -- a token sentence, really, just to make the point that such behaviour is illegal and won't be tolerated. In effect, it'll be kinda like roughing it out on a mountain for 3 days. Sure, it will be a blot on their records, but really, they shouldn't have, and if they had done the same, say, on the Buckingham Palace grounds, i don't think the Queen would have been very amused either ... The fine -- S$1800 -- does seem a bit steep to me, but it's just money, and i'm assuming these students, or their parents, can afford it.
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In Singapore, too, there seems to be this pattern recently of over-reacting to the most trivial things. Sigh. Small country, petty minds? Or maybe this is what happens when people just have it too good -- small trivial things start assuming a totally disproportionate significance in the mind ...
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