A Good Crisis
- Peter K F Cheung SBS
- Aug 3, 2020
- 3 min read
FADE IN.
Act 1
INT. STUDY - DAY
PETER is reading his phone screen.
PETER (V.O.): Someone asks my pandemic interpretation on the quote: "never let a good crisis go to waste". Who said this?
Peter surfs the web.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Winston Churchill? Mark Twain?
Reading.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Machiavelli, the renaissance author, wrote: ...never waste the opportunity offered by a good crisis.
Reading.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Saul Alinsky has the phrase in his work Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer (1971).
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): In the 2008 financial crash, fund managers used the phrase often.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): For whatever that I do, I'll never let an incident to turn into an emergency and then into a crisis.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Other crises are the results of humans' dereliction of duty and lack of leadership. Even the current pandemic can be contained and mitigated.
Act 2
INT. STUDY - CONTINUOUS
On Peter's phone screen are small prints. We see the Prologue of Rules for Radicals.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): The author wrote the work because he heard young protagonists urging violence and crying"Burn the system down!"
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Sounds so familiar.
Reading.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): "Today's generation is desperately trying to make sense out of their lives and out of the world."
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): That was how I felt back in 1971.
Reading.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): The "negativism now extends to all institutions, from the police and the courts to 'the system' itself...We are living in the world of mass media which daily exposes society's innate hypocrisy..."
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): The same old stuff, under different labels or excuses now.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): To the young, the world is always insane and is falling apart.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): They think that the older generation doesn't understand them. Worst still, they don't want to change.
Reading.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Feeling the generation gap, the young seem to have listened the old's message:"...you will find out when you get older."
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): And if they think the world is collapsing, what would they do?
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Some may panic and run. Yes, while some may confront pointlessly.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): They're just rhetoric radicals, swearing against the authorities all the time.
Thinking.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Yes, many of them are unrealistic. They don't respect others' values. Their communication is bad and would be rejected.
Reflecting.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): Was I a radical back then? If not in action, how about in thoughts?
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): The same phenomenon. The difference being I was young and am now old.
Act 3
INT. STUDY - CONTINUOUS
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): The world then was simpler. Now, it's more connected and complicated.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): Nothing is static though. Circumstances are different and relative. Value assumptions change with the times.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): Should change begin within the system?
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.)(Cont'd): That's how China has changed communism.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Who can conceive that just years after the Cultural Revolution, China would allow the one-country-two-systems principle to practise in Hong Kong upon its rejoining the motherland?
Reflecting.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Any crisis might bring good opportunities for institutional changes.
Reflecting.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): The current pandemic eg on the issue of mask wearing, demonstrates that the greatest enemies of individual freedom are the individuals themselves, due to their self-interest.
Thinking.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): Individuals can't be free unless individual rights are regulated to take into account the rights of others.
Pausing.
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): I've grown up. I love peace. I create and deliver value.
Pausing
PETER (V.O.) (Cont'd): I know why I'm here.
Peter begins to type his opinion on his phone.
THE END
FADE OUT.
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