Firecrackers and culture

Injuries due to firecracker explosions and pyrotechnic displays continue to rise, both in numbers and in severity. Yet why is it that people keep up with this practice during Christmas and New Year despite the aggressiveness of the warnings against them?

The answer is simple. It has become part of our culture. Since we did not invent firecrackers and other pyrotechnic products, we cannot say it is a culture we have been born with. But it is one we have assimilated quite successfully over the generations. It has become what we are.

And that is why it is very hard to eradicate. You just cannot wipe away an ingrained culture. Not even the most graphic television footages of severe physical injuries suffered by firecracker explosion victims can stop people from doing what they feel is the right thing to do.

This is the same with smoking. It has long been scientifically proven that smoking is harmful. Yet people continue to do so because smoking has become part of the culture of people. True, many countries have succeeded in kicking the habit. But that has been achieved largely by choice.

In other words, culture may only change by choice, such as when a person decides to give up being a citizen of one country and decides to become a citizen of another. A person making that choice knows he has to give up a lot of the cultures familiar to him in order to be fully immersed in the culture of the other.

But even then, as a testament to the difficulty of eradicating what has already been ingrained by culture, even people who have long become citizens of other countries will continue to display cultures they simply cannot get rid of. If we are who we are, then we will always be what we are no matter where we may be.

The same with firecrackers. Where in retrievable memory can we find a Christmas or a New Year where no firecracker explosions have been recorded? That has always been the way we do it and will always continue to do so. You just cannot legislate against culture and those who think so are just playing up to the gallery.

What can be done instead is to regulate the sizes because some firecrackers have truly become like bombs. And, as a matter of sensibility, firecracker makers should be dissuaded from naming their products after some sensitive issues, such as Yolanda and Bin Laden, in relation to which untold suffering has been caused.

As far as culture is concerned, some distinctions should be made. Our culture involves only exploding firecrackers during the holidays. Nowhere in that culture does it say it has to involve virtual bombs with names that invoke pain and suffering. Let the firecrackers be, but go after the patently dangerous ones.