i think asian culture is used to subjugation. think singapore. 14th century srivijaya, vassal feufdoms of siam, china, indian hindi, malayan, till raffles and EIC 1819, till jap occupation 1942, till PAP 1965. in short, sporeans are basically random diaspora. they never OWN the land and were never empowered or given incentives to do so. the average singaporean wants total simple freedom and happy in mediocrity and never was in his or her culture to appreciate a sense of civil and societal totality. such big sounding concepts are social and historical imaginations imposed from a western and detached concept of governance. western civilisations are built, torn down (often razed) and rebuilt over centuries. in order to seek excellance u need to fail. all civilisations in their golden ages thrive on brainpower and creativity becoz of centuries of worksmanship and enslavery of lesser vassal colonies allowed them to do so.
singaporeans, upon accepting the face value of western liberisation, sought out the gratifying elements and high sounding philosophies for representation in order to cover up its poor and impoverished history of 50 years (mainstream politics call ourselves that. we constantly hark back at our difficult yrs. i always thought those were EXCITING yrs!) . we sit in air conditioned rooms built by blangas and prc workers talking about democracy. we strut around in branded apparel made in thai and indonesia condemning slavery. by removing the previous colonial masters we had we modelled ourselves after them in order to fill the self esteem that was taken away with them. in studiously copying the western civic model and our asian roots, we developed a face value system of the 2 and it creates a 3 way rift between the 2 decades-old discussion of Western Evils and Eastern Conservativism, and the 3rd, our very own intrinsic human individuality.
i do not know if it is a higher conspiracy behind all this, that the ruling governance is completely happy but pretending to be pissed at the online outrage and opposition. becoz what they have provided is a playground for armchair critics to indulge in cat and mouse games. and how creativity is being killed off by our OWN so called liberal Y generation who are inculcated with the "western liberalism" and "asian morality". those whom assume when they reach a certain age in life, deem themselves fit to judge and decide. in doing so, our very own society, and NOT the government, NOT the ruling parties, NOT the opposition, destroys the very facet of civilisation growth - the actual getting down to work process, leaving the actual work process to decades old practices of bureacracy.
in every society, there are workers who work for personal excellance. the human intrinsic spirit. the incandelescent mind. the timeless quest for excellance. there are leeches who speak for big values of social ethos which ultimately resulted in nothing done but chaos. those who preach for the greater good. those who uphold the morality banner. those who fervently believes in social contracts over physical labour. those who thrive on face values. it is just natural. but overwhelmingly, we continue to breed the latter. just becoz our culture is left in a void of low self esteem and continuous petty competition with our "neighbour" countries. (we always rank higher in everything to msia or whatever in some international study, but we never dared to rank ourselves lower against the likes of similar 1st world european cities). under the veil of high international ranking and successful urban boosterist campaigning, we have excelled in achieving competence, but we invariably failed to achieve excellance. becoz with excellance comes experimentation, which comes with failure, which comes with tolerance and maturity, which comes with appreciation and honesty to the basic human value.
lets be realistic. we are only 50 yrs old as a sovereign country that chooses to bear the burdens of our history. there are pple out there working for a betterment of our intrinsic human achievement, or if not, the human achievement our own society chooses to bestow our standards upon becoz of these constant leeching squabbling. the single tracked mind of a singular evil vs singular good concept is what led the world into world wars in 1930s. "good" and "bad" are social constructs. the postmodern mind of problemsolving is the key to the new society. the concepts of accepting and building on "differences" is a stark shock to many. we are still far behind, probably further than our contemporary founding forefathers in the 1960s. but we are learning. but one day we will grow up and singapore will truly be great. and the workers will be proud of themselves, for themselves, and quietly toil away for greater excellance.
i want to be a worker.
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