STAR BLOGGERS

Can the millennial generation sustain Singapore for the next 50 years? Why should I care? This answer raises many questions: Why am I apathetic?  In fact, why are people apathetic?  Blame has been placed on self-centredness amongst the youth, but you find the most self-centredness in countries with lesser political apathy – why are, for example, divorces commonplace in the West?  The self-centredness of the youth in Singapore, in spite of their political apathy, cannot be placed on their “myopic self-centred interests,” to quote TOC, alone.

You can put it this way too – people who are engaged in politics do so either because they are really altruistic and want to do something for society, OR because they want to make a point, they want to go down in history.  But these are two extremes, and people normally do so because they want to improve the lives of others and at the same time be remembered when they are gone. It all has to do with finding meaning in life.  So why are Singaporeans self-centred, and at the same time, apathetic?

Perhaps it is because life in Singapore is meaningless?  Meritocracy – the good will succeed – does that make sense at all, for who defines “good”? I think meritocracy has led to an equation “more” = “good”, where “more” means a material more, a more which you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands. But is there meaning above that?  For those who pursue materialism, meaning is just a thing of possessing a quantitative more, by which I mean more money, a better car, a bigger house, more marks than your classmate, etc.  Who reads anymore, who thinks about life? (No time, right?)

Furthermore, everyone has worked hard so that no one ever has to see poverty, the “evil” again. So, this explains the apathy somehow – just as you will trust whatever a doctor tells you with regard to your health, you will trust whatever the politician tells you regarding the country.  So, apathy, in the form of blind trust, is good for you, the doctor, and the politician. So maybe Singapore is, in this sense, a victim of its own success. As long as this conception of what is good remains, then no, I don’t see sustainability for any country, let alone Singapore.

When MM Lee says that we have never experienced poverty, it is because he has turned out to be a good doctor, a good politician (past or present is not my topic), who will never allow anything to run wild. We have been told that we should always trust the leaders we have “voted” into office, because they have, well, worked for the material good, and since we see this as the good, is it any surprise that we believe that our politicians are good doctors for the country? Rich in material goods, poor in soul – we seemed to have missed the point somewhere that there are more ways in which something can be good.

The writer, who wishes to be known only as Guojun, is a product of the millenial generation (year of birth: 1985), digital native and a philosophy and German major in (where else?) Germany. Amongst the special powers he possesses: levitation, master elementalist, part-time Maori and medicine man. When he’s not mixing Singlish with German (ya!), he is busy writing here.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS