see also:
- Singapore is far from first world in terms of social behaviour
- First World Economy, Third World Politics
- Viewpoint: Does Singapore deserve its ‘miserable’ tag?
- The dirty truth about Singapore
- S’pore not world-class in social behaviour (Straits Times, 1 Jan 2014)
- Singapore: First World Economy, First World Costs, Third World Everything Else
Askmelah has often said that we have the first world economy, but third world behaviours all these years. Refusing to allow commuters to alight first, talking loudly on mobile phones, refusing to give way to those more in need of a seat, littering and other examples of bad behaviour are commonplace in our trains. It does not need to take a foreigner to reaffirm this point. As someone once said, we have the hardware but not the heartware.
It is still indeed a good wake up call for Singaporeans and the Government to do some serious soul searching (This especially so for the politicians, they should be the doers not the commentators because the of the sheer power and influence that they have. The mindset change has to come from the top). For example, one online comment that the maid policy need to be fine-tuned or changed, “having maid since young and seeing how adults behave toward them can make one callous to people.”. Another policy change will be the tightening of the immigration policy, how can a national identity and norm being formed if the melting pot keeps brewing ? This is the reason why Japan, Korean and Taiwan are so civil conscious compared to immigration society like Singapore and Hong Kong, amongst the 5 most developed Asian countries.
“The problem here is that we measure everything in dollar bills – personal identity, self-respect, happiness, your sense of worth – it is all linked to how much money you have. But only the top few percent earn serious cash — so everyone else feels worthless and apathetic.”
BBC commentary sparks compassion debate in Singapore
By Jeanette Tan | Yahoo Newsroom
It’s not easy to build a gracious society, but we can do it if we choose to, say two Singapore ministers in response to a comment piece that was widely shared on social media on Saturday night.
Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin posted a link to the article on his Facebook page, written by a foreign journalist for BBC News Magazine staying in Singapore, and admitted “many of us would be able to relate to some of her experiences”.
“We do hear stories of people being callous, indifferent, unfeeling. And I guess we need to look at ourselves and ask if we too sometimes reflect these ugly traits in the little things that we do or say, or don’t do and don’t say when we really should do the right thing,” he wrote. “Truth is, we often do know what is the right thing to do. And we can, if we choose to.”
Adding on to what he said was Minister for Community, Culture and Youth Lawrence Wong, who noted that Singapore’s Graciousness Index for last year fell sharply, which means that Singaporeans experienced fewer acts of graciousness and kindness.
“We are and we can be better than this,” he said, adding that the Singapore Kindness Movement has stepped up on its efforts to reach out to young Singaporeans in schools and communities.
“Amid our fast-paced lifestyles, let us take the time to reflect on how we lead our lives; to ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and compassion to the people around us,” Wong said. “Because in the end, that’s what matters above all else.”
The BBC journalist, Charlotte Ashton, wrote an op-ed piece entitled “Does Singapore deserve its ‘miserable’ tag?”, describing how Singapore’s apathetic and uncaring money-chasing culture reflects its “world’s least-positive country” label — slapped on the nation-state by a Gallup poll in December 2012.
Sharing her experiences on public transport while pregnant, Ashton said she on one occasion crouched to the floor on a packed train, holding her head in her hands and feeling faint but was “completely ignored, for the full 15 minutes it took to reach (her) station”.
“Nobody offered me (a) seat or asked me if I was okay,” she wrote. “For the first time Singapore had made me feel unhappy. I had been vulnerable — completely reliant on the kindness of strangers. Singaporeans, I felt, had let me down.”
She ended off her piece with the comment, “…in the Singaporean rat race, you are certainly on your own. An unhappy conclusion, I am afraid, from misery city.”
Within the article, she also quoted a few Singaporean friends who said they were not surprised by it at all, adding their own stories of negative experiences on public transport.
“We are programmed to think only about ourselves,” said one of them, a Chinese who had been educated in Canada. “The only thing that matters is money — helping people is not important,” he added.
“The problem here is that we measure everything in dollar bills – personal identity, self-respect, happiness, your sense of worth – it is all linked to how much money you have. But only the top few percent earn serious cash — so everyone else feels worthless and apathetic.”
Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/bbc-comment…024348837.html
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