From the escape of Mas Selamat to the confusion over who should have assumed ultimate command during the Little India riot, to the two recent checkpoint breaches, our internal security forces have not inspired our confidence of late. One could argue that it reflects a systemic deterioration of a culture of readiness within the Ministry of Home Affairs; I think its indicative of a much broader social phenomenon. Singapore is entering an era of softness. It is a softness produced by (1) the lack of perceived common threats and (2) a more intelligent but not necessarily wiser population. The first factor contributes to this softness by making us complacent; thats obvious enough. But it is the second factor that is more interesting. We have become overly reliant on textbook information in the absence of opportunities to acquire real-world knowledge and experience; this has in turn lulled us into a false confidence in our competencies. We see this softness not just in how our internal security services have floundered in these recent high-profile lapses, but also in the changing popular sentiment towards our domestic politics. Our more educated populace has learned from the proverbial textbooks concepts like democracy and multiparty legislature; appreciating from those textbooks only the virtues of such ideas, and never having experienced their intricate flaws, we are lulled into a similarly false confidence about our competencies as a society to chart our collective path. My generation (and perhaps even my parents) are merely the inheritors of the stability and security that our so-called pioneer generation earned. In place of a textbook-education, their classrooms were the mean streets, leaky atap houses and a fractured pre-indepdence political landscape. They were educated in this experience, were hardened by it and made tough decisions in their individual lives and for the life of their country. Today, we, the intelligent generation, have the privilege of making soft choices — which will inevitably lead to a soft country.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 16:07:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015