Be aware

Singapore has recently been awarded as having the highest standards of living worldwide. For such a small, almost unnoticeable country plopped on the map, it is of great wonder that we should have been able to achieve such a ranking. However, it does come with a price.

I would like to draw your attention to but one today. Noticed how our children and youths no longer care what's happening outside this small bubble we call home? Awareness and thought are being dulled by our comfortable lifestyles. As we grew up in such an utopian milieu, albeit certain concerns about our politics/way of governance etc which I shan't go into, it's not a surprise that we no longer care about this world. We think the world is a safe, perfect place where people have the luxury to complain, complain, complain. We think the way of the world is as simplistic and blissful as our life here in Singapore. 

But we forget, Singapore is an anomaly in human history. 

We weren't meant to be born. We were destined to be Malaysians once upon a time (thank god we didn't go there). We are an accident, a shot-gun birth nobody wanted to claim responsibility for. But somehow, it turned out to be a fairy tale. We didn't become a communist fortress or some failed fishing state. We became the best country in the world for anyone to live in. People don't starve, they are stuffed instead, with all your delicious hawkerware. People don't turn blue from drinking tap water. People aren't persecuted for their ethnicity. People aren't forced under dictatorial rule (some will disagree, but hoot). Girls aren't forced out of school and moulded into breast-feeding, clothes washing, submissive cooking machines. No one poaches and kills off our wildlife, disrupting our biodiversity (assuming we have any). Instead, we are a PSP-wielding, ipod-holding, broadband connected bunch. With a Starbucks in one  hand and a blackberry in the other, we have lifted ourselves beyond the life of your normal human that you would see elsewhere. Such comforts have diminished our perspective of what this life is about. 

~ "If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other had, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence." - Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom ~

What I am trying to say here is that people live in worlds of their own and we are living in a world which would not be feasible elsewhere. I just wish that as a society, we would be more attuned to the cries of this world. Thus, it really irks me to see teens wasting their time on nonsense like underage smoking and sex. Skipping school and having a slanting fringe because it's cool, not being responsible for their education and blaming the system for their failure in life. The potential growth in everyone of us blessed bastards living within reach of such amazing educational infrastructure is exponential. It's irritating to see these wasted youths not seeing what they can achieve. All because they see through the comfortable eyes of a Singaporean. If they think beyond this box of ours, they will see how competitive the world is out there and if they don't wake up, that's it. Where's the ambition? Where's the drive?

I hope this is a fact we'd all take time off our facebook breaks to scrutinize and think about. 

Be more alert and critical. Be aware.