And that would be competitiveness. It struck me that our Singaporean society is breeding competitiveness in us while looking through my biology notes and doing chemistry MCQs. A weird moment to think about such thing but quite timely and related it is, which i shall highlight further on in this post.
Sidetrack: Been not posting anything much as i’ve been too distracted with various stuff to finish a complete post but 2 more are in the making so yar…
Humans by having to need to live in communities have heighten the need for competition. Such inherent need of competition can be generally seen in the animal kingdom, for the need to survive and propagate one’s species is in a sense why living things live. For us as humans, with intense competition due to even greater need to fight for scarce resources, this is pretty much obvious in various social construct ranging from our economies, markets and the Olympics. Competition is good as it spurs people on to achieve greater thins, and at times things which were initially thought to be unachievable. However in Singapore competition has been stretch to the fullest, close to its breaking, or maybe already past it.
Why are we as Singaporeans so competitive? Well personally i feel that such intense competitiveness is a result the delicate past which we as an natural-resource poor island country are left to fend for ourselves in the midst of such perilous conditions/situations.
We first gain self-rule from Britain to be merge eventually with Malaysia. The process for independence from the time of colonisation to Japanese occupation is a long and arduous one for our leaders. The bitterness from the surrender of the british and the japanese occupation had made our leaders realise that we are responsible for our own future. Eventually we broke off from Malaysia and became the Republic of Singapore, alone and lacking in resources. What we lack in natural resource we had to make up for it in strength of our people.
Why is our history so important? Because it shaped the general direction of our governmental policies as well as the mentality of society at large. The Asian Crisis, the SARS outbreak once again re-enforce that we must be a competitive country in order to survive in this harsh and brutal global village. (Even now one of our founding fathers LKY still hopes that we can merge with Malaysia)
How has the spirit of competitiveness been bred into us, you may ask. Well right from the tender age of 7 or even lower. We fight to get into prestigious primary school. We were made have extra supplementary classes. We try to get into the Gifted programme, to the extent of attending classes to get into the GEP. At 12 we pitted against one another to yet fight for that precious place in secondary school. At 14 we get streamed again. At 16 we fight our second major battle, the O levels. At 18 we try for A levels or 19 for our diplomas. If you happen to be unable to catch up too bad you dropped out and go to a ‘lesser’ institute of study. No matter what you then proceed to finally fight it out for a place in NUS/NTU/SMU. But wait there is again another class differentiation again. In general you are considered the best if you get into NUS, second rated if you go into NTU or SMU. Not totally accurate but that’s what the general public feel.
This is the life we are made to get used to from young. We fight for places, get tested over and over again, needing to prove ourselves; fighting for the first place in class or even level. But is all this healthy?
Well no, it is far too excessive. The need for being competitive has slowly erode away our altruistic nature. We refuse to help people who come to us for help for fear of them doing better than us. We compare our results, taking pride in being better than others. We bugged people to try and get them to ’share their brains’ and thus decreasing their edge over others. Is all this beneficial to anyone? Is this why we live? And what we live for?
Personally i’ve been at the receiving end of such unpleasantness and it has not always ended well. For one i hated my sec four class not the people in it but rather all the back stabbing going on almost everyday. Two of my friends have argued about who was been helped more by me. And at times people refuse to answer because they fear that others will do better than them. I must confess that i’m no angel and have lapsed into this competitiveness and act as i would like not to.
As much as i want to this overbearing need to be competitive is all around me, especially at this time now. As usual i get people asking me last minute questions. Not that i’m being unhelpful but why now? Is it because i’m free enough or the few willing people to share?
When i do fall prey to such selfish behaviour, i always wonder if i should have acted differently. Well i don’t have the answer to it. For me i don’t like people who are overly competitive. I’m never too comfortable with excessive competition but guess another round of competiveness will come again as i try to get a scholarship. Is this the way we want to spent our childhood?
-wonght
Sighz this is pretty much commonplace no matter how you try to hide and run from the obsessiveness to be competitive
Are we even altruistic by nature? If competition is a remnant of our hunters-and-gatherers prehistoric past, then it’s pretty much inborn.
But it’s true. Singapore prides itself on being an Asian tiger despite the lack of natural resources sans human manpower.
But on so many fronts, the government wants us (well the most of you guys in high flying top JCs) to be competitive to continue on our prosperity that LKY has really managed quite gracefully.
Being competitive and looking out for oneself is pretty much a human trait. But Darwin is also too near sighted when he places quite the emphasis on competition. For he couldn’t really see that in our global village, competition as well as (or even more importantly) cooperation will be the key to mankind’s own survival for the future.
One clear path is the IPCC report you listed. Reading through it makes me realise that combating climate destabilization takes collective effort and a cooperation among nations. And the fact that the IPCC itself is a body composed of scientists representing over 100 countries, it’s a heartening sight.
But do you really believe that Singapore’s growth will be ensured well enough? For one, Indonesia is rising, and with that ascension, is re-establishing herself as a economic power. With a president who’s committed to eradicate corruption, and a military, who has stayed out of politics for now, Indonesia looks set to exert her might. And Malaysia too has embarked on an ambitious project to develop Southern Johor to become an economic power. Indochina has woken up. Vietnam is drawing in healthy foreign investments while Cambodia is promoting tourism quite aggressively. Laos still suffer from chronic poverty but is making impressive headway with some good growth at 7.2% last year.
So can Singapore survive this renewal in economies in ASEAN? And if not, then can we even compete with the world?
It’s a sure thing that economies will rise, and then Singapore will need to project itself well ahead to succeed.
By the way, how’s your papers?
Cheers.
By: kieranwar on November 15, 2007
at 4:28 pm
One more thing about Cambodia, it’s recently started to explore the possibility of being an oil exporter due to recently discovered oil reserves near the coast.
Do read it.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0830/p07s02-woap.html
Cheers.
By: kieranwar on November 15, 2007
at 4:33 pm
i don’t think we should get complacent and all. I agreed that through joint effort then can we save the environment. The AR4 though is actually mainly composing of European countries if memory did not fail me. As for Singapore, well we want to be the best in far too many things. We try to hard to be everything but is everything the way to go. I think not, yes we must be competitive but not at all fronts and not till we lose even the little shred of altruism in us. Well guess for something there’s always a trade off.
By: wonght12 on November 16, 2007
at 1:21 pm
as for my papers they are so so for details check out the other blog
By: wonght12 on November 16, 2007
at 1:25 pm
But with respect to the AR4, and the reports prior and subsequent to it, there have been supporters and detractors.
The reality is, the trade-off often happens to be our own good sense of humanity.
In the race to be good on some many fronts, we have become hard academics/scientists but soft humanitarians.
The issue is whether we are even altruistic by nature at all.
By: kieranwar on November 16, 2007
at 3:57 pm
My belief is that we have a strand of altriusm in us esp to our siblings and immediate family which would branch out further to close friends and more. Why actually there is a genetic reasoning behind all this: kin selection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection. Important thing to note is we as a young species have little variation thus we are more or less geneticaly similar. Another thing is we must surely have some form of altriusm even if for a selfish reason in order for society to be together. How together is our society? Well one idea that support this is the 6 degrees of separation
By: wonght12 on November 18, 2007
at 3:27 am
Have you already read The Tipping Point??
Family do form one of the most remarkable unit of society as we know it.
But beyond that, we really are strangers despite hardly any genetic differences between us.
(I’m not talking about “us” us. Rather like anyone you or me see on the streets. Like between us, we’re not strangers, first of all.)
Yes, within our own families we are rather altruistic. But this rare virtue sometimes is more sub-conscious than outwardly intended. Like if we buy something home to eat, sometimes (in fact for me, most of the time) we’ll call home and ask whether those at home would like us to pick something up for them.
Sure it seems rather conscious at first, but if we look back and we explore the whole incident, it really shows quite a bit of our altruistic nature — even if it’s really just towards our families and immediate kin and relations.
Like I’ve never really bought a book for my cousins, out of which of course I barely am close to no more than 2 or 3 of them.
But it doesn’t make me altruistic that I bought a book for you.
But it does highlight the fact that we are nicer, and kinder to our kin.
But not to strangers — maybe randomly sometimes.
So perhaps it’s circumstantial altruism?
By: kieranwar on November 18, 2007
at 9:44 am
well that’s all really true but what i mean to be truly altruistic well outside your family will be little bits of stuff you’ve done. For example turning off pwer when there’s no ned for it and save our earth? Or even simpler just giving way to someone when he/she is in need of speed? Well such acts are what make living in a society more tangible i guess.
By: wonght12 on November 20, 2007
at 1:33 pm
Well I disagree that we are altruistic when we switch off the lights/power when it’s not in use.
That hardly qualifies as an unselfish act, which is the definition of “true altruism”.
When we (or I) do that, it’s mostly because climate destabilization if it do occur, will affect me as well.
We do perform deeds (though rarely) that serves us no obvious benefit.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t help people. Just that we can help the earth by doing things like you said.
All I’m saying here is that we don’t go out help people and then expect a reward.
We do help others, when it can seem like there is nothing for us to gain at the end.
But sometimes, let’s say you help a person carry a heavy load of groceries up the stairs.
Sure that’s helping a person. But if you feel good, then surely you know that feeling good is something you would expect, even if you never intended it to.
Since we do benefit (feeling good about ourselves) when we help the person carry the load up the stairs, then it’s not as unselfish as it is.
In principle, altruism requires us to do something that would make really no difference to our lives if we didn’t do it.
But we still do it.
Expecting a reward isn’t as bad as it should be (or can be), but it shouldn’t deter us from trying to be “altruistic” as well.
But being a nice person (and having people be nice to you) is a great thing. And it makes our lives, more livable.
By: kieranwar on November 20, 2007
at 4:43 pm
we can’t be truly altriustic due to our biological make up the only one-insects. Which we aren’t
By: wonght12 on November 21, 2007
at 1:23 pm
Clearly.
By: kieranwar on November 22, 2007
at 6:30 am