Where we're at as a society

I've always had the impression that Singapore was a country that prided itself on its human capital. The education system and universities there are often much talked-about and garner considerable degrees of respect from around the world with respect to their quality.

And I still have that impression. I certainly wouldn't mind at all being associated with a classy college or university like the Raffles Junior College and the NTU. Just saying that you belong to NUS for example, already puts you on a higher social standing than your peers who might be studying in any of our local universities. I'm not saying that local graduates are inferior in any way of course since I'm studying here myself, but the general consensus seems to be that Singapore has a pretty solid education backbone propping up the country's main resource: its people.

Or do they?

In today's Star paper page N50, the columnist for INSIGHT DOWN SOUTH who writes about the goings-on in Singapore mentioned the inevitable skew in the mindset of Singaporean youths whose minds have been so deeply ingrained with the competitive nature of the Singaporean society that places too much emphasis on success and leaves too little room for failure.

Where are we now as a society and where are we headed? Why is it that we are so focused on churning out world-class academic wonderkids akin to a factory producing designer sports shoes? In terms of science the global society as a whole is making wave after waves of breakthroughs and discoveries and everyday we hear people telling us that our "quality of life" is getting better. But at what cost? I feel that people have become robots in how they are being pushed to fit a mould to serve in a particular manner. Never mind if you are a unique human individual with your own set of skills, talents and abilities. All that matters is success, and whether you make it big in life. The individual is overtaking the group in importance, and our society now is more accurately just an assembly of 'individual individuals who happen to share the same living place and happen to have to interact with one another but otherwise pursue only individual goals individually'. And here I am talking about all these things because...I too, am a part of this degenerate change in our societal values.

If you didn't have the time to read the article that I was talking about to the end, then here's something that I wish I would never say, whether out loud or in my heart:

A reporter recounted how her friend was shaken when her young daughter came home one day and mentioned in passing that poor people were "stupid, obviously."