Why Do We Hate?

I wanted to write this blog post about something else, maybe something reflective on achieving my ascension to that of a university student or surviving the year of Taylor College’s “excellent” Foundation Program…But in the end after a conversation with my friend Aaron over msn helped steer this blog post to something that has been bugging me for awhile. I talked to a fair number of people that I know and read it online through some forums and so on. I notice that alot of them don’t really like the PAP…For those who aren’t very politically inclined, PAP means People Action Party the current ruling party of Singapore. Well since the start of Singapore till now. Anyway I conclude that it has almost become…fashionable to hate Singapore and the People’s Action Party. I am not defending nor am I supporting the PAP but I am just wondering why? Ask any of them who say that they don’t like the PAP or Singapore and ask them to give you a proper reason why they don’t like both the party and the nation, most of them would be hard pressed to give a good reason why…even a specific reason would be missing. Most of the time I asked and all I get are general reasons like the way they ran the nation, some strange reasoning that Lee Kuan Yew is corrupted etc etc. I get close to no specific reason backed up by evidence of not liking Singapore and the PAP.

Lets see, one of the general reasons I get for not liking the government is that it is corrupted and so on. I agree that there is a high chance that the government is corrupted to some extent and you can view some of their actions as dynastic and corrupted in the sense that they are keeping everything within the Lee family but if you compare it against the other countries in the world. Really you don’t have to look too far, look at Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia to see strong evidence of major corruption and how it is screwing up their nations. Then when you look at them, take a nice look at our country and realise the fact that even though there is corruption in our government, it is so small that its almost nothing compared to our neighbours. Come on people. Our nation is so stable and peaceful, cause their corruption isn’t as bad as the rest!

There is this idea of the grass being greener on the other side. The idea that I think most Singaporeans have that other countries have it better off than them. I will admit that I have been guilty of thinking that way in the past, wondering wether my life would have turned out better if maybe I had a different life, different parents or born in a different nation. Then it would change to thinking that so & so country seems to be better than my country and why can’t I stay in that country instead of Singapore. I lived my life in both Perth and Singapore, i experienced the idea of living in the “greener” side of life. But then I find myself missing Singapore, i go back to Singapore and I find myself missing Perth. We can never satisfy that idea in us, there will always be another place that seems better than our place and we can’t do anything about it except to either live with it or complain throughout our lives. Obviously we can see that most of the Singaporeans just complain that they wished that they could live in another nation and so on.

I’m not looking to insult anyone and so on. Just my opinion. Our generation needs to shape up abit and realise that once our parents kick the bucket, that it will be up to us to do something about it. Scary thought isn’t it? That it is up to our generation to fix the problems of the old generation? My geography teacher told us in class with a hint of sadism that it is his generation that sucked up all the resources and dumped all the poisons into the ocean and up into the air and it will be our generation who will have to clean up the mess that his generation caused. And that he will be long dead before he will have to endure any of the hellist conditions that seem set to descend onto our world from Global Warming to financial upheaval. I take a walk around Singapore and I see the people around my age who don’t seem to be doing anything about their lives and so on. They seem to be living for the Now, for the moment instead of wondering about their futures. I wonder what is going to happen to Singapore and the rest of the world when our generation takes over.

50 bucks that we will all combust into flames.

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