43. STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES - Forrest Gump

A  prominent Taiwanese personality recently pinned several labels on the Chinese diaspora in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. He called Singaporeans ‘stupid’, ‘of poor stock.’
Our leaders and intellectuals didn’t rebut, in their heart of hearts they know this to be true.

That same week a small group of Singaporeans confirmed this by getting lost in the highlands of Japan. When found in snowy conditions in mountainous terrain, they were huddled together for warmth in their vehicle. They were dressed in lightweight shirtsleeves and tees.

When interviewed, one of them said, that on the world map, Japan looked ‘small’. They must have figured they won’t have too much difficulty locating the region they needed to visit. Brilliant. This makes at least 10 stupid Singaporeans in that group…….there’s lots more where they come from.

People everywhere are products of their conditioning – by their families, the society, the school system, their religious indoctrination….and Singaporeans are a highly conditioned lot. After years of living in a conformist Second Wave environment, the results are now painfully obvious.

Narrow small-minded thinking is ingrained into young people from an early age from adults who went through the same mill. The large majority have a hard time thinking out of the box because they simply can’t - there’s a block there. 

They have a hard time processing their own thoughts because they never had to do that from the very start. Many things were decided for them and handed out to them by the family, by rote learning, by the authorities, by those in religion. As they conform to what others expect to be the right norm, they are rewarded with carrots, be it monetary, a toy perhaps, a plaque or a merit award, a place in a ‘good’ school or a place in ‘heaven’ where they will be seated at the right hand side of their ‘God.’ (the current war cry is 'jihad is good!')

So we have TV programmes, ‘educational’ books, ad campaigns shamelessly rehashed because the publishers, writers, producers etc have no original ideas of their own. They copy and borrow formats and storylines from everywhere else, the results are corny, to say the least. …and the target audience simply lap it up.

Singaporeans are, by and large, followers and doers, not thinkers. Far easier to follow - let others do the thinking, the planning, the creating. In every society, the masses (read: multitudes) will always outnumber the intelligentsia.

Didn’t a prominent Singaporean criticize the soft heads of her fellow citizens in parting with their cash unthinkingly to those foreigners with sob stories? Fools and their money are soon parted. Those responsible for feeding tabloid fodder to these fools are the local dailies…sensational headlines and pictures sell…reporters, editors, publishers, vendors, get to keep their jobs.
 
At an NGO seminar I attended in Bombay, a speaker suggested that Singapore’s a ‘good’ place to raise funds. During my church going days, a priest had come from East Malaysia to raise donations for his parish, Singapore was recommended to him as the ‘best’ place.

Consider this – the millions collected for the tsunami victims went to a faceless nameless Red Cross which has been around for donkey years so must be respectable – nearly 2 years on, the tsunami victims are still in a sorry state. 

In India and Sri Lanka, the real work of new homes and new boats were completed by small Indian spiritual organisations with private donations from members, well-wishers and their own Trust. Their Gurus and volunteers went hands-on to rebuild, quietly, without the fanfare and the politics.

There’s a zillion real life stories of foreigners with schemes and scams targeted at us to rip us off….they include ‘investment’ opportunities, properties, time-shares, internet surfing, ostrich farms……many Singaporeans fell for these – hook, line and sinker. 
The presenters are slick and suave, their data impressive, their brochures glossy.
And because these are overseas ‘investments’ or the faceless nameless internet, suckers have no recourse.

Is there hope for a truly creative, innovative, independent thinking tribe here? Will take a while. The truly creative innovative thinkers are thankfully running the show and the corporations. For starters, they’ve bravely imported large numbers of ‘foreign talents’ to make up the shortfall, opened the country to migrants from the region, exposed young people to ways of doing things which are not necessarily the norm or the usual.
The downside is, creative thinking will produce creative crooks....but that's another story.

Modern day controversial thinkers have been brought into Singapore at great expense to address civil servants, high fliers movers and shakers, captains of industry. The Government pays for its officers to attend and its at times money down the drain because a teacher friend who attended several, gathered from discussions after the talks that there were Heads of Departments, school principals, teachers, government officers - left scratching their heads, who didn’t understand the new terminology, the new thinking.
These folks badly need that paradigm shift to unleash the Forces within, which can only come about if they can change the gestalt. Huh? Say what?

Independent thinkers are rebels and loners….they need to be. Following the crowd cramp their style. My favourite way of putting it is ‘Follow like sheep – be led to the slaughterhouse.’
The black sheep is special – it’s an individual…….

The Rebel is the very salt of the Earth.


Upon publishing this, I await some journalists who borrow ideas or my headlines to write their week's article....I'm flattered. Those 10, fortunate enough to engage MM, forgot where they or their parents crawled out from - if things had turned out differently and this country had fallen into the hands of incompetent idiots and crooks, those hotshots would be working overseas as 'foreign talents' - as labourers, maids and prostitutes.

If young undergrads know nothing much about what's going on in their country or the names of their leaders, it is'nt apathy. They're dull, dull, dull. Sluggish.

Too much consumption. Too much materialism...

There were students from China who described their Singaporean classmates as having 'pig's brains'. This is not to say there are'nt ignorant people elsewhere - there's plenty - Westerners who think Singapore is in China or Kong Kong, and Chiangmai is in China as it sounds like Shanghai, others think Singapore's this poor Third World country, its people living in trees.