The World from a Singaporean Perspective
Ask not what your society can do for you, ask what can you do for your society
I had a conversation with my children the other day about their future plans and if they would want to study overseas. The discussion triggered some old memories of when I was their age. Since young, my parents have always said to me the United Kingdom is a great country to live in, with a highly advanced and democratic society. This was because back in the early sixties, Singapore was still part of the British colony with an impoverished and uneducated society yearning to be part of their colonial master and be liberated from their hardship and suffering.
It wasn’t a surprise that such a message had been imprinted on my entire generation born between the late sixties and early seventies. My fellow classmates and secondary school cohort would openly share with one another their dreams of emigrating and living in developed Western societies. We even thought that if we ever wanted to escape hardship and live a purposeful life, we must live and work abroad in countries like the UK or the US.
There was no reason to believe otherwise because since the British left, no one believed we could survive on our own and having been kicked out from Malaysian Federation, it was all but certain that Singapore was on its final decline to certain death.
Against such an environment, I have always dreamt of going to the UK to experience living in an advanced society and get out of our declining society to be at the forefront of human evolution. I have subscribed completely to the Western values of democracy, liberty, equality and human rights. It was my firm belief that a country could not prosper without subscribing to those values, and our Singaporean society was far from having these ideals. I do not have the optimism that my country could ever make it. This belief was so strong among our generation that it was even documented in the lyrics of our national song, “We Are Singapore.”
The Singapore I grew up in was filled with “Kiasu-ism”, a term derived from the Hokkien language and is commonly defined as “the fear of losing out.” The term yields the meaning of taking extreme precautions and extreme measures to achieve success. Our parents drove us hard to compete with one another for the rare resources or opportunities that were not available for those who didn’t work hard enough for them. There was really no room to talk about the luxury of liberty or human rights in those days. It was all about how to survive and thrive in this competitive world.
Honestly, it wasn’t a nice society to associate with, and younger Singaporeans tended to leave the nation for another country that would provide better opportunities with lesser competition. Who would want to fight so hard for an opportunity that is lesser than elsewhere? A good example would be getting a university degree. In the nineties, our National University of Singapore (NUS) was ranked outside the global Top 100. Despite that, I had to compete with a whole lot of Kiasu Singaporeans to get in, making it extremely stressful, and in addition, I had to spend an extra year to get the degree with honours. For the same course, I was offered a place in several UK Universities that rank within the Top 50 globally, plus I didn’t need to do the extra year to graduate with honours. The choice was straightforward, and the only barrier was securing the funds to go overseas.
The valuable experience of an overseas education opens up horizons and the understanding of the world at large. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be able to study overseas. Having studied in the UK for my undergrad and the US for my postgrad, it really impressed me that Western cultures are indeed better-developed and mature societies. This was in the nineties. It was an experience that I valued very much, and I wish my children could be exposed to it as well.
However, many of my peers returned to Singapore after our overseas stint because we felt that we had something to contribute to our own society. Singapore might not be great, but it is undeniably a society we belong to and one that we can make a difference if we all do our part. Back then, it wasn’t about making a decent living that pulled me back to Singapore; it was about making a contribution that would make a difference.
The song “We Are Singapore” was released in 1987. Ask any Singaporean, and I can assure you they will know how to sing this song. The first two lines of the lyrics go like this “There was a time when people said that Singapore won’t make it, but we did.
There was a time when troubles seemed too much for us to take, but we did.” It was a factual reflection of how Singaporeans saw themselves in those years and how it has made us come together to make a difference for our country. There was even another song to mobilise the entire nation to work towards that goal known as “Count On Me Singapore.”
We were imperfect, which was a well-known fact, so we didn’t have to spend time arguing about why we were not perfect. We just have to start working on making things better. Certainly, much of the credit goes to our government and our great leader Mr. Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), who rallies the nation to rise. But LKY and the government alone cannot change Singapore. It is with the collective will of all Singaporeans to contribute that we have arrived where we are.
In life, things won’t stay the same. In just one generation, the global landscape has changed, and Singapore has changed. We have come a long way, from an impoverished fishing village before independence into now a wealthy cosmopolitan metropolis; a financial hub, a tech hub, an aviation hub, a maritime hub, and more recently, a Family Office Hub for global billionaires.
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