Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Small things and Big things
The car ahead of me wouldn't wait for them and I guess many would not wait for the second pedestrian. She appreciated it and waved to me to say thanks :-) I don't usually get this. These days many see it as their right or entitlement especially the teenagers.
I always like to begin the day this way. It is the small things that count and the challenge is to persuade more people to get involved. William Wan is at his best encouraging little acts of kindness but often got it very wrong when he tried to tackle the big issues. At the level of the individual it is the relationships and trust between us than bind us. Scale it up to the size of the nation state, only self interest matter. Little wonder I have found far too many provocations from the bigger issues to criticize. Foreigners do not understand. They have left the worse back home for the better here. On the other hand, we are accepting the worse from the better before. It is still very good but the trend is bad, i.e., tomorrow will not be better unless we reverse the trends.
Policy making here had been relatively easy in the past because unlike most places, we were willing to make sacrifices for the long term good. That is now broken and the government is trying to recapture that because in the end that is our decisive advantage against everyone else. Unfortunately the ST instead of helping is making things harder and worse not just for the PAP government but all of us too. Increasingly they are running the paper only for the bottom line. They are not burning fat but eating their muscles. The future is not bright for them.
Nevertheless I like today. It has started very well.
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"Policy making here had been relatively easy in the past because unlike most places, we were willing to make sacrifices for the long term good. That is now broken and the government is trying to recapture that because in the end that is our decisive advantage against everyone else. "
ReplyDeleteWe have a morally impoverished set of leaders and policy makers. The population is hardly different but leaders should be better people, not just more intelligent. Yes, they are basically honest, maybe hardworking and ethical. However, it seems the education system has not produced people with enough moral fibre. Put it down to the general denigration of humanities in our culture perhaps. Most can't recount something as basic as Aesop's fables. We don't even know we are killing the Golden Goose. You are right, our ability to act as one people was our strength. This is rapidly being sapped.