What we don't know can hurt us

This is an op-ed I wrote in Aug 2003 (five years ago, incedible!) when MM used to be SM. As a student in the NTU School of Communication and Information, this piece reflects my hope in the potential of youth to make a difference in society through community-based action. A tad too cliched and skimming only at the surface, it isn't my best piece of work, but what the heck:

At a forum where Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew was the Guest Speaker, one participant revealed that he was more interested in what SM Lee had to say about the economic situation rather than worry about the worsening Singapore-Malaysia ties or the war in Iraq, as these did not have a ‘direct and immediate’ effect on his life. In a survey by Singapore Polytechnic, 85% of about 800 youth also did not feel too comfortable in reflecting views opposite that of the government, as they felt that their views would not be heard.

These snippets unravel the somewhat unsettling observation that Singaporean youth do not hold opinions about some of the major issues that affect them directly or indirectly now, or in the future. The apparent apathy of Singaporean youth toward world issues and local politics has been a much-discussed topic.

Why is there such apathy? Does it exist at all?

Our state of political, social and until recently, economic, stability in our nation has made conditions for some kind of apathy conducive. Life is great: You’re an undergraduate, reading communications and are the future intellectual who will remake our nation in the time to come. Whatever that means. For some, life has become routine: lectures, tutorials and assignments. There is simply no time to go out of the curriculum and read other material to form opinions about world matters. They are too complex to waste precious time on.

The blame is also on the nature of these ‘world’ matters as well. Many of the terrorist attacks, bombings and wars do not happen in Singapore. We are safe. After all, our government always takes care of everything, and our defence is a force to reckon with. Let the experts handle it. After all, our main goal is to get a degree to get a job, right?

In such a context, we need to seriously re-examine ourselves, in terms of our roles, and our identity as both individuals and Singaporeans.

As students of communications, we especially need to know what is going around in the world. The Global Village is materializing. There is an explosion of information available, in newspapers, radio television and the Internet. The political, economic and social upheavals in other parts of the world will affect us in our small nation, and we have to know what should be done, and what is being done. In other words, we must care and have an opinion. If we don’t, we are in danger of becoming the proverbial frog stuck at the bottom of the well.

True, student organization has been battered into organizing bashes at clubbing joints and jam-and-hops and dinner-and-dances ever since the 1960s, when the government took harsh actions to suppress left-wing student movements that were gaining momentum in universities.

But I believe we have reached a stage in our society where civil student opinion, in the form of thinking University students, will be welcome and tolerated, provided feedback is given to the leadership according to their own rules. That is better than not speaking up and staying ignorant.

But so what if we do care? There’s nothing we can do to effect changes on anything. Many of us wore white ribbons as a sign of being ‘anti-war’ during the Iraq War. But apart from our own feeling of pseudo-achievement of having ‘protested’, we couldn’t stop the war. May this feeling of uselessness prevent us from wanting to know at all? Perhaps. But it is during times like these that we must ask ourselves: would I want this to happen to my nation, my family or myself? By knowing and accepting the very real atrocities that happen to people like you and me, we can appreciate our enormous comforts and be prepared for crisis situations, if they were to befall us.

We are the next generation of Singaporeans who are going to govern and live in Singapore for the next 50 years or so. We will become the nation. How we approach the larger world issues, and how ready we are in the face of unexpected crises, will determine how we negotiate future challenges to our peace and stability. Therefore let our youth be a starting period for us to ‘warm up’ to the responsibilities that will be thrust on us.