BBC commentary sparks compassion debate in Singapore
It’s not easy to build a gracious society, but we can do it if we choose to, say two Singapore ministers in response to a comment piece that was widely shared on social media on Saturday night.
Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin posted a link to the article on his Facebook page, written by a foreign journalist for BBC News Magazine staying in Singapore, and admitted “many of us would be able to relate to some of her experiences”.
“We do hear stories of people being callous, indifferent, unfeeling. And I guess we need to look at ourselves and ask if we too sometimes reflect these ugly traits in the little things that we do or say, or don’t do and don’t say when we really should do the right thing,” he wrote. “Truth is, we often do know what is the right thing to do. And we can, if we choose to.”
Adding on to what he said was Minister for Community, Culture and Youth Lawrence Wong, who noted that Singapore’s Graciousness Index for last year fell sharply, which means that Singaporeans experienced fewer acts of graciousness and kindness.
“We are and we can be better than this,” he said, adding that the Singapore Kindness Movement has stepped up on its efforts to reach out to young Singaporeans in schools and communities.
“Amid our fast-paced lifestyles, let us take the time to reflect on how we lead our lives; to ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and compassion to the people around us,” Wong said. “Because in the end, that’s what matters above all else.”
The BBC journalist, Charlotte Ashton, wrote an op-ed piece entitled "Does Singapore deserve its 'miserable' tag?", describing how Singapore’s apathetic and uncaring money-chasing culture reflects its “world’s least-positive country” label — slapped on the nation-state by a Gallup poll in December 2012.
Sharing her experiences on public transport while pregnant, Ashton said she on one occasion crouched to the floor on a packed train, holding her head in her hands and feeling faint but was “completely ignored, for the full 15 minutes it took to reach (her) station”.
“Nobody offered me (a) seat or asked me if I was okay,” she wrote. “For the first time Singapore had made me feel unhappy. I had been vulnerable — completely reliant on the kindness of strangers. Singaporeans, I felt, had let me down.”
She ended off her piece with the comment, "…in the Singaporean rat race, you are certainly on your own. An unhappy conclusion, I am afraid, from misery city."
Within the article, she also quoted a few Singaporean friends who said they were not surprised by it at all, adding their own stories of negative experiences on public transport.
“We are programmed to think only about ourselves,” said one of them, a Chinese who had been educated in Canada. “The only thing that matters is money — helping people is not important,” he added.
"The problem here is that we measure everything in dollar bills - personal identity, self-respect, happiness, your sense of worth - it is all linked to how much money you have. But only the top few percent earn serious cash -- so everyone else feels worthless and apathetic."
