Ignorance, of course.
If you were to ask me to list 10 negative stuff about PAP in 10
minutes, I would probably be able to tell you a few, and probably
give justification for one of them only - just like a student who
did not prepare for his exams. Conversely, Poh Ah Pak would be able
to shoot out at least 100 of them like a machine gun and justify
each of them with so much evidence and proof that printing them
would require the entire Amazon rainforest, right, Ah Pak?
And with ignorance, comes fear. If one doesn't know much about
something, he/she will not feel confident discussing about it,
because of the fear of the consequences - criticism, labelled as
kaypoh and whatsoever.
To illustrate this better, it's like going to a forum of some
unknown field to you, say, soaps and detergents. Then you post
something like "PAPA Lemon sux sia - cannot remove this XX stain
from plates", and get a reply from the PAPA CEO, "*laughs* I'm
afraid you'll need to justify this. Our dishwashing detergent is
produced using the latest ABC technology and ingredients like DEF
also blah blah blah...". Then "?" shows all over your head about
the ABCDEF nomenclature and you feel down-right stupid in front of
other forum users. Either that, or you receive a lawyer's letter
the next day demanding for a public apology and state that you made
up everything; you'll probably go wtf and regret about complaining
in the first place.
And I still remember the TV telecast of a conversation between LKY
and a group of people. Then one of the participants got pinned down
for asking a sensitive question (something about a survey) like a
needle through an ant. It's just...scary.
One way to end such ignorance is to make sure the knowledge is
"compulsory" aka in textbooks and examinations. The advantage of
this is, unless something else in his/her knowledge proves it
untrue, it remains true in the learners' mind. Something like an
opt-out system; you get what I mean. But of course, it will never
happen until MOE privatises some eons later.
Another would be to get the person to generate an interest in the
topic, one of which is by proving some "truths" relevant to his/her
life untrue, as mentioned above, or by providing alternative
viewpoints about it. With the internet, there's technically no
limit on what you can find out about anything (yet), confidential
stuff aside, if he/she is indeed genuinely interested about it. And
just how does it feel like to realize that you have been kept in
the dark or been given one-sided views about certain issues, which
would probably affect your future, for the past ten-odd
years?
But anyway, the challenge here is to spark that interest in the
first place, imho. With so much censorship and restriction on
freedom, it is no surprise that me and my peers are being apathetic
about political issues. Even the local newspapers which the
teachers encourage us to read are simply filled with either pro-PAP
content or non-politics stuff, mainly trivia. Nothing else. And so
much for the impression that our papers are neutral and unbiased
which I had until a few months ago. What a charade, or maybe it's
just that I was dumb.
Right now, I feel like I'm ban1 men2 nong4 fu3-ing in front of you
SC regulars. But anyway, if there is any part of my post which is
incorrect or just naive teenager crap, do point them out, but don't
flame me - I fear of being flamed.
