You can find this sort of wisdom in our Indian, Malay and
Chinese cultures. There are many gems of wisdom, knowledge and
strength, we can draw upon - not just in time of crisis but also in
our daily living.
You look at this guy. What character he has left? friendly?,
jovial? stingy? argumentative? His character is pulled to
shred.
In that kind of living condition, nobody around treated him as
human anymore. Nothing around told him that he was a human anymore.
His drinking and eating bowls were no better looking than the
pigs'. The only female around were the sows, even then and if he
wished, he had to content with fighting off the male
pigs. It was like heaven and hell has abandoned him -
totally.
The only thing left was his spirit, ie his personality if
you wish. When he faced with that kind of situation, he
had two choices. Psychologist calls it, fight or flight
response.
If his personality was weak - caved in, ie became insane. If his
personality was strong -soldiered on.
And only his personality or his spirit was left - to tell
his body and mind whether to agree with the surround or to
disagree. If his spirit dared to acknowldege that he was still
human, he had to face the harsh
consequences.
This white soldier, he has been brought up the traditional way -
with love, family togetherness, and god-fearing environment. Mainly
with the traditonal Christian values. That was why he had this
tough personality to fight on.
That is also what I meant when I said we don't throw away our
culture, tradition and religion just because of globalisation or
multiracialism.
To the younger Singaporean this - What you see in Holywood, in
movies, in TV are just what it is - make-believe stuff. The
mainstream American, European, and Japanese are still holding onto
their tradition, culture and religion. And my personal thinking is
that globalisation or muliraciaIism has not adversely diminished
their traditional values - certainly not like the rate we are
losing ours.
We?? oh, God forbid, we are like Rojak, so damn mixed up, to tell u
the truth, most of us lost our identity already, there is no focus
in our culture, or so call Singapore culture, cos the govt paradigm
shift is so fast, eg follow switzerland lifestyle, then take
on China economic, then invest in India, exchange program with
Americans, wha lau, work like tha japanese, unreasonable and
sometime inhuman, i feels that they are running a corporation with
machineries rather than a country with humans. I cannot even speak
my dialect with proficiency but i can speak Malay and thais
due to my nature of work here. So funny.
So, in the end, we younger ones lack of direction in term of our
cultures, a mix of hollywood stuff, MTV hip hop, joo chiat ah pek,
bak kut teh, jack place, laksa, Serangoon style, canto pub,
hokkien ktv, Guan Yim Ma temple, methodist church, hotel 81,..race
course road indian temple, sri..man north indian crusine, orchard
rd trendy..etc etc..and in the end, i agree that sometime, i hv to
ask myself, Who am I? or Are they making us look like a fool?
