Ian On The Red Dot

One thing I remember hearing a lot when I was still part of the Singapore education system was this question on the Singaporean identity. Do we have an identity? How can we nurture an identity? And so on and so on.

One aspect of the Singaporean identity is pragmatism. Well, that is my answer to the question anyway. Not very romantic.

I also remember Minister Mentor sharing an anecdote about how he noticed during the riots in the early days of Singapore history, people would take in their possessions into their homes to ensure they were protected. I can’t remember what those possessions are but I think motorcycles might have been involved. And that is why HDB was important. Give the people homes they actually owned and they might riot less because no one wants to risk something they owned being damaged.

And so why do we do National Service? Why would we want to fight for Singapore? Because for better or worse, whether we like it or not, most of us have our lives here. We are rooted here by circumstances.

I for one believe that if all Singaporeans have the ability to just pack up and shift their life to another place of their choice with no loss in quality of life or significant material and financial loss then a significant number of us would do so. Especially if there was a war. I’m saying if most of us could, we would run instead of stay and fight and probably die. Sad. But true.

But not all of us can just pack up and go. Only the rich. Which isn’t most of us.

But the rich of course, being rich won’t want their stuff to be lost so easily (I’m being presumptuous here because I don’t have personal insight to their mind). So they would need people to stay and fight, just for that chance nothing much will be lost if anything is ever lost.

And so, give the people enough such that they won’t play punk in their own country, but not too much so they can leave this country.

Maybe that is why a growing poorer middle class is so damn attractive.