Again, I deliberate on whether to pounce upon this topic once again because it has been too rigorously debated - with my side of the argument being furiously pounced about in a piranhic fashion whenever it surfaces, otherwise it is heavily self-censored due to the backlash. There is so much on my mind. Incoherent, emotive, opinionated thoughts...but underneath it all, a deep sense of abject disappointment. I ranted a bit on a platform that only my close friends know of, because I was feeling so frustrated with the turn of events in my home (I love Singapore, but only inwardly so... if you knew this country, covert patriotism is a trademark). But I thought I'll try to organize it a bit better, less offensively. And I know people will respond like this:
"They can go ahead and whine for all they want, denial of what Mr LKY did for us. Shame on them!" and, "Unfriend those unkind people who put unkind remarks"
and the similar. You've read those, you know what I'm talking about. I cringe and feel extremely disgusted when I read those. I have the urge to withdraw myself from this online social space until further notice, but the posts just keep coming, and I kept reading. Threads, comments, articles, all of them. There is one stark, common theme to it: a fury to keep the online space a pristine wall of emotional sentiments of grieve, gratefulness, and a pictorial display of each of their steel determination to pay respects.
These people - by which I mean people who rejects the antinomy - live in self-denial. These people purposefully encase themselves in a closed system of knowledge. These people who segregates the man from politics and selectively remembers the good about him. Many self-proclaiming literates determined to err on the side of ignorance. They are the ones who jump to conclusions by only reading the title and commenting. Then I realized that I've been living, working, studying, walking, sharing public spaces, sharing the same passport, and building a future with these people. I shudder. I have seen a paralleled, affective clamping down on opinions when it comes to pro-PAP sentiments on the online arena. Now, I am witnessing my country in regression once again.
(I promise to be as unoffensive but whatever, you know how no-offense works. By the way, a late disclaimer but: I do not refer to all Singaporeans.)
I've previously posted about how I transited from knowing LKY as an almost saviour-figure to detesting him as a man whose system has affected some negatively (TLDR: stemming his political opponents), then to respecting him after taking into account his entire lifetime of dedication and the positives. I will emphasise again that he's only human, and that his critics are often too harsh on him - but that's what critics are supposed to be. We do not live in Wonderland or Paradise. We call him our founding father. We know that family and friends are imperfect, they come packaged with flaws. We embrace them all the same, wholeheartedly. Why not the same for LKY? LKY has placed us on the world map to be financially astounding, the vanguard for technology and scientific advancement, efficiency and perfect clockwork governance. Will we repay him by self-censoring and proving international critics right about the lack of freedom of speech (this, by the way, is one of the major negative impressions of Singaporeans when we go overseas)?
At this juncture, I recall one wise friend who told me that I cannot expect everyone to be politically interested and has the capacity to respond intelligently to everything online. Or something to that effect. But if we want to be a well-rounded first-world nation and be internationally functional, which by definition, encapsulates both economic prosperity and political maturity, we definitely need to work on the latter. The first step is to keep an open mind, and question the provenance of everything you read. The next is to let our next generation think for themselves.
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Postscript: I'm writing on this too much. Back on my assignment.