The Cancer of the Mind And Political Apathy in An Affluent Society
This entry was first posted as a note on my Facebook account.
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Coming across a series of three separate articles over these couple of days on the TODAY paper and Straits Times - on the study report by AXA Life Outlook Index pertaining to the general local consumer's confidence level; the sentiments of notable high-fliers in the private sector concerning their aversion towards a life of being scrutinized, i.e. e.g. political life; and on the inadvertent revelation of airline pilots' income in relation to latest corporate decision to impose a duration of 'no-pay' leave upon them every month following impending severe negative growth in the commercial aircraft industry.
Reflecting on these articles has afforded me the credulity to abide by the view that our ever increasing dependency on the world economy, together with the continually incremental affluence of our society, have caused the greatest harm to our collective mentality as a nation - it is a kind of cancer that has gradually metastasized itself pervasively over the course of the two to three generations since the day of our independence. It is like a biblical rendering of the mechanism of yeast working through flour, in the context of permitting the trickling in of traces of impurity into what is already clean.
It is not as if the issue is that high-fliers in the private sector should consider to enter politics, or that the worries of the general person in the street in these times of job insecurity are illegitimate, or even that airline pilots are not deserving of that SGD10,000 equivalent every month. The real problem that underlies the state of society as depicted through these three situational articles, is that of an innate, deeply enrooted apathy towards "recanting from a convenient familiarity towards the establishment", in short - "change" - of the drastic, radical and abstract kind, into a form that is absolutely unlike the former way of things, i.e. a total transformation.
Just like President Barack Obama of the United States of America is now "unable" to articulate his words of promise of "change" into perceivable actualizations, in the same manner, doing away with this "cancer of the mind" in our society today requires that same understanding and belief to carry forth decisive action to stop doing whatever is established and entrenched at all levels of human influence and inter-dependency in this world.
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Not that I am a supporter of President Barack Obama or all of his views, but simply drawing a parallel line of thought to the concept of the desirable change that was advocated in his presidential campaign.
______________________________________________________________
Coming across a series of three separate articles over these couple of days on the TODAY paper and Straits Times - on the study report by AXA Life Outlook Index pertaining to the general local consumer's confidence level; the sentiments of notable high-fliers in the private sector concerning their aversion towards a life of being scrutinized, i.e. e.g. political life; and on the inadvertent revelation of airline pilots' income in relation to latest corporate decision to impose a duration of 'no-pay' leave upon them every month following impending severe negative growth in the commercial aircraft industry.
Reflecting on these articles has afforded me the credulity to abide by the view that our ever increasing dependency on the world economy, together with the continually incremental affluence of our society, have caused the greatest harm to our collective mentality as a nation - it is a kind of cancer that has gradually metastasized itself pervasively over the course of the two to three generations since the day of our independence. It is like a biblical rendering of the mechanism of yeast working through flour, in the context of permitting the trickling in of traces of impurity into what is already clean.
It is not as if the issue is that high-fliers in the private sector should consider to enter politics, or that the worries of the general person in the street in these times of job insecurity are illegitimate, or even that airline pilots are not deserving of that SGD10,000 equivalent every month. The real problem that underlies the state of society as depicted through these three situational articles, is that of an innate, deeply enrooted apathy towards "recanting from a convenient familiarity towards the establishment", in short - "change" - of the drastic, radical and abstract kind, into a form that is absolutely unlike the former way of things, i.e. a total transformation.
Just like President Barack Obama of the United States of America is now "unable" to articulate his words of promise of "change" into perceivable actualizations, in the same manner, doing away with this "cancer of the mind" in our society today requires that same understanding and belief to carry forth decisive action to stop doing whatever is established and entrenched at all levels of human influence and inter-dependency in this world.
_______________________________________________________________
Not that I am a supporter of President Barack Obama or all of his views, but simply drawing a parallel line of thought to the concept of the desirable change that was advocated in his presidential campaign.
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